Jingpo language
Jinghpaw (Jinghpaw ga, Jìngphòʔ gà, ဈိာင်ဖေါစ်) or Kachin (Burmese: ကချင်ဘာသာ, [kətɕɪ̀ɰ̃ bàðà]) is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sal branch spoken primarily in Kachin State, Myanmar; Northeast India; and Yunnan, China. The Jinghpaw (or Kachin) peoples, a confederation of several ethnic groups who live in the Kachin Hills, are the primary speakers of Jinghpaw language,[2] numbering approximately 625,000 speakers.[3] The term "Kachin language" may refer to the Jinghpaw language or any of the other languages spoken by the Jinghpaw peoples, such as Lisu, Lashi, Rawang, Zaiwa, Lhawo Vo, and Achang. These languages are from distinct branches of the highest level of the Tibeto-Burman family.
Jinghpaw is written using a modified Latin alphabet; a Burmese alphabet is used by some speakers, but it has largely been phased out. Jinghpaw syllable finals can consist of vowels, nasals, or oral stops.
The Turung of Assam in India speak a Jingpo dialect with many Assamese loanwords, called Singpho, which shares 50% lexical similarity with Jinghpaw.[4]
Vocabulary[edit]
The Jingpo lexicon contains a large number of words of both Tibeto-Burman and non-Tibeto-Burman stock, including Burmese and Shan.[20] Burmese loan words reflect two stratas, an older stratum reflecting the phonology of conservative written Burmese, and a newer stratum reflecting words drawn from modern Burmese phonology.[20] The older strata consist of vocabulary borrowed from Burmese via Shan, which also exhibits the pre-modern phonology of Burmese vocabulary.[20] Jingpo has also borrowed a large number of lexical items from Shan, with which it has been in close ethnolinguistic contact for several centuries.[21] Jingpo, as the lingua franca in the northern highlands of Myanmar, has in turn been the source language of vocabulary into other regional languages like Rawang and Zaiwa.[20]