Mru language

Mru; Mro, Krama[1]
Type	alphabet
Languages	Mru
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Mroo, 264
Unicode alias	Mro
Unicode range	U+16A40–U+16A6F

Mru
	Mrung
Region	Bangladesh, Burma, India
Ethnicity	Mru people
Native speakers	50,000 (1999–2007)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Mruic[2] Mru; ;
Writing system	Mru script, Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mro
Glottolog	mruu1242[3]

Mru, also known as Mrung (Murung), is a Sino-Tibetan language and one of the recognized languages of Bangladesh. It is spoken by a community of Mros (Mrus) inhabiting the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh with a population of 22,000 according to the 1991 census, and in Burma. The Mros 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.

Mru women harvesting rice

A group of Mrus foraging in the hills

The Mru people and language are located in the lower right hand corner of the map of Bangladesh

The Mru language is considered "Severely endangered" by UNESCO.[4]

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

Map of Bandarban District

The Mros live in forest areas of Lama, Ruma, Alikaram, and Thanchi near Chimbuk Mountain of Bandarban District (Rashel 2009). They also live in Sittwe (Akiab), Rakhine State, Burma.

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

Grammar

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

Numerals

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

lɔk
pre
ʃum
taːli
taŋa
trok
rinit
riyat
tako
h:muit

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.[5][6]

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:

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 13.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

References

Mru at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mruic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mru". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Evans, Lisa (2011-04-15). "Endangered languages: the full list". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-11-26.
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.
Zaman, Mustafa (24 February 2006). "Mother Tongue at Stake". Star Weekend Magazine. The Daily Star. 5 (83).

Ebersole, Harold. 1996. The Mru Language: A preliminary grammatical sketch. Ms.
Peterson, David A., "Where does Mru fit into Tibeto-Burman?", 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). "Morphosyntactic Analysis of Mro Language." Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics, Vol, 2, No, 3, February 2009, 141–160.