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Sino-Tibetan languages Summary (2063 words) |
 | Whereas the sole constituents of Sinitic are the variants of Chinese (which are mostly, but quite misleadingly, referred to as the "dialects" of Chinese), the Tibeto-Burman branch numbers several hundred often poorly known languages and language groups, the proper linguistic classification of which is still largely a task for future research. |
| Newari, the language of the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley, was written in Devanagari script beginning in the seventeenth century (with at least one manuscript dated as early as the fourteenth century). |
| On the Sinitic side, the last decades of the twentieth century saw a great deal of progress in our understanding of the phonological prehistory of Chinese, though too many details are still the subject of controversies to be able to speak of a general consensus on the sound-shape of early Chinese. |
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