Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese and the Tibetic languages. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.
Tani, is a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and neighboring regions.
James Alan Matisoff is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia.
Gurung, also known as Tamu Kyi or Tamu Bhaasaa, is a language spoken by the Gurung people of Nepal. The total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal was 227,918 in 1991 and 325,622 in 2011.
The Karen or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some 4.5 million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages. The Karen languages are written using the Karen script. The three main branches are Sgaw, Pwo and Pa'O. Karenni and Kayan are a branch of Karen languages. They are unusual among the Sino-Tibetan languages in having a subject–verb–object word order; other than Karen, Bai and the Chinese languages, Sino-Tibetan languages have a subject–object–verb order. This is likely due to influence from neighboring Mon and Tai languages.
The Sal languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeast India, parts of Bangladesh, and Burma.
The Lolo-Burmese languages of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail.
There have been various classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages.
Proto-Tibeto-Burman is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages, except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined by James Matisoff. Several other researchers argue that the Tibeto-Burman languages sans Chinese do not constitute a monophyletic group within Sino-Tibetan, and therefore that Proto-Tibeto-Burman was the same language as Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Paul King Benedict was an American anthropologist, mental health professional, and linguist who specialized in languages of East and Southeast Asia. He is well known for his 1942 proposal of the Austro-Tai language family and also his reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Tibeto-Burman. He was also a practicing psychiatrist in the New York area for 20 years and was also a pioneer in the field of ethnopsychiatry.
Scott DeLancey is an American linguist from the University of Oregon. His work focuses on typology and historical linguistics of Tibeto-Burman languages as well as North American indigenous languages such as the Penutian family, particularly the Klamath. His research is known for its diversity of its thematic and theoretical reach.
Manang, also called Manangba, Manange, Manang Ke, Nyishang, Nyishangte and Nyishangba, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal. Native speakers refer to the language as ŋyeshaŋ, meaning 'our language'. It is one of half a dozen languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. Manang and its most closely related languages are often written as TGTM in literature, referring to Tamang, Gurung, Thakali, and Manangba, due to the high degree of similarity in the linguistic characteristics of the languages. The language is unwritten and almost solely spoken within the Manang District, leading it to be classified as threatened, with the number of speakers continuing to decline. Suspected reasons for the decline include parents not passing down the language to their children, in order to allow for what they see as more advanced communication with other groups of people, and thus gain more opportunities. Due to the proximity of the district to Tibet, as well as various globally widespread languages being introduced into the area, use of the native language is declining in favor of new languages, which are perceived to aid in the advancement of the people and region.
Aimol, also known as Aimual, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Aimol people of Manipur, India. It is considered endangered and has less than 9,000 speakers worldwide as per 2011 census.
The SEAlang Library is an online library that hosts Southeast Asian linguistic reference materials.
Mruic or Mru–Hkongso is a small group of Sino-Tibetan languages consisting of two languages, Mru and Anu-Hkongso. Their relationship within Sino-Tibetan is unclear.
Jackson T.-S. Sun, also known as Jackson Tianshin Sun, is a Taiwanese linguist working on languages of the Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic families. He is best known for his pioneering documentation and historical-comparative work in Tani, Rgyalrongic, and Tibetic languages. Sun is a research fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.
The East Asian languages are a language family proposed by Stanley Starosta in 2001. The proposal has since been adopted by George van Driem and others.
Central Tibeto-Burman or Central Trans-Himalayan is a proposed branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family proposed by Scott DeLancey (2015) on the basis of shared morphological evidence.
The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus was a linguistics research project hosted at the University of California at Berkeley. The project, which focused on Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics, started in 1987 and lasted until 2015.
