Mizo language

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 (Tibeto-Burman) Kukish Central Mizo
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.

History

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.

Writing System

Christian missionaries started developing an alphabet for the language by adapting the Italian alphabet and the Hunterian system of transliteration. The 25 letters used for writing in Mizo language are:

a, aw, b, ch, d, e, f, g, ng, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, ṭ, u, v, z.

A circumflex ^ was later added to the vowels to indicate long vowels, viz., â, ê, î, ô, û, which were insufficient to fully express Mizo tone. Recently, a leading newspaper in Mizoram, Vanglaini, the magazine Kristian Ṭhalai, and other publishers began using á, à, é, è, í, ì, ó, ò, ú, ù to indicate long vowels with high and low tone respectively.

Relation with other language

Mizo language is similar or related with other group of languages like Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic languages.

Mizo and Burmese

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")

Phonetics

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").

Tone

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.

Grammar

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").

Unique Parts of Speech in Mizo Ṭawng

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.

Dialects

The Mizo dialects can be classified broadly as ten groups - Aso, Chho, Halam, Hmar, Lai, Lusei, Gangte, Mara, Miu-Khumi, Paite and Thado-Kuki.

Aso Groups

List:

Regions:

Chho Groups

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.

Halam Groups

List: Halam

Regions:

Hmar Groups

List: Hmar, Biate

Regions:Churachandpur District(Manipur), Jaintia Hills(Meghalaya),Shillong(Meghalaya),Aizawl District(Mizoram),NC Hills(Assam), Haflong(Assam).

Lai Groups

List: Lai, Laizo, Halam

Regions: Falam, Hakha, Thantlang township in Chin State, Burma

Lusei Groups

List: Lusei, Ralte, Hualngo.

Regions:Mizoram,Churachandpur District(Manipur), Jaintia Hills(Meghalaya),Shillong(Meghalaya),NC Hills(Assam), Haflong(Assam).

Gangte Groups

List: Gangte, Rangte

Regions:Manipur, Assam, Mizoram, Burma. Most majority at Manipur.

Mara Groups

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.

Miu-Khumi Groups

List:

Regions: Most of Paletwa Township, Chin State in Burma

Paite Groups

List: Paite, Tedim

Regions: Tedim, Tung Zang township in Chin State Burma and some township in Manipur State in India.

Thado-Kuki Groups

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

Mizo literature

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.

Newspaper

(In alphabetical order)

• Vanglaini
• Zothlifim Daily Newspaper

Statistics

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).

See also

• Hunterian transliteration

References

Others:

1. The Ethnologue, 13th Edition, Barbara F. Grimes, Editor, 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc.
2. K. S. Singh: 1995, People of India-Mizoram, Volume XXXIII, Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta.
3. 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 Government Printing, Calcutta.
4. Grierson, G. A: 1995, Languages of North-Eastern India, Gian Publishing House, New Delhi.
5. Malsawmtluanga, 1994 Mizoram, Aizawl

External links

• Lorrain, J. Herbert (James Herbert) Dictionary of the Lushai language. Calcutta : Asiatic Society, 1940. (Bibliotheca Indica, 261)
• Mizoram.nic.in Official website of Mizoram.
• Mizoram Presbyterian
• Mizoram Baptist
• Mizoram Adventist