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. The languages are Idu and Taraon (Digaro, Darang).
Contents
1External relationships
2Names
3Registers
4References
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
Taraon people da31 raŋ53
Kaman people tɕɑu53
Idu people dju55; dju55 ta31 rɑŋ53; dɑi53
Zha people 扎人 tɕɑ31 kʰen55
Tibetan people lɑ31 mɑ55; mei53 bom55
Registers
Idu, Tawra, Kman, and Meyor all share a system of multiple language registers, which are (Blench 2016):
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