Digaro languages

Digarish
Northern Mishmic
Geographic
distribution
Arunachal Pradesh
Linguistic classificationpossibly Sino-Tibetan or an independent family
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologmish1241

The Digaro (Digarish), Northern Mishmi (Mishmic), or Kera'a–Tawrã[1] languages are a possible small family of possibly Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by the Mishmi people of southeastern Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh.

The languages are Idu and Taraon (Digaro, Darang). Lexical similarities are restricted to centain semantic fields, so a relationship between them is doubtful.[2]

External relationships

[edit]

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

[edit]

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

Names of Mishmi peoples
Taraon name Kaman name Idu name Assamese name
Taraon people da31 raŋ53 tɕi31 moŋ35 tɑ31 rɑŋ35 Digaru;
Digaru Mishmi
Kaman people tɕɑu53 kɯ31 mɑn35 mi31 tɕu55 Midzu
Idu people dju55;
dju55 ta31 rɑŋ53;
dɑi53
min31 dɑu55;
hu53
i53 du55 Chulikata Mishmi
Zha people 扎人 tɕɑ31 kʰen55 tɕɑ31 kreŋ35
Tibetan people lɑ31 mɑ55;
mei53 bom55
dɯ31 luŋ35;
hɑi35 hɯl55
ɑ31 mi53;
pu53;
mi31 si55 pu53

Registers

[edit]

Idu, Tawra, Kman, and Meyor all share a system of multiple language registers, which are (Blench 2016):[3]

  1. ordinary speech
  2. speech of hunters: lexical substitution, the replacement of animal names and others by special lexical forms, and sometimes short poems
  3. speech of priests/shamans: more complex, involving much language which is difficult to understand, and also lengthy descriptions of sacrificial animals
  4. poetic/lyrical register (not in Idu, but appears in Kman)
  5. mediation register (only in Idu?)
  6. babytalk register

References

[edit]
  1. ^ DeLancey, Scott (2021). "Classifying Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 207–224. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-012. ISBN 9783110558142. S2CID 238722139.
  2. ^ Blench, R.M. 2024. The ‘Mishmi’ languages, Idu, Tawrã and Kman: a mismatch between cultural and linguistic relations. In: Movements through Time and Space: Ecology and Lingua-Cultural Change in South and Southeast Asia. Nishant Choksi ed. Guwahati: Pragjyotish Centre for Cultural Research.
  3. ^ Blench, Roger. "(PDF) Mishmi language development | Roger Blench - Academia.edu".