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 certain semantic fields, so a relationship between them is doubtful.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.
External relationships They are not related to the Southern Mishmi Miju 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): 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
References
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]. van Driem, George (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.