SINO-TIBETAN LANGUAGES

The Sino-Tibetan family consists of two branches: Sinitic, consisting of the Chinese languages and possibly the aberrant Bai or Minjia language of Yunnan, and Tibeto-Burman, which includes several hundred languages spoken from the Tibetan plateau in the north to the Malay peninsula in the south and from northern Pakistan in the west to northeastern Vietnam in the east. Comparative Tibeto-Burman is a relatively unexplored field and there is not yet a complete and reliable schema for the genetic relationships among the various sub-branches of the family. The best known Tibeto-Burman languages are Tibetan and Burmese, the two which have the longest and most extensive literary traditions. Both have a primarily Buddhistic literature written in an Indie script; the Tibetan script dates to the seventh century. The earliest attestations of Burmese are in twelfth-century inscriptions; the earliest Tibetan writings extant were discovered in the caves at Tun-huang and date from the ninth century.