Mru, also known as Mrung (Murung), is a Sino-Tibetan language of Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is spoken by a community of Mrus (Mros) inhabiting the

Chittagong Hill Tracts The Chittagong Hill Tracts (), often shortened to simply the Hill Tracts and abbreviated to CHT, refers to the three hilly districts within the Chittagong Division in southeastern Bangladesh, bordering India and Myanmar (Burma) in the east: Kh ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

with a population of 22,000 according to the 1991 census, and in

Rakhine State Rakhine State ( ; , ; ), formerly known as Arakan State, is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Re ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. The Mrus are the second-largest tribal group in

Bandarban District Bandarban District (), officially Bandarban Hill District, is a district in South-Eastern Bangladesh, and a part of the Chittagong Division. It is one of the three hill districts of Bangladesh and a part of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the others ...

of the

. A small group of Mros also live in Rangamati Hill District.

Classification

Mru forms the Mruic language branch with Hkongso and Anu, which are spoken in Paletwa Township,

Chin State Chin State (, ) is a state in western Myanmar. Chin State is bordered by Sagaing Division and Magway Division to the east, Rakhine State to the south, the Chattogram Division of Bangladesh to the west, and the Indian states of Mizoram to th ...

. The position of Mruic with Sino-Tibetan is unclear.

Distribution

The Mros live in forest areas of Lama Upazila, Ruma Upazila, Alikadam Upazila, and Thanchi Upazila near Chimbuk Mountain of

(Rashel 2009). In

, they also live in

Buthidaung Township Buthidaung Township ( ) is a township of Maungdaw District in the Rakhine State of Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in ...

and Ponnagyun Township in Sittwe District (Akiab),

Subdivisions

''Ethnologue'' (22nd edition) lists 3 main dialects as Anok, Dowpreng (Dopreng), and Sungma (Tshungma), as well as the 2 minor dialects of Domrong and Rumma. *Anok: largest and central *Tshungma: in the north *Domrong: in the lowlands north of the Matamuri *Dopreng: in far south and into Arakan *Rumma: in far south and into Arakan There are five Mru dialects according to Ebersole (1996). *Anawk *Süngma *Dopreng *Tamsa *Rengmitsa There are five major Mro clans (Rashel 2009). *Dengua *Premsang *Kongloi *Maizer *Ganaroo Gnar Rashel (2009) also lists another classification scheme which lists ten Mro clans. *Yarua (subdivisions below) **Khatpo **Chimlung **Zongnow *Sangkan *Chawla *Ngaringcha *Tang *Deng *Kough *Tam-tu-chah *Kanbak *Prenju *Naichah *Yomore *Rum/Rumthu

Grammar

Unlike the

Kuki-Chin languages The Kuki-Chin languages (also called Kukish or South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages) are a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most notable Kuki-Chin-speaking ...

, Mru has SVO ( subject-verb-object) word order (Ebersole 1996).

Phonology

Consonants

/s/ can also be heard as �

Vowels

Numerals

Rashel (2009:159) lists the following Mro numerals. #lok #pre #sum #tle #tnga #trok #rinit #riyat #tako #homod

Script

The Mru script is an indigenous, messianic script: In the 1980s Menlay Murang (also known as Manley Mro) created the religion of Khrama (or Crama) and with it a new script for the Mru language. The script is written from left to right and has its own set of digits. It does not use tone marks. The Mru language is written in both the Latin and Mru scripts.

Unicode

The Mru alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in June, 2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for the Mru script, called Mro, is U+16A40–U+16A6F:

References

* Ebersole, Harold. 1996. ''The Mru Language: A preliminary grammatical sketch''. Ms. * Peterson, David A.
"Where does Mru fit into Tibeto-Burman?"
''The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics'' (ICSTLL 42), November 2009,

Payap University Payap University (; ), established in 1974, is a private and non-profit institution founded by the Foundation of the Church of Christ in Thailand. Payap University is a liberal arts and pre-professional school offering a doctoral degree in peac ...

, Chiangmai,

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

. Cf. p. 14. * Rashel, Md Mostafa (2009).
Morphosyntactic Analysis of Mro Language
" ''Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics'', Vol, 2, No, 3, February 2009, 141–160.