Digaro languages
The Digaro (Digarish), Northern Mishmi (Mishmic), or Kera'a–Tawrã 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.
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).
Registers
Idu, Tawra, Kman, and Meyor 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