The severe difficulties in attempting a rigorous reconstruction of Proto-Tibeto-Burman on this basis [of scant data] have not prevented certain hardy… - James Alan Matisoff

Bilingual humor may be viewed as a relatively benign response to the frustrations inherent in living in such a linguistically and racially heterogeneous region as the hills and valleys of backwoods Southeast Asia.

Semantic shifting goes by many different names. In his pioneering article, Benedict 1939 calls it "semantic differentiation." In his article on Gnau, Lewis calls it "referent slippage." American Indianists have traditionally called it "gloss shifting." The latter term has the merit of recognizing that the meanings given in dictionaries are only the constructs of the lexicographer's mind, and do not necessarily exactly mirror the meanings "in the minds of the native speakers," whether they are now long dead or still alive.

I suggest that the reconstruction of PTB [Proto-Tibeto-Burman] is a noble enterprise, where a spirit of competitive territoriality is out of place. We should pool our knowledge and encourage each other to venture outside of our specialized niches, so that we begin to appreciate the full range of Tibeto-Burman languages — a family as vast and diversified as Indo-European.