The Digaro (Digarish), Northern Mishmi (Mishmic), or Kera'a–Tawrã
languages are a small family of possibly
Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by the
Mishmi people of southeastern
Tibet 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 share ...
.
The languages are
Idu and
Taraon
Taraon is a village in the Ghazipur District of Uttar Pradesh, India.
The village of Taraon falls under the jurisdiction of the Taraon Panchayat. It is located East of Ghazipur, on the border of the Ghazipur and Buxer districts. It is from n ...
(Digaro, Darang).
External relationships
They are not related to the Southern Mishmi
Midzu languages, 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 Miju may refer to:
* Miju language
*Miju Mishmi tribe
In in Northeastern India, the Miju Mishmi, also known as Kaman or Kammaan, are one of the three tribes of the Mishmi people of Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. Members of this tribe are located in ...
(Kaman), are given below (Jiang, et al. 2013:2-3).
Registers
Idu,
Tawra,
Kman, and
Meyor
The Zekhring are from the Anjaw District (formerly part of Lohit district) of Arunachal Pradesh. They live in the hilly terrain and banks of the Lohit River in the Walong and Kibithoo area. As of 2002, their tribal population stood at 300, and th ...
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
Kman)
#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