Mizo language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mizo | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | India, Bangladesh, Myanmar | |
| Region: | Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Manipur | |
| Total speakers: | 900,000
529,000 in India (1997);12,500 in Myanmar (1983);1,041 in Bangladesh (1981 census) |
|
| Language family: | Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Kamarupan Kuki-Chin-Naga Kuki-Chin Mizo |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Mizoram (India) | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | sit | |
| ISO 639-3: | lus | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Mizoram known as the Lushai Hills District till 1954 is now a state in the Indian Union. The word ‘Mizo’ is a generic term applying to all Mizos living in Mizoram and its adjoining areas of Manipur, Tripura and the Chittagong Hill tracts and Chin Hills. Mizo literally means (Mi = people, zo = highlander) ‘Highlander’.
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[edit] History
The language of the Mizo comes under the Tibeto–Burman branch of Sino–Tibetan group of people.The numerous clans of the Mizo had respective dialects, amongst which the Mizo dialect, originally known as Duhlian, was most popular which subsequently had become the lingua franca of the State.
[edit] Writing System
Initially the Mizo had no script of its own. Christian missionaries started developing script for the language adopting Roman script with a phonetic form of spelling based on the well known Hunterian system transliteration. The alphabets used are - a, aw, b, ch, chh, d, e, f, g, ng, h, i, í, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, û, v, z
[edit] Sounds
Later there were radical developments in the language where the symbol â used for the sound of long O was replaced by aŵ with a circumflex accent and the symbol A is used for the vowel sound of O was changed to AW without any accent. The following few words shall suggest that Mizo and the Burmese are of the same family. To illustrate the words that are same as Burmese are: Kun (to blend), Kam (bank of a river), Kha (bitter), Sam (hair), Mei (fire), That (to kill), Ni (Sun) etc.
[edit] Phonetics
In Mizo the large groups of words are obviously related to one another both in sound and in meaning, but not by any regular systematic pattern. For example: bu (slightly bulging), bum (to swell up, be swollen), bom (to bloat), bem (chubby), hpum (fat), bum (hill, mountain, heap), pem (to bank up earth into a hillock for planting), hpum (to crouch), bong (to bulge, to grow, as a goitre), bep (calf of the leg – the bulging part), um (round/bulbous). These are all obviously relatable semantically to a notion of bulging or protrusion, and they share a back vowel and a labial initial or final consonant or both. However, the relationships are not regular, i.e., there is no general pattern in which, for example, an adjective is related to a verb by suffixation of a nasal, as bu is to bum in the preceding series.
[edit] Consonants
Mizo is a tone language, in which differences in pitch and pitch contour can change the meanings of words. Tone systems have developed independently in many of the daughter languages largely through simplifications in the set of possible syllable-final and syllable-initial consonants. Typically, a distinction between voiceless and voiced initial consonants is replaced by a distinction between high and low tone, while falling and rising tones develop from syllable-final (h) and glottal stop, which themselves often reflect earlier consonants.
[edit] Grammer
Mizo contains many un-analyzable polysyllables, which are polysyllabic units such as the English word water, in which the individual syllables have no meaning by themselves. In a true monosyllabic language polysyllables are mostly confined to compound words, such as lighthouse. The first syllables of compounds tend over time to be distressed, and may eventually reduce to prefixed consonants. Virtually all polysyllabic morphemes in Mizo can be shown to originate in this way. For example, the disyllabic form bakhwan "butterfly," which occurs in one dialect of the Trung (or Dulung) language of Yunnan, is clearly a reduced form of the compound blak kwar, found in a closely related dialect. The first element of this compound, in turn, is itself a reduction of an old compound of two roots, ba or ban and lak, both meaning ‘arm’, ’limb’, and often turning up in forms for ‘wing’.
[edit] Dialects
Fannai, Mizo, Ngente, Tlau, Le. Related to Hmar, Pankhu, Zahao (Falam Chin).
[edit] Mizo Literature
Mizo langauage has a thriving literature with a Mizo department in Mizoram University.
[edit] Statistics
Mizo (Dulien, Duhlian Twang, Lusai, Lushai, Lusei, Lushei, Lukhai, Lusago, Sailau, Hualngo, Whelngo); 529,000 in India (1997). 1,041 in Bangladesh (1981 census). 12,500 in Myanmar (1983).Population total all countries: 542,541.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- The Ethnologue, 13th Edition, Barbara F. Grimes, Editor, 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc.
- K. S. Singh: 1995, People of India-Mizoram, Volume XXXIII, Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta.
- Grierson, G. A. (Ed.) (1904b). Tibeto-Burman Family: Specimens of the Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups, # Volume III Part III of Linguistic Survey of India. Office of the Superintendent of Goverment Printing, Calcutta.
- Grierson, G. A: 1995, Languages of North-Eastern India, Gian Publishing House, New Delhi.
[edit] External links
- mizoram.nic.in Official website of Mizoram.
- Zoram.org A Mizoram portal.
- [1] Mizo Online Dictionary
