Indo-European compare with Sino-Tibetan

Introduction

Many people are confused between the relationship between Sino-Tibetan, Han Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Naga, Cantonese, Mandarin etc. so this article clarifies by taking the Indo-European family as an analogy.

This article will also highlight the main linguistic differences between Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language family.

Relationship

The hierarchical analogy is as follows:

Level	Group 1	Group 2
1- Family	Sino-Tibetan	Indo-European
2- People	Han Chinese	Germanic people
3- Branch	Yue Chinese	West Germanic
4- Sub-branch	Eastern Yue	North Sea Germanic
5- Subgroup	Cantonese	Anglo(English)

Migration path of Indo-European people in Europe

Level	Group 3	Group 4
1- Family	Sino-Tibetan	Indo-European
2- People	Brahmaputran	Indo-Aryan
3- Branch	Boro-Garo	Eastern Indo-Aryan
4- Sub-branch	Central	Bengali-Assamese
5- Subgroup	Boro	Assamese

Migration path of Indo-European people to Central Asia and India

Migration path of Sino-Tibetan people

 

From the map above, we can see that the extremely high Himalayan, Pamir and Tian Shan mountains separated the Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European people from interacting with each other in ancient times before the silk roads were established. 

Videos 

The videos below illustrate the history of the Germanic people and Han Chinese respectively.

Language

Characteristics	Sino-Tibetan	Indo-European
Tones	Tonal	Non-tonal
Syllable structure	Mono-syllabic	Poly-syllabic
Consonant endings	Restricted	Rich
Noun classifiers	Numerous	Absent or marginal
Grammar	Simpler	Complex (tense, gender)

More than 90% of Sino-Tibetan languages are tonal languages except for a few languages/dialects which were influenced by the Indic languages and also Mongolic languages (Amdo Tibetan).

The native syllable structure is mono-syllabic excluding foreign loan words such as Sanskrit which are polysyllabic.

The consonant endings of most Sino-Tibetan languages are restricted to seven or eight sounds which are (m,n,ŋ)(k,t,p,h) such as mim, min, ming, mik, mit, mip, mih. (Note: k,t,p endings are unaspirated voiceless; h is a glottal stop).

Indo-European languages have a much richer consonant endings such as mis, mil, mir, mif and other voiced consonant endings; in addition to the Sino-Tibetan set.

Sino-Tibetan languages don't have the complex verb conjugations (go/went, take/took), noun gender (un garçon, une fille), plural/singular noun distinction (man/men, mouse/mice) of Indo-European languages.

These differences are not meant to be comprehensive but as a general comparison of the characteristics of both language families.

References

Common Innovations in Sino-Tibetan Languages. By Sun Hongkai

Last updated: 8 Sept 2022

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