Meitei language

'Meitei-lon (মৈতৈলোন্), also Meitei-lol (মৈতৈলোল্) and ' (মণিপুরি) (and sometimes, the 19th century British term, Meithei (মৈথৈ), which is the name of the people, not of the ), is the predominant and lingua franca in the southeastern Himalayan state of Manipur, in northeastern India. It is the official in government offices. Meitei-lon is also spoken in the Indian states of Assam and Tripura, and in Bangladesh and Burma (now Myanmar).

Meitei is a Tibeto-Burman whose exact classification remains unclear, though it shows lexical resemblances to Kuki and Tangkhul Naga.

Meitei-lon has proven to be a large integrating factor among all ethnic groups in Manipur who use it to communicate among themselves.

In 1980, the Government of Manipur recognized the alphabet with 27 letters (Manipur Gazette No. 33, 1980) and it the seems to match for modern speech.

Meitei-lon has been recognized, as "Manipuri", by the Indian Union and has been included in the list of scheduled s (included in the 8th schedule by the 71st amendment of the constitution in 1992). Meitei-lon is taught as a subject up to the post-graduate level (Ph.D.) in universities of India, apart from being a medium of instruction up to the undergraduate level in Manipur.

Phonology

Meiteilon is a tonal .

Numbers

1 - ama, 2 - ani, 3 - ahum, 4 - mari, 5 - manga, 6 - taruk, 7 - taret, 8 - nipan, 9 - mapan, 10 - tara

Writing

Meitei-lon has its own script named Meitei-mayek, which was popularly used until the 18th century. Its earliest use is dated between the 11th and 12th centuries C.E. Subsequently, and particularly with the advent of British Rule in 1891, the Eastern Nagari script (commonly known as the Assamese / Bengali script) was forced upon the people. This script is, however, still in use today. Efforts are being made to popularise the Meitei Mayek script and is showing significant improvement in the recent decades.

It is also a known fact that Bengali scripts are used to write Meitei-lon. Bengali script are still in use for many purposes like those of officials, studies and newspapers. In a step towards re-building of the use of script, the Government of Manipur on pressure of many organizations replaced the Bengali script with the Meitei script for some standards in all schools of Manipur. Government also assures that Bengali script used for written the would be completely replaced.

Bengali script replaced the native Meitei script officially at the KONUNG - the Royal Palace during the period 1709 and became the official script till 1940's. The history of Manipur records that the PUYAS-historical documents of Manipur were written in original Meitei script and was burnt down during the reign of King PAMHEIBA, the then king of Kangliepak under the influence of some Bengali Scholars.

Some examples for replacement of the Meitei script by Bengali script "Bengali script were already made the official and hence the scholars were of that time have completely lost the idea of Meitei script, when British conquered Manipur in 1891, almost all the scholars and officials were using Bengali script. A change in script would take time and may affect the rulers. Moreover printing press were available in Bengali script. Therefore it was purposefully and forcefully implemented even during the era of five decades of British in Manipur. Above all this, the implementation of Meitei script was impracticable.

There are some texts from the Maring and Limbu tribes of Manipur which were also written using Meitei Mayek.

See also

• s of India
• List of s by number of native speakers in India
• List of Meitei-lon poets
• Sahitya Akademi Award to Writers

References

Culture

• Brara, N. Vijaylakshmi. (1998). Politics, society, and cosmology in India's North East. Delphi: Oxford University Press.
• Budha, W. (1992). Indigenous games of the Meiteis. Manipur: Wangkeimayum Publications.
• Singh, M. Kirti. (1988). Religion and culture of Manipur. Delhi: Manas Publications.
• Singh, M. Kirti. (1993). Folk culture of Manipur. Delhi: Manas Publications.

==

• Bhat, D. N. S.; & Ningomba, S. (1997). grammar. Munich: Lincom Europa.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1990). Experiencer subjects in . In V. M. Manindra & K. P. Mohanan (Eds.), Experiencer subjects in South Asian s (pp. 195–211). Stanford: The Center for the Study of and Information.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1992). Tone in . In K. L. Adams & T. J. Hudak (Eds.), Papers from the first annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1991 (pp. 65–85). Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1992). Bracketing paradoxes in . In M. Aronoff (Ed.), Morphology now (pp. 33–47). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1994). Morphological change and fast speech phenomena in the verb. In K. L. Adams & T. J. Hudak (Eds.), Papers from the second annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1992 (pp. 121–134). Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1997). A grammar of Meithei. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 0-19-564331-3.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). Early Meithei manuscripts. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman s: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000 (pp. 59–71). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). A glossary of 39 basic words in archaic and modern Meithei. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman s: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000 (pp. 189–190). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2004). "Polysemy through metonymy: The case of Meithei pi 'grandmother'". Studies in 28 (2): 363–386. doi:10.1075/sl.28.2.04che. 
• Singh, Ningthoukhongjam Khelchandra. (1964). to & English dictionary.

External links

• Meitei language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• Entry for Meitei at Rosetta Project
• Meetei Mayek (Meitei Script)
  • / Meiteilon: An Introduction
• Meetei Mayek Alphabet
• Learn to speak , with the right pronunciation
• Learn
• Learn Meitei Mayek (Meitei Script) - E-Pao.net
• Poetry
• Contemporary Poetry In
• Seirangba Marup, the based Yahoo Group of Art and Literature
• KokSum.com, A Mobile friendly News Aggregator on Manipur. Made it easy as KOK-SUM.