TheKho-Bwa languages, also known asKamengic, are a small family of languages, or pair of families, spoken inArunachal Pradesh,northeast India. The nameKho-Bwa was originally proposed byGeorge van Driem (2001). It is based on the reconstructed words*kho ("water") and*bwa ("fire"). Blench (2011) suggests the nameKamengic, from theKameng area of Arunachal Pradesh. Alternatively, Anderson (2014)^[1] refers to Kho-Bwa asNortheast Kamengic.

Both Van Driem and Blench group theSherdukpen (or Mey),Lishpa (or Khispi),Chug (Duhumbi) andSartang languages together. These form alanguage cluster and are clearly related.The pair ofSulung (or Puroik) andKhowa (or Bugun) languages are included in the family by Van Driem (2001) but provisionally treated as a second family by Blench (2024).^[2]

These languages have traditionally been placed in theTibeto-Burman group by theLinguistic Survey of India.^[3]Jackson Sun,George van Driem, and multiple handbooks and language classification databases after them also label Kho-Bwa languages as Tibeto-Burman or otherwise Sino-Tibetan.^[4][5]Roger Blench, however, does not accept a Sino-Tibetan origin of these languages, claiming that similarities to such could instead be due to anareal effect.^[3]

The entire language family has about 15,000 speakers (including Puroik) or about 10,000 speakers (excluding Puroik), according to estimates made during the 2000s.

Word lists and sociolinguistic surveys of Kho-Bwa languages have also been conducted by Abraham, et al. (2018).

The internal structure of theKho-Bwa group of languages is as follows.^[2]The similarities between Puroik–Bugun and Sherdukpen/Mey are sporadic and may be due to contact. Lieberherr (2015) considers Puroik to be a Tibeto-Burman language, which would imply that at least Bugun is as well.

Blench & Post (2024)^[2]

Lieberherr & Bodt (2017)^[6] considerPuroik to be a Kho-Bwa language, and classify the Kho-Bwa languages as follows.

Based on computational phylogenetic analyses from Tresoldi et al. (2022), the phylogenetic tree of Kho-Bwa is roughly as follows:^[7]

Common characteristics between Western Kho-Bwa and Puroik are given by Lieberherr & Bodt (2017).

Kho-Bwa languages share the following prefixes:

• *a- in front of adjectives
• *kV- prefix before multiple parts of the head, such as the head itself, eyes, ears, and hair
• Some element in front of the names of a specific subset of objects in the sky, namely themoon,sun,stars,clouds,rain andsnow. The prefixes themselves however, although they resemble each other, are not identical; Puroik prefixes*ham- while Western Kho-Bwa prefixes*nam-.

Kho-Bwa languages share the following sound changes:

• Thefortition of Sino-Tibetan initial*m- to*b-.
• Outright loss of initial*s-.

In the below tables, the other Sino-Tibetan cognates are taken from Lieberherr & Bodt (2017), but the proto-Western Kho-Bwa forms are taken from Bodt (2024) and the Proto-Puroik forms are from Lieberherr (2015).

The following table of Kho-Bwa basic vocabulary items is from Blench (2015).^[8] Proto-Western Kho-Bwa (Proto-WKB) reconstructions are from Bodt (2024).

• Kho-Bwa comparative vocabulary lists (Wiktionary)

• Ismail Lieberherr and Timotheus Adrianus Bodt. (2017) Sub-grouping Kho-Bwa based on shared core vocabulary. Himalayan Linguistics 16(2). 26–63.Paper (CLDF Dataset on Zenododoi:10.5281/zenodo.2553234)
• Binny Abraham, Kara Sako, Elina Kinny, Isapdaile Zeliang (2018). Sociolinguistic Research among Selected Groups in Western Arunachal Pradesh: Highlighting Monpa. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2018–009. (CLDF Dataset on Zenodo.doi:10.5281/zenodo.3537601)
• Bodt, T. and J.-M. List (2019). Testing the predictive strength of the comparative method: An ongoing experiment on unattested words in Western Kho-Bwa languages.Papers in Historical Phonology 4.1. 22–44.doi:10.2218/pihph.4.2019.3037 (CLDF Dataset on Zenododoi:10.5281/zenodo.3537604)
• Bodt, Timotheus A.; List, Johann-Mattis (2021)."Reflex prediction: A case study of Western Kho-Bwa".Diachronica.doi:10.1075/dia.20009.bod.

• van Driem, George (2001).Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.
• Blench, Roger. 2011.(De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconsidering the evidence
• Lieberherr, Ismael (2015). "A progress report on the historical phonology and affiliation of Puroik". In Linda Konnerth; Stephen Morey; Priyankoo Sarmah; Amos Teo (eds.).North East Indian Linguistics (NEIL) 7,. Canberra: College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. pp. 235–286.
• Lieberherr, Ismael; Bodt, Timotheus Adrianus (2017)."Sub-grouping Kho-Bwa based on shared core vocabulary".Himalayan Linguistics.16 (2).
• Abraham, Binny, Kara Sako, Elina Kinny, Isapdaile Zeliang. 2018.Sociolinguistic Research among Selected Groups in Western Arunachal Pradesh: Highlighting Monpa. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2018–009.
• Wu, Mei-Shin; Bodt, Timotheus A.; Tresoldi, Tiago (2022). "Bayesian phylogenetics illuminate shallower relationships among Trans-Himalayan languages in the Tibet-Arunachal area".Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area.45 (2):171–210.doi:10.1075/ltba.21019.wu.ISSN 0731-3500.
• Bodt, Timotheus A. (2024).Proto-Western Kho-Bwa: Reconstructing a Community's Past through Language. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series. Vol. 67. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.ISBN 978-626-7341-64-3.

• Kho-Bwa languages
• Languages of India
• Proposed language families

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from October 2019