Jingpho language

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Jingpho, Marip
Spoken in:	Burma, People's Republic of China
Region:	Kachin State, Yingjiang
Total speakers:	900,000 [1]
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan  Tibeto-Burman   Jingpho-Konyak-Bodo    Jingpho-Luish     Jingpho, Marip
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	kac
ISO 639-3:	kac
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

"Kachin language" redirects here. For other meanings of word "Kachin" see Kachin (disambiguation)

The Jingpho language (also called Jinghpaw, Chingp'o or Marip) is sometimes also referred as Kachin. This language is spoken in the Kachin State in Burma and also in the PRC (about 40,000 speakers in 1999). Thus, the language is spoken by totally approximately 900,000 people.^[1]

'Kachin' can refer either to the Jingpho language or to a group of languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the same region as Jingpo. These languages are Lisu, Lachit, Rawang, Zaiwa, Maru, Achang (Ngo Chang), and Jingpho. These languages are from distinct branches of the highest level of the Tibeto-Burman family. So they should not be brought under one term.

Jinghpo is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the jinghpo-bodo-konyak (kachinic) subgroup. It is a tonal language. The Jingpo ethnicity or Kachin (ka khrang in Burmese is contained between Yunnan In the Peoples Repulic of China, the Kachin state of Burma and Thailand. This ethnic group contains speakers of other lolo-burmese languages in addition to Jingpho who have adopted the Jingpho social system.

The Turung of Assam in India speak a Jingpho dialect mixed with thai words. This language is called Singpho.

Jingpho has verbal morphology which marks the subject and the direct object. Here is one example (the tonemes) are not marked. The verb is 'to be' (rai).

person and number	present	past
1sg	rai n ngai	rai sa ngai
2sg	rai n dai	rai sin dai
3sg	rai ai	rai sai
1pl	rai ga ai	rai sa ga dai
2pl	rai ma dai	rai ma sin dai
3pl	rai ma ai	rai ma sai

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Bibliography

• Site internet en jinghpo
• 景颇语-汉语词典 Jingpho Chinese dictionary, 戴庆夏 Dai Qingxia et al. ;
• 景颇语语法 Grammar of Jingpho, 戴庆夏 Dai Qingxia et al. ;
• Structures élémentaires de la parenté, de Claude Lévi-Strauss, devotes a chapter to the study of parantage in the Jingpho ethnicity.

[edit] Sources

1. Kachin on ethnologue.com
2. Linguistlist.org
3. Rosetta Project