Mru language

Mro, also known as Mru (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.

Distribution

The Mros live in forest areas of Lama Upazila, Ruma Upazila, Alikadam Upazila, and Thanchi Upazila 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.

• 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
• Saisanow
• Simlung

Grammar

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

Phonology

Consonants

/s/ can also be heard as [ʃ].

Vowels

Numerals

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

1. lok လော့
2. pre ပရေ
3. sum သုံ
4. tle တ္လေ
5. tnga တ္င
6. trok တရော့
7. rinit ခိနစ်
8. riyat ခိယတ်
9. tako တ္ကို
10. homod ဟောမော့

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 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:

See also

• Mru word list (Wiktionary)

• Ebersole, Harold. 1996. The Mru Language: A preliminary grammatical sketch. Ms.
• Peterson, David A., , The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL 42), November 2009, Payap University, Chiangmai, Thailand. Cf. p.14.
• Rashel, Md Mostafa (2009). "." Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics, Vol, 2, No, 3, February 2009, 141–160.

Further reading

• Clifton, John M. 2009. . 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC)
• Many languages able translate to Mro language.
• Used to example for Mro keyboard font.