Hruso, also known as Aka (Angka), is a language of

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...

India. Long assumed to be a

Sino-Tibetan language Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

, it may actually be a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

. It is spoken by 3,000 people in 21 villages in Thrizino Circle,

West Kameng District West Kameng (pronounced ) is a district of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. It accounts for 8.86% of the total area of the state. The name is derived from the Kameng river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, that flows through the distric ...

. The Hruso people inhabit areas of South East Kameng and are concentrated in the Bichom River Valley, and speak English, Hindi, and Miji in addition to Hruso. Bangru (Ləvai), spoken on the Tibetan border, might be related to Hruso, but it seems more likely that it is a dialect of Miji.

Locations

According to the ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

'', Hruso is spoken in the following villages of Thrizino circle,

West Kameng district West Kameng (pronounced ) is a district of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. It accounts for 8.86% of the total area of the state. The name is derived from the Kameng river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, that flows through the distric ...

. Hruso is also spoken in Pisang village, Seppa circle,

East Kameng district East Kameng district is one of districts of Arunachal Pradesh state in northeastern, India. It shares an international border with China in the north and district borders with West Kameng district to the west, Pakke-Kessang district to the sou ...

Status

lists the language as 6b, or "threatened".

Dialects/varieties

The book ''Hruso'' by Robert Shafer, notes the two dialects that Hruso is divided into. The first one is known to be recorded by Campbell and the second dialect is known to be recorded by Anderson, Hesslmeyer, and Payne. Also Dialect A has some differentiation in vocabulary when compared to Dialect B. Dialect A is also known to be briefly recorded and is more archaic than dialect B which has very little recording evidence behind it. Dialects A 1 Anderson hhu, k' k'ii "water ", Hess. xu. And. diaha (p. 9), diak'a (17) " to-morrow ". And. yo " to-day ", ya " now ". And. k'sesi " goat " (6), k's8 (18), H. kisie, P. k'esi, k'isi. Camp. gle " foot ", P. -ksi, si-, si, And. -si, H. si. 2 To chew; p. 17, to eat. 3 In na-yu "ear emerald ". 4 The consonant seems to be palatalized in this root in some languages and the vowel perhaps umlauted, both perhaps due to the following *-s. But these languages are too poorly recorded to form a basis for a conclusion.

References

*Blench, Roger. 2018
The Hruso language: grammar sketch and wordlist

External links

Endangered Languages.com
* Simon, I.M. (1993
Aka language guide
*ELAR collection
Documentation and Description of the Hrusso Aka Language of Arunachal Pradesh
deposited by Vijay D'Souza Hrusish languages Languages of India Endangered languages of India Language isolates of Asia {{st-lang-stub