The Karbí language, also known as Mikir or Arleng, is spoken by the Karbi people of Assam. It belongs to the the Tibeto-Burman language family, latest classification has put it into a different Mikir Group, which is again sub grouped into Amri and Karbi, Tibeto-Burmanists such as Shafer (1974) and Bradley (1997) have however classified it as aberrantly Kukish. There is little dialect diversity except for the Amri dialect, which is distinct enough to be considered a separate Karbi language.

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  • The Karbí language, also known as Mikir or Arleng, is spoken by the Karbi people of Assam. It belongs to the the Tibeto-Burman language family, latest classification has put it into a different Mikir Group, which is again sub grouped into Amri and Karbi, Tibeto-Burmanists such as Shafer (1974) and Bradley (1997) have however classified it as aberrantly Kukish. There is little dialect diversity except for the Amri dialect, which is distinct enough to be considered a separate Karbi language. Like most languages of the hill tribes of the North-east, Karbi does not have its own script and is written in the Roman alphabet, occasionally in Assamese script. The earliest written texts in Karbi were produced by Christian missionaries, especially the American Baptist Mission and the Catholic Church. The missionaries brought out a newspaper in Karbi titled Birta as early as 1903. Rev. R.E. Neighbor's Vocabulary of English and Mikir, with Illustrative Sentences published in 1878, which can be called the ‘first’ Karbi ‘dictionary’, Sardoka Perrin Kay’s English-Mikir Dictionary published in 1904, Sir Charles Lyall and Edward Stack's The Mikirs in 1908, the first ethnographic details on the Karbis and G.D. Walker's A Dictionary of the Mikir Language published in 1925 are some of the earliest important books on the Karbis and the Karbi language and grammar. The Karbis have a rich oral tradition. The Mosera ('recalling the past'), a lengthy folk narrative that describes the origin and migration ordeal of the Karbis, is one such example. The Sabin Alun, another traditional narrative, relates the legend of Prince Rama (Ram in Karbi), Lakshmana (Lokhon or Khon) and Princess Sita (Sinta Kungri) in the traditional Karbi and rural setting where Sinta Kungri is adept in weaving clothes and helps her father Bamonpo (Janaka) in his Jhum fields. However, the Sabin Alun is not a widely accepted tradition, and it seems to be of recent origin. Many Karbi themselves argue that the Sabin Alun is probably an adaptation from the Ramayana, composed when some Karbi were converted to Hinduism in the sixteenth century CE.
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  • Sino-Tibetan
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  • Karbi
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  • The Karbí language, also known as Mikir or Arleng, is spoken by the Karbi people of Assam. It belongs to the the Tibeto-Burman language family, latest classification has put it into a different Mikir Group, which is again sub grouped into Amri and Karbi, Tibeto-Burmanists such as Shafer (1974) and Bradley (1997) have however classified it as aberrantly Kukish. There is little dialect diversity except for the Amri dialect, which is distinct enough to be considered a separate Karbi language.
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  • Karbi language
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  • Karbi
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