Singpho is a dialect of the

Jingpho language Jinghpaw (, , ) or Kachin (, ) 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 ...

spoken by the

Singpho people The Jingpo people (; ; ''siŋphou''), also spelt Jinghpaw or Jingphaw, are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group who inhabit northern Burma, northeastern India, and southwestern China. The Jingpo are the largest subgroup of the Kachin peoples. The J ...

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...

and

Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. It is spoken by at least 3,000 people. "Singpho" is the local pronunciation of "Jingpho," and the dialect shares 50%

lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

with Jingpho. The Jingpho (Jinghpaw, Chingp'o), or Kachin, language is a Tibeto-Burman language mainly spoken in

Kachin State Kachin State (; Jingpho language, Kachin: ) is the northernmost administrative divisions of Myanmar, state of Myanmar. It is bordered by China to the north and east (Tibet Autonomous Region, Tibet and Yunnan, respectively), Shan State to the sou ...

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 ...

and

Yunnan Province Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The term Kachin language can refer either to the Jingpho language or to a group of languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the same region as Jingpho: Lisu, Lachit, Rawang,

Zaiwa Zaiwa (autonym: '; 载瓦; Burmese: ဇိုင်ဝါး/အဇီး) is a Burmish language spoken in parts of southwest China and eastern Burma. There are around 100,000 speakers. It is also known as ''Atsi'', its name in Jingpo. ''Zaiw ...

, Lhaovo,

Achang The Achang ( zh, c=, p=Āchāngzú), also known as the Ngac'ang (their own name) is an ethnic group. They are one of Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman languages speaking people. They form one of the List of Chinese ethnic groups, 56 ethnic g ...

(Ngo Chang), and Jingpho. These languages are from distinct branches of the highest level of the Tibeto-Burman family. The total estimated native speakers are 950,000 (2001 census). Singpho is spoken the eastern extreme of northeastern

, such as Bordumsa Circle,

Tirap District Tirap district (Pron:/tɪˈɹæp/) is a district located in the southeastern part of the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. It shares a state border with Assam, an international border with Myanmar and a district border with Changlang and ...

, and also in nearby parts of

Lohit District Lohit () is an administrative district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. The district headquarters is located at Tezu. As of 2011 it is the third most populous district of Arunachal Pradesh, after Papum Pare and Changlang. Etymol ...

. Singpho lacks the system of person-number

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...

on an auxiliary particle found in the other dialects of Jingpho. DeLancey attributes this to

creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ...

"in the broad sense", as a simplification brought about by a large population of enslaved Assamese rice farmers learning Singpho as a second language.

References

External links

Singpho dictionary
( SEAlang Library) Languages of Myanmar Sal languages Endangered languages of India Languages of Assam Languages of Arunachal Pradesh {{Assam-stub