Midzu languages

Midzu
Southern Mishmi
(disputed)
Ethnicity Miju Mishmi
Geographic
distribution
Arunachal Pradesh
Linguistic classification

Sino-Tibetan?

  • Midzu
Subdivisions
Glottolog gema1234[1]

Midzu (Midu, Miju, Mijhu), Midzuish, 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 are Kaman (Midzu/Miju) and Zakhring (Meyor).[2] However, whereas Zakhring appears to be Sino-Tibetan, Kaman may be more divergent. Blench and Post (2011) believe that Zakhring is an East Bodish language that has been influenced by Midzu or other divergent languages of the region, whereas Kaman may be a language isolate.[3]

Blench (2015) suggests that Meyor (Zakhring) and Kman may each be a language isolate.[4] Blench argues that the lexical similarities between Kman and Zakhring are borrowings, and that Zakhring had borrowed heavily from Kman and Tibetic, and then later borrowed from Naga languages and Jingpho as well.

Regardless, they are not closely related to the Northern Mishmi also known as Digaro languages.

References

  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Geman". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.
  3. Blench, Roger; Post, Mark (2011), (De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-26
  4. Blench, Roger. 2015. The classification of Meyor (Zakhring). m.s.


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