Milang is a Siangic or Tani language of

Upper Siang district Upper Siang (Pron:/ˈsjæŋ or ˈsɪæŋ/) is an administrative district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. It is the fourth least populous district in the country (out of 640). History The majority of the people are of the Adi trib ...

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...

, India. It is spoken in the 3 villages of Milang (Milang: ''Holon''), Dalbing, and Pekimodi (Milang: ''Moobuk Ade''), located in Mariyang Subdivision,

Upper Siang District Upper Siang (Pron:/ˈsjæŋ or ˈsɪæŋ/) is an administrative district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. It is the fourth least populous district in the country (out of 640). History The majority of the people are of the Adi trib ...

(Tayeng 1976).

Classification

Milang has traditionally been classified as the most divergent of the

Tani languages The Tani language, often referred to as Tani languages, encompasses a group of closely related languages spoken by the Tani people in the northeastern region of India, primarily in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. These language ...

, hence ultimately

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) 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 ...

. Post & Blench (2011) reclassified it as Siangic, on the basis of clear correspondences with the Koro language in vocabulary that may not ultimately be of Sino-Tibetan origin. The implication is that Milang may, like other Siangic languages, harbour a non-Sino-Tibetan

substrate Substrate may refer to: Physical layers *Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached ** Substrate (aquatic environment), the earthy material that exi ...

, or may be a non-Sino-Tibetan language with Sino-Tibetan features acquired through prolonged contact, perhaps with the neighbouring and much larger Padam tribe, who speak an Eastern Tani language.

References

* Modi, Milorai (2007). ''The Millangs''. Itanagar: Himalayan Publishers. . * Modi, Yankee. 2017.
The Milang Language: Grammar and Texts
'. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Bern The University of Bern (, , ) is a public university, public research university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern. It was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a br ...

. * Post, Mark W. and Roger Blench (2011).
Siangic: A new language phylum in North East India
, ''6th International Conference of the North East India Linguistics Society'', Tezpur University, Assam, India, Jan 31 – Feb 2. * Tayeng, Aduk (1976). ''Milang phrase-book''. Shillong: The Director of Information and Public Relations, Arunachal Pradesh.

External links

* ELAR archive o
documentation of Milang
{{ArunachalPradesh-stub Languages of Arunachal Pradesh Tani languages Siangic languages Endangered languages of India Definitely endangered languages Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages