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Myanmar (also known as Burma) is an ethnically diverse nation with 135 distinct ethnic groups officially recognised by the Burmese government. These are grouped into eight "major national ethnic races":
Contents
- Officially recognised ethnic groups
- Unrecognised ethnic groups
- Language ISO 639 3 codes
- Books
- References
- Bamar
- Chin
- Kachin
- Kayin
- Kayah
- Mon
- Rakhine
- Shan
The "major national ethnic races" are grouped primarily according to region rather than linguistic or ethnic affiliation, as for example the Shan Major National Ethnic Race includes 33 ethnic groups speaking languages in at least four widely differing language families.[1]
Many unrecognised ethnic groups exist, the largest being the Burmese Chinese and Panthay (who together form 3% of the population), Burmese Indians (who form 2% of the population), Anglo-Burmese and Gurkha. There are no official statistics regarding the population of the latter two groups, although unofficial estimates place around 52,000 Anglo-Burmese in Burma with around 1.6 million outside of the country.
Officially recognised ethnic groups
Note: The list is very controversial. Many of the names and spelling variants are known only from this list.
Unrecognised ethnic groups
The Government of Myanmar (Burma) does not recognise several ethnic groups as being among the list of 135 officially recognised ethnic groups:
Ethnic groups that hold Burmese citizenship
Ethnic groups that don't hold citizenship
Language ISO 639-3 codes
Note: This is a list of is languages, and the name of a language are not always the same as the name of an ethnic group.
Books
Yangon: Thein Myint Win Press, 2000.