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Sino-Tibetan, or sometimes Trans-Himalayan, 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.
The Kuki-Chin–Naga languages are a geographic clustering of languages of the Sino-Tibetan family in James Matisoff's classification used by Ethnologue, which groups it under the non-monophyletic "Tibeto-Burman". Their genealogical relationship both to each other and to the rest of Sino-Tibetan is unresolved, but Matisoff lumps them together as a convenience pending further research.
Hakha Chin, or Laiholh, is a Kuki-Chin language spoken by 446,264 people, mostly in Myanmar. The total figure includes 2,000 Zokhua and 60,100 Hakha speakers. The speakers are largely concentrated in Chin State in western Myanmar and Mizoram in eastern India, with a small number of speakers in south-eastern Bangladesh.
The Sal languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeast India, parts of Bangladesh, and Burma.
The Kuki-Chin languages are a branch of 50 or so Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most speakers of these languages are known as Mizo in Mizoram and Manipur. Also, as Kukī in Assamese and Bengali and as Chin in Burmese; some also identify as Zomi. Mizo is the most widely spoken of the Kuki-Chin languages. The Kuki-Chin language has official status in both Chin State and Mizoram as Chin and Mizo respectively.
The Tibeto-Burmese 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-Burmese 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 Zo people are an ethnic group which inhabit areas of India, Myanmar and the Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh. The word Zohnatlâk/Zo is used to describe an ethnic group, which is also known as the Chin, the Mizo, the Kuki, or a number of other names based on geographic distribution, that speaks the Kuki-Chin languages. They are from same origin which is known as Sinlung. They spread throughout the northeastern states of India, northwestern Myanmar and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. In northeastern India, they are present in Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam.
Mru, also known as Mrung (Murung), is a Sino-Tibetan language of Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is spoken by a community of Mrus (Mros) inhabiting the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh with a population of 22,000 according to the 1991 census, and in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The Mrus are the second-largest tribal group in Bandarban District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. A small group of Mros also live in Rangamati Hill District.
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.
Khumi, or Khumi Chin, is a Kuki-Chin-Mizo language of Burma, with some speakers across the border in Bangladesh.
Bawm or Bawm Chin, also known as Banjogi, is a Kuki-Chin language primarily spoken in Bangladesh. It is also spoken in adjacent regions of Northeast India and Burma. The Bawms that live on the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh call their settlements "Bawmram", which literally means an area or location inhabited by Bawms.
Purum is a Southern Naga language of India. Speakers consider themselves to be ethnic Naga people, rather than part of the Kuki and Chin ethnic groups. Peterson (2017) classifies Purum as part of the Northwestern branch of Kuki-Chin. According Ethnologue, Purum shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Kharam.
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.
Shobhana Chelliah is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean of Research and Advancement at the College of Information, University of North Texas. Her research focuses on the documentation of the Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. She was a Program Director for the US National Science Foundation’s Documenting Endangered Languages Program from 2012-2015. She is currently partnering with individuals and academic institutions in India to create a state-of-the-art archive for the long term preservation and access of language documentation materials. This archive, the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages, is housed at the University of North Texas Digital Library. Chelliah’s 2022 Fulbright-Nehru fellowship is dedicated to development of these partnerships. Her publications include A Grammar of Meithei and The Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork as well as articles on Tibeto-Burman differential case marking and language contact, many of which she has co-authored with her students. She is working with Political Scientists James Meernik and Kimi King to create interdisciplinary frameworks to understand threats to language vitality. With health information expert Sara Champlain and phonologist Kelly Berkson, she is working to bring culturally-framed COVID information to underserved populations in the United States. With computational linguist, Alexis Palmer, she is working on discovering differential marking patterns through cross language comparison. These three projects are funded by the National Science Foundation.
Southern Naga is a branch of Kuki-Chin-Naga languages.
Northern Kuki-Chin is a branch of Kuki-Chin languages. It is called Northeastern Kuki-Chin by Peterson (2017) to distinguish it from the Northwestern Kuki-Chin languages. VanBik (2009:31) also calls the branch Northern Chin or Zo.
Central Kuki-Chin is a branch of the Kuki-Chin languages. Central Kuki-Chin languages are spoken primarily in Mizoram, India and in Hakha Township and Falam Township of Chin State, Myanmar.
The Maraic languages are a branch of Kuki-Chin languages.
Southern Kuki-Chin is a branch of Kuki-Chin languages. They are spoken mostly in southern Chin State, Myanmar and in southeastern Bangladesh.
The Khomic languages are a branch of Kuki-Chin languages proposed by Peterson (2017). They are spoken mostly in southern Chin State, Myanmar and in southeastern Bangladesh.
References
- 1 2 Peterson, David A. (2020-12-01). "The stem alternation in Rengmitca". Himalayan Linguistics. 19 (2). doi: 10.5070/h91150997 . ISSN 1544-7502.
- ↑ Marma, U. She Thowai. "Rengmitca: an ethnic language on the verge of extinction". bdnews24.com. Retrieved 2021-02-21.
- ↑ Peterson, David A. 2015. An update on the status of Rengmitca. Paper presented at SoLE-4, Payap University.
- ↑ Peterson, David. 2017. "On Kuki-Chin subgrouping." In Picus Sizhi Ding and Jamin Pelkey, eds. Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley, 189-209. Leiden: Brill.
