Digaro languages

Digarish
Northern Mishmic
Geographic distribution	Arunachal Pradesh
Linguistic classification	possibly Sino-Tibetan or an independent family Greater Siangic ? Digarish
Subdivisions	Idu Mishmi Taraon
Language codes
Glottolog	mish1241

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

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 (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

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

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".

• 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 [江获], Li Daqin [李大勤], Sun Hongkai [孙宏开] (2013). A study of Taraon [达让语研]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House [民族出版社]. ISBN 9787105129324
• van Driem, George (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.