| Mizo | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | India, Bangladesh, Burma, Israel |
| Region | Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland |
| Ethnicity | Mizo people |
| Native speakers | 542,000 (1997) |
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
|
| Official status | |
| Official language in | Mizoram (India) |
| Regulated by | No official regulation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | lus |
| ISO 639-3 | lus |
The Mizo language (Mizo: Mizo ṭawng) is natively spoken by Mizo people in Mizoram, a state in the Indian Union; Chin State of Burma and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The language is also known as Lushai (by the Colonial British), as Lusei people are the first clan who have an external exposure. For this reason, even in most of modern writings Lushai (or Lusei) is being used instead of Mizo.
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The Mizo language belongs to the Kukish branch of the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. The numerous clans of the Mizo had respective dialects, amongst which the Lushai (Lusei, by Mizo themselves) dialect was most common, and which subsequently became the Mizo language and the lingua franca of the Kuki peoples due to its extensive and exclusive used by the Christian missionaries.
Christian missionaries[1] started developing a script for the language by adopting the Italian pronunciation of the Roman alphabet with a phonetic form of spelling based on the Hunterian system of transliteration. The 25 letters used for writing in Mizo language are:
Later there were some developments in the letters where the symbol ^ was added to the vowel in the word to indicate long tone, viz., â, ê, î, ô, û which, of course are not sufficient to express the various tones. Recently, a leading newspaper in Mizoram, Vanglaini,a magazine Kristian Ṭhalai and many other publishers started using á, à, é, è, í, ì, ó, ò, ú, ù to indicate the long tone ending in high tone and low tone respectively.
Mizo language is similar or related with other group of languages like Tibeto-Burman[2] and Austro-Asiatic languages.[3]
The following few words suggest that Mizo and the Burmese are of the same family: kun ("to bend"), kam ("bank of a river"), kha ("bitter"), sam ("hair"), mei ("fire"), that ("to kill"), ni ("sun") hnih ("two") li ("four") nga ("five")
In Mizo, large groups of words are obviously related to one another both in sound and in meaning, with proper regular systematic pattern. For example: puar ("slightly bulging"), na ("to feel pain"), lang ("to float"), huan ("garden"), thiam ("to know", such as languages or knowledge), thau ("fat"), lian ("big"), buai ("to be troubled of"), pem ("to move from one town or city to another"), puan ("a piece of cloth"), puar ("to bulge", as in a goitre), hmelchhia ("ugly"), piang ("born"), ropui ("great", "mighty", "powerful"), bial ("round", "bulbous").
Mizo is a tonal 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 developed from syllable-final h and glottal stop, which themselves often reflect earlier consonants.
Mizo contains many analyzable polysyllables, which are polysyllabic units in which the individual syllables have 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 de-stressed, and may eventually be reduced to prefixed consonants. The word nuntheihna ("survival") is composed of nung ("to live"), theih ("possible") and na (a nominalizing suffix); likewise, theihna means "possibility". Virtually all polysyllabic morphemes in Mizo can be shown to originate in this way. For example, the disyllabic form phengphehlep ("butterfly"), which occurs in one dialect of the Trung (or Dulung) language of Yunnan, is actually a reduced form of the compound blak kwar, found in a closely related dialect. It is reported over 18 of the dialects share about 850 words with the same meaning. For example, ban ("arm"), ke ("leg"), thla ("wing", "month"), lu ("head") and kut ("hand").
All kinds of Parts of Speech like noun, pronoun, verbs, etc. can be found in Mizo language with some additional unique kinds - post-positions and double adverbs.
The Mizo dialects can be classified broadly as ten groups - Aso, Chho, Halam, Hmar, Lai, Lusei, Gangte, Mara, Miu-Khumi, Paite and Thado-Kuki.
List:
Regions:
List: Chho (Cho) Sub Groups: Mun, Kaang and Ukpu.
Regions: All of Mindat, Kanpetlet, Matupi (Matupui) Township and some of Paletwa township in Burma. Some Townships in Arakan State and some townships in Magwe Division in Burma.
List: Halam
Regions:
List: Hmar, Biate
Regions:Churachandpur District(Manipur), Jaintia Hills(Meghalaya),Shillong(Meghalaya),Aizawl District(Mizoram),NC Hills(Assam), Haflong(Assam).
List: Lai, Laizo, Halam
Regions: Falam, Hakha, Thantlang township in Chin State, Burma
List: Lusei, Ralte, Hualngo.
Regions:Mizoram,Churachandpur District(Manipur), Jaintia Hills(Meghalaya),Shillong(Meghalaya),NC Hills(Assam), Haflong(Assam).
List: Gangte, Rangte
Regions:Manipur, Assam, Mizoram, Burma. Most majority at Manipur.
List: Mara, Serkawr
Regions: Exclusive of Saiha district in Mizoram, India where they have self and autonomous government under Mara Autonomous District Council. Maras also inhabit a contiguous area in Burma; however, they are administered under three townships of Matupi, Thantlang and Paletwa in Chin State, Burma. Mara is a recognized ethnic tribe under the sixth schedule of the constitution of India.
List:
Regions: Most of Paletwa Township, Chin State in Burma
List: Paite, Tedim
Regions: Tedim, Tung Zang township in Chin State Burma and some township in Manipur State in India.
List: Kuki, Thado
Regions: Few township in Sitkiang Division in Burma and few township in Manipur state viz- Churachandpur, Sadar Hills, NC Hills (Assam), Chandel, Tamenglong, India
The Mizo language has a thriving literature with a Mizo Department at Mizoram University, up to Ph.D. degree and Manipur University, up to M.A. degree.
(In alphabetical order)
There are around 700,000 speakers of Mizo dialects (Lusei (Duhlian), Lusei (Hualngo)): 674,756 speakers in India (2001 census); 1,041 speakers in Bangladesh (1981 census); 12,500 speakers in Burma (1983 census).
Others:
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