Sino-Tibetan

Introduction
This language family has 403 languages and 2 subfamilies.  Over 1.5 billion people speak these languages.   There are various theories on where it started.   Sino-Tibetan people have a great history and even brighter future. 

History
This language family came in to being over 5,000 years ago in China.  It may have started around the Yellow River.  The languages of this family is spoken by many people.  As people migrated to different parts of Asia they created different languages.   

Languages
There are two major branches to this language family.  The first major branch is Chinese (Sino) and the 2nd major branch is Tibetan-Burmese.  There are 14 languages in the 1st major branch.  The 2nd branch has 389 languages.  Mandarin is the most spoken language of the Sino branch.  It has existed 4 over 3,000 years.  I think it is the hardest language to learn.

The 13 other languages have a lot less speakers than Mandarin.  Tibetan languages have the most speakers of the the 2nd major branch.  Vowels don't have separate letters in the Tibetan alphabet.   The Tibetans have their on number symbols.  Word that make up sentences are only separated by a dot.  These languages have been around over 1200 years!!!  Ewoks in Star Wars speak Tibetan backwards.

There are many dialects of these languages.  Most of languages have 7 vowels.  Some of these languages are tonal.  The languages in the Chinese branch are more analytical and is topic prominent.  Chinese languages don't have many foreign words in it.  Languages in the Tibetan-Burmese branch word order is subject-object-verb and they have many foreign words.   

There are @ least 5 alphabets of this language family.  They are as followed: Mandarin script, Myanmar script, Tibetan script, Lepcha script, and Ranjana script.  Written Mandarin started off as pictures and it hasn't changed much for 4,000 years!!!  It may have has many 60,000 symbols, but you only need to know 4,00 of them to be fluent.  There are pictographs and ideographs in this language.  Myanmar script is based on the Mon script.  It is 1,000 years old!  Tibetan script was created by a minister of Tibet 1400 years ago.  It is based on Devanagari and it has 30 constants and 5 vowels.  Lepcha script was created by a Buddhist missionary 400 year ago.  It has it's own number system.  Ranjana script was created 1000 years ago; it is based on the Brahmi script.                 

Sino-Tibetan People
These people are as follows: Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese.  Chinese people have a grand history!!!  They are technological and philosophical pioneers!!!  They invented the compass, printing press, and gunpowder.  Confucianism, Taoist, Legalism, and Mohism are Chinese philosophies.  They contributed to Buddhist philosophy as well.  Tibetan people have their own religion called Bon and their own medicine.  They fellow a unique form of Buddhism.  Burmese people use to live in China.  They have their own folk religion and they mixed it with Theravada Buddhism. 

Conclusion
The Sino-Tibetan language family is the 2nd biggest language family in the world.  It's history is over 5,000 years old.  It has 2 major branches and 403 languages.  It has unique writing scripts.  The people that speak the languages of this family are amazing!!!!!   

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages
https://stedt.berkeley.edu/about-st.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01214-6
https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/sino-tibetan
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sino-Tibetan-languages/Language-affiliations
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/sino-tibetan-language-family/
https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-tibetan-language/
https://www.omniglot.com/