| Mongsen Ao | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | India | |||
| Region | Nagaland | |||
| Ethnicity | Ao Naga | |||
| Native speakers | 141,000 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
|
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| Dialects |
Chungli
|
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | njo | |||
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Mongsen Ao is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Ao of Nagaland in northeast India. Conventionally classified as "Naga", the Ao languages are not clearly related to other Naga languages. Gordon (2005) estimates that there are 141,000 speakers of Mongsen and Chungli Ao.
Missionary grammars from the late 19th century exist. A grammatical description is Gowda (1975). Coupe (2003) is one of the few acoustic studies published on a Kuki-Chin-Naga language (only three exist). Coupe also has a reference grammar in progress.
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The Ao Naga tribes of Nagaland speak three languages: Chungli, Mongsen, and Changki. (J.P.Mills 1921). Chungli Ao and Mongsen Ao is spoken in majority of the Ao villages whereas Changki speakers forms the minor speakers.
During the American Baptist Mission to Naga Hills,DR.E.W.Clark first came in contact with the Molungyimsen village that paved the way for a common Ao language-Chungli Ao is spoken in Molungyimchen and Molungyimsen and other villages throughout Ao territory by roughly 60% of the Ao-speaking population. The speech of Molungyimsen is the prestige dialect due to Baptist missionaries' influence. Most Ao can speak Chungli even if they are from Mongsen-speaking regions. Chungli is taught in schools . Various ''trans-Dikhu neighbouring dialects of Ao Chungli are spoken east of the Dikhu River in Yacham, Tengsa, and Longla . These are poorly documented; Yacham and Tengsa may be separate languages (van Driem 2001). Mongsen Ao is spoken primarily in the western part of Ao territory. The Changki dialect is spoken only within these 3 villages-Changki,Japu and Longjemdang which is poorly documented till date though reportedly related to Mongsen Ao.Some Changki speaker can fluently converse in both Mongsen as well as in chungli,a Mongsen Ao cannot speak Changki than understand it,whereas Chungli hardly understand nor speak Changki. The speech of each Ao village has its own distinctive characteristics. Many villages contain both Chungli and Mongsen speakers.
This section describes the sound system of Mongsen Ao as spoken in Waromung village and is based on Coupe (2003).
Mongsen Ao has 20 (or 21) consonants:
| Bilabial | Dental | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | unaspirated | p | t | k | (ʔ) | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| Affricate | unaspirated | ts | tʃ | ||||
| aspirated | tsʰ | tʃʰ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | h | ||||
| voiced | z | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Approximant | central | w | ɹ | j | |||
| lateral | l | ||||||
Mongsen Ao has 6 vowels:
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| modal | creaky | |||
| High | i | ʉ | u | |
| Mid | ə | |||
| Low | a | a̰ | ||
Ao is a tonal language with 3 contrasting lexical tones:
All are register tones.
The generalized syllable structure of Ao is abbreviated as the following:
(C1)
V
(G)
(C2)
T
All syllables occur with one of the three tones. In a VG sequence, tone only occurs the vowel head.
Ao is an SOV language with postpositions. Adjectives, numerals and demonstratives follow the nouns they modify, whilst relative clauses may be either externally or internally headed. Adverbial subordinators are suffixes attached to the verb and the end of the subordinate clause.
Ao orthography is based on the Roman alphabet and was developed in the 1880s by the Christian missionary Edward W. Clark for Chungli Ao. The system is not based on phonemic principles and does not represent tone. A Christian bible was published using the orthography in 1964. Coupe (2003) suggests a more consistent orthography for Mongsen Ao.