Mru
Mrung
The word 𖩌𖩑𖩗 'Kow (Village)' in Mro script[1]
Native toBangladesh, Myanmar
EthnicityMru
Native speakers
50,000 (1999–2007)[2]
Mru script, Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3mro
Glottologmruu1242
ELPMru
Mru women harvesting rice
The Mru people and language are located in the lower right-hand corner of the map of Bangladesh

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 of Bangladesh with a population of 22,000 according to the 1991 census, and in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The Mrus are the second-largest tribal group in Bandarban District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. 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, Myanmar. The position of Mruic with Sino-Tibetan is unclear. however, the language share similarities with Bodo-Garo languages.

Distribution

Map of Bandarban District

The Mros live in forest areas of Lama, Ruma, Alikaram, and Thanchi near Chimbuk Mountain of Bandarban District, Bangladesh (Rashel 2009). In Myanmar, they also live in Buthidaung Township and Ponnagyun Township in Sittwe District (Akiab), Rakhine State.

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.

There are five Mru dialects according to Ebersole (1996).

There are five major Mro clans (Rashel 2009).

Rashel (2009) also lists another classification scheme which lists ten Mro clans.

Grammar

Unlike the Kuki-Chin languages, Mru has SVO (subject-verb-object) word order (Ebersole 1996).

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive/
Affricate 		voiceless p t tɕ k ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ tɕʰ kʰ
voiced b d
Fricative s (ʃ) h
Rhotic r
Approximant w l j

/s/ can also be heard as [ʃ].[4]

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i ɯ u
Mid ɛ ɤ ɔ
Open a

[5]

Numerals

Rashel (2009:159) lists the following Mro numerals.

  1. lok
  2. pre
  3. sum
  4. tle
  5. tnga
  6. trok
  7. rinit
  8. riyat
  9. tako
  10. homod

Script

Mru
Mro, Krama[2]
Script type
alphabet
LanguagesMru
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Mroo (264), ​Mro, Mru
Unicode
Unicode alias
Mro
U+16A40–U+16A6F

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.[6][7]

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

Main article: Mro (Unicode block)

The Mru alphabet was added to the Unicode 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:

Mro[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+16A4x 𖩀‎ 𖩁‎ 𖩂‎ 𖩃‎ 𖩄‎ 𖩅‎ 𖩆‎ 𖩇‎ 𖩈‎ 𖩉‎ 𖩊‎ 𖩋‎ 𖩌‎ 𖩍‎ 𖩎‎ 𖩏‎
U+16A5x 𖩐‎ 𖩑‎ 𖩒‎ 𖩓‎ 𖩔‎ 𖩕‎ 𖩖‎ 𖩗‎ 𖩘‎ 𖩙‎ 𖩚‎ 𖩛‎ 𖩜‎ 𖩝‎ 𖩞‎
U+16A6x 𖩠‎ 𖩡‎ 𖩢‎ 𖩣‎ 𖩤‎ 𖩥‎ 𖩦‎ 𖩧‎ 𖩨‎ 𖩩‎ 𖩮‎ 𖩯‎
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

See also

References

  1. ^ Hosken, Martin; Everson, Michael (24 March 2009). "N3589R: Proposal for encoding the Mro script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF). Retrieved 2 August 2014.
  2. ^ a b Mru at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018) closed access
  3. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mruic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ^ Williams, Nicholas J. (2008). Directionals in Mru. Dartmouth College.
  5. ^ Namkung, Ju (1996). Mru. Phonological Inventories of Tibeto-Burman Languages. (STEDT Monograph Series, 3.): Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asia Studies. p. 268.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location (link)
  6. ^ Hosken, Martin; Everson, Michael (24 March 2009). "N3589R: Proposal for encoding the Mro script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF). Retrieved 2 August 2014.
  7. ^ Zaman, Mustafa (24 February 2006). "Mother Tongue at Stake". Star Weekend Magazine. The Daily Star. 5 (83).

Further reading

Mru language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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