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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. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic 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.
Dura is a recently extinct language of Nepal. It has been classified in the West Bodish branch of Tibetan languages, though more recent work separates it out as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan. Many of the Dura have switched to speaking Nepali, and the Dura language has sometimes been thought to be extinct. Some of the people who have switched to Nepali for their daily speech still use Dura for prayer.
The Mahakiranti or Maha-Kiranti languages are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages, consisting of the Kiranti languages and neighbouring languages thought to be closely related to them. Researchers disagree on which languages belong in Mahakiranti, or even whether Mahakiranti is a valid group. The group was originally proposed by George van Driem, who retracted his proposal in 2004 after a field study in Bhutan.
There are two dozen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family except for Nepali, which is an Indo-Aryan language, and Bhutanese Sign Language. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only native language of Bhutan with a literary tradition, though Lepcha and Nepali are literary languages in other countries. Other non-Bhutanese minority languages are also spoken along Bhutan's borders and among the primarily Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community in South and East Bhutan. Chöke is the language of the traditional literature and learning of the Buddhist monastics.
The Kiranti languages are a major family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Nepal and India by the Kirati people.
The Sal languages, also known as the Brahmaputran languages, are a branch of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in northeast India, as well as parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and China.
The Angami–Pochuri languages are a small family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in southern Nagaland and Northern Manipur of northeast India. Conventionally classified as "Naga", they are not clearly related to other Naga languages, and are conservatively classified as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan, pending further research.
Raji–Raute is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family that includes the three closely related languages, namely Raji, Raute, and Rawat. They are spoken by small hunter-gatherer communities in the Terai region of Nepal and in neighboring Uttarakhand, India.
The Chepangic languages, Chepang and Bhujel, are Sino-Tibetan languages of uncertain affiliation spoken in Nepal. They are often classified as part of the Mahakiranti or Magaric families.
The Tibeto-Kanauri languages, also called Bodic, Bodish–Himalayish, and Western Tibeto-Burman, are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages, centered on the Tibetic languages and the Kinnauri dialect cluster. The conception of the relationship, or if it is even a valid group, varies between researchers.
The Nung or Nungish languages are a poorly described family of uncertain affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Yunnan, China and Burma. They include:
The Boroic languages are a group within the Boro-Garo languages which are spoken in and around the Brahmaputra basin, Barak valley and Tripura of present-day northeast India. They are:
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.
The Baram–Thangmi languages, Baram and Thangmi are Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Nepal. They are classified as part of the Newaric branch by van Driem (2003) and Turin (2004), who view Newar as being most closely related to Baram–Thangmi.
Rawat (Raute), or "Jangali" (Jungle), is a small Sino-Tibetan language of India. It is spoken in 9 villages north of Askot in Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand, India (Ethnologue) as well as in several villages in Dadeldhura District, Nepal and Darchula District, Nepal.
The Rung languages are a proposed branch of Sino-Tibetan languages. The branch was proposed by Randy LaPolla on the basis of morphological evidence such as pronominal paradigms. However, Guillaume Jacques and Thomas Pellard (2021) argues that these languages do not constitute a monophyly based on recent phylogenetic studies and on a thorough investigation of shared lexical innovations.
The Raji people are a community found in Uttarakhand, India and some parts of western Nepal. As of 2001, the Raji people are classified as a Scheduled Tribe under the Indian government's reservation program of positive discrimination.
The Greater Magaric languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages proposed by Nicolas Schorer (2016). Schorer considers Greater Magaric to be closely related to the Kiranti languages as part of a greater Himalayish branch, and does not consider Himalayish to be particularly closely related to the Tibetic languages, which include Tibetan and the Tamangic languages.
Tandrange is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in a few ethnic Gurung villages of Lamjung District, Nepal. Tandrange is spoken in the villages of Tāndrāṅ (तान्द्राङ), Pokharī Thok, and Jītā (जीता). It belongs to the Greater Magaric branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.
The Newaric languages are a proposed group of Sino-Tibetan languages. George van Driem (2003) and Mark Turin (2004) argue that Newar and Baram–Thangmi share many features with each other, and thus group with each other.
References
- ↑ Schorer, Nicolas. 2016. The Dura Language: Grammar and Phylogeny. Leiden: Brill.
