Myanmar has a total population of 54 million, and the main ethnic group is the Burmese, accounting for 68% of the total population. In second place is the Shan, or Dai in China, who account for 9% of the population, and whose language belongs to the Zhuang-Dong language family. Therefore, some Guangxi netizens said that they could understand part of the spoken language when they went to Thailand. In addition, the Mon people, who account for 2% of the total population, belong to the Austroasiatic language family, and the Wa language of the Wa people belongs to the Wa-Khmer language family of the Austroasiatic language family. Most of the other ethnic minorities and the Burmese belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family.
The Burmese language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language familyYi-Burman language groupMany ethnic minorities in southwest China belong to the Yi branch. The Chin people are the Kuki people of the northeastern state of India, belonging to the Hakata-Naga-Chin language group, and belonging to the same language branch as the Naga and Meitai people, who are known as the descendants of the dragon in the northeastern state of India: the Kuki-Chin branch. The Kachin people are the Jingpo people of China, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman language group Qiang-Jingpo language group Jingpo language branch. At least 85% of the population of Myanmar speaks a language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family.
The earliest taxa of language are generally referred to as "language families". In Chinese, Xi traditionally refers to the taxa at the lower level of the language family as the "language family", the taxa at the lower level of the language family as the "language branch", and the language branch as the specific language. For example, English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
Sino-Tibetan languages (English: Sino-Tibetan languages) are one of the world's major language families, this language family includes at least the Chinese family and the Tibeto-Burman language family, China considers the Miao Yao language family to be a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and foreign scholars consider the Miao Yao language family to be an independent language family. There are about 400 languages in the Sino-Tibetan language family, mainly distributed in China, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, northeastern Indian states, Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries and regions. There are about 1.5 billion native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages. It is the second largest language family after the Indo-European language family in terms of the number of speakers.
Sino-Tibetan language origin
The Sino-Tibetan language family originated from the Neolithic culture of the Yellow River Valley, such as the Cishan culture (6500-5000 BC, Hebei Province), the Yangshao culture (5000-3000 BC, Shaanxi, eastern Gansu, and western Henan), or the Majiayao culture (3300-2000 BC, central and eastern Gansu, and northeastern Qinghai), which expanded with the expansion of millet agriculture. Among all the Sino-Tibetan languages, Chinese was the first to diverge, and the rest of the languages, namely the Tibeto-Burman language family, had a common primitive language, and later the Tibeto-Burman people (ancient Qiang people) gradually migrated to the southwest and diverged, forming various language branches. A computer phylogenetic analysis of 109 Sino-Tibetan languages conducted by Zhang Menghan et al. (2019) at Fudan University found that the Sino-Tibetan language family first diverged from northern China between about 2200 and 5800 BC (average 3900 BC).
The total number of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by about 60 million people, while Burmese is the most spoken language in the Tibeto-Burman language family, with about 36 million speakers. At the beginning of the 9th century, Burmese speakers first entered the northern basin of the Irrawaddy River from present-day western Yunnan. The southernmost part is the Karen branch, which is spoken by about 4 million people in the mountains on the Burma-Thailand border.
Linguists identify the existence of a Sino-Tibetan language family as a common vocabulary within that language family. Chinese and Tibetan, Burmese, Yi, Jiarong, Bai, Tujia, Tangut, Jingpo, Karen and other languages share a large number of words, especially the most basic words, such as personal pronouns, numerals, kinship, body parts words, etc. For example, the pronunciation of "five", "wu" and "fish" in ancient Chinese is very similar to the pronunciation of the three words Tibetan and Burmese, and the semantics of the three words are not related, and they are all very basic words in the language, which are difficult to borrow from other languages, so it is determined that these words have a common **. There are many similar examples.
In fact, in addition to the linguistic aspect, the study of Y chromosome haplotype also proves that many ethnic groups belonging to the Tibeto-Burman language family in Myanmar and the northeastern states of India are from the ancient Chinese of the Yellow River Valley. O-M122 is the most common haplogroup in China, accounting for about 50-60% of Han Chinese. And this subtype is 40% in the Burmese, the Chin and the Kuki in India, accounting for 58%. The self-proclaimed among the northeastern states of India".DragonsBecause these ethnic groups insist on not intermarrying with other Indian peoples, O-M122 accounts for 77%. That's why the Burmese call the Chinese cell waves.