The Digaro (Digarish), Northern Mishmi (Mishmic), or Kera'a–Tawrã languages are a small family of possibly

Sino-Tibetan languages 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. ...

spoken by the

Mishmi people The Mishmi people of Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh are an ethnic group located in the northeastern tip of the central Arunachal Pradesh in Upper and Lower Dibang Valley, Lohit and Anjaw Districts, all bordering southern Tibet in northeast India. ...

of southeastern

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...

and

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...

. The languages are Idu and Taraon (Digaro, Darang).

External relationships

They are not related to the Southern Mishmi

Midzu languages Miju (Midžu, Miju, Mijhu), Kaman–Meyor, Midžuish, Southern Mishmi, or Geman languages are a small proposed family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by the Kaman (Miju Mishmi) people of southeastern Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. The languages a ...

, apart from possibly being Sino-Tibetan. However, Blench and Post (2011) suggests that they may not even be Sino-Tibetan, but rather an independent language family of their own. Blench (2014) classifies the Digaro languages as part of the Greater Siangic group of languages.

Names

Autonyms and exonyms for Digaro-speaking peoples, as well as Miju (Kaman), are given below (Jiang, et al. 2013:2-3).

Registers

Idu, Tawra,

Kman KMAN (1350 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk format. Licensed to Manhattan, Kansas, United States, the station serves the Salina-Manhattan area. The station is currently owned by Manhattan Broadcasting Co. and features programing fr ...

, and Meyor all share a system of multiple language registers, which are (Blench 2016): #ordinary speech #speech of hunters: lexical substitution, the replacement of animal names and others by special lexical forms, and sometimes short poems #speech of priests/shamans: more complex, involving much language which is difficult to understand, and also lengthy descriptions of sacrificial animals #poetic/lyrical register (not in Idu, but appears in

) #mediation register (only in Idu?) #babytalk register

References

* Blench, Roger (2011
''(De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence''
* Blench, Roger (2014).
Fallen leaves blow away: a neo-Hammarstromian approach to Sino-Tibetan classification
'. Presentation given at the University of New England, Armidale, 6 September 2014. * Blench, Roger. 2017
The ‘Mishmi’ languages, Idu, Tawra and Kman: a mismatch between cultural and linguistic relations
* Jiang Huo ��获 Li Daqin ��大勤 Sun Hongkai ��宏开(2013). ''A study of Taraon'' ��让语研 Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House ��族出版社 * van Driem, George (2001) ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill. {{Arunachal languages Greater Siangic languages * Languages of India Proposed language families