Meithei

Meithei is the primary language spoken in central Manipur. It is highly internally homogeneous, pointing to language leveling due to its plains geography and history of political expansion. Various isoglosses are shared with neighboring branches, but there are also many innovations which clearly show that Meithei should not be placed within Kuki-Chin or any other "Naga" branch. Thus, Meithei is an independent Central Sino-Tibetan branch like Pyu and Mru-Khongso.

Sources

Bradley, David. 1997. "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, Papers in South East Asian linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

DeLancey, Scott. 2015. "Morphological Evidence for a Central Branch of Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan)." Cahiers de linguistique - Asie oriental 44(2):122-149. December 2015. doi:10.1163/19606028-00442p02