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Plains Miri language

Mising/Mishing
Miri
Region Assam
Ethnicity Mishing
Native speakers
ca. 517,170 (2001 census)
Sino-Tibetan
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog misi1242

Mising/Mishing, also known as Plains Miri, is a Tani language spoken by the Mishing people. There are 517,170 speakers (as per Census of India, 2001), who inhabit mostly the Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Golaghat, Tinsukia districts of Assam. The primary literary body of Mising is known as 'Mising Agom Kébang (Mising Language Society)'.

Ethnologue gives the following locations for Mising speakers. The Hill Miri live in Arunachal Pradesh, while the Plains Miri live in Assam.

Mishing Language

Mishing language belongs to the Tani branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. The Mishing is a highly agglutinative language, marked by the profusion of verbal suffixes, denoting various tenses, moods and aspects. It is also noted by its tonal peculiarities. The language is known for abundance of suffix, prefix, particle, participle and such additives. Any action can be expressed a few dozen ways by adding suffix to the verb-root, various combinations of inflectional or derivational suffixes, along with several types of reduplications. For instance, there is no common word for some aspects, but adding suffix to the verb the sense of the aspects accomplished: such as ‘complete’ or ‘end’ finds no equivalent word in the language, but the suffix ‘ngap’ added to verb suffices what work has been completed – dongap (dinning completed), geengap (end of the journey) and so on. The diacritical variations technically called diaphonic variations are observed in two central phonemes, viz., close central, variant from its frontal counterpart and half open central from the frontal half-open. Phonemic variants from short vowels to long variety are prominent but the plosive consonants to their aspirated variants are not weak. The language also has a wide array of classifiers and case-making systems. The major lexical categories are nouns, pronouns, verb and adverbs.

Standard Mising Language

The authors of an English Grammar have subtly set apart written language from its vocal counterpart, inasmuch as to say, "The written language is an artificial product – more formal and exact than the spoken language; it is the product of generations of men of letters who have established a definite tradition in the matter of form and expression" (M. Alderton Pink & S. E. Thomas – English Grammar, Composition & Correspondence, Revised by J. J. Cowdery, Twelfth Edition, 1970, Chapter – 16, Diction & Style, p - 144). The Standard Mishing Language is the refined & formal form of the Mishing speeches used for the purpose of writing, which in turn, is largely deployed in creating literature, linguistic research, office correspondence, diplomatic interaction and also for effective vocal communications.


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