Mizo
Spoken in:	India, Bangladesh, Myanmar
Region:	Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Manipur
Total speakers:	700,000+ 674,756 in India (2001 census);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 in:	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.

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’. The language is also known as Lushai (eg Ethnologue.com and ISO 639-3).

History

The language of the Mizo comes under the Kuki-Chin branch of Tibeto-Burman. The numerous clans of the Mizo had respective dialects, amongst which the Mizo dialect, originally known as Duhlian or Lusei(by the mizo themselves), was most popular which subsequently had become the lingua franca of the State.

Writing System

Initially the Mizo had no script of its own. Christian missionaries started developing script for the language adopting the Roman alphabet with a phonetic form of spelling based on the well known Hunterian system of transliteration. The alphabets used are - a, â, á, à, aw, b, ch, chh, d, e, ê, é, è, f, g, ng, h, i, ì, í, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, û, v, z

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.

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: puar (slightly bulging), na (to swell up, be swollen), lang (to float), huan (garden), thiam (to know, like languages and 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 a goitre), hmelchhia (ugly), piang (born), ropui (great, mighty and powerful), bial (round/bulbous).

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.

Grammar

Mizo contains many analyzable polysyllables, which are polysyllabic units such as the English word water, in which the individual syllables have meaning by themselves. In a true monosyl

abic 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, but mizo languages is also rich from the people\'s saying, it just don\'t have nouns like the words virtual, survival (but this can be simplified to nungtheihna, in which \'nung\' means "to live" \'theih\' means "possible" \'na\' in mizo always creates a noun so, in \'theih\' if we add \'na\' "theihna" it 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 clearly 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), Kut(Hand)etc.

Dialects

Fannai, Chhangte, Ngente, Ralte, Bawm, Lai(lakher), Mara, Tlau, Le. Related to Hmar, Pankhu, Zahao (Falam Chin).

Mizo literature

Mizo language has a thriving literature with a Mizo department in Mizoram University.

Statistics

Mizo (Dulien, Duhlian Twang, Kuki, Chin, Lusai, Lushai, Lusei, Lushei, Lukhai, Lusago, Sailo, Hualngo, Whelngo); 529,000 in India (1997). 1,041 in Bangladesh (1981 census). 12,500 in Myanmar (1983).Population total all countries: 542,541.

See also

• Mizo people

References

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

• youthim.com Youth Internet Ministry.
• Sinlung News
• mizoram.nic.in Official website of Mizoram.
• Zoram.org A Mizoram portal.
• lorrain Mizo Online Dictionary
• Mizoram Presbyterian
• Mizoram Baptist
• Mizoram Adventist
• Maraland.net - The southern part of the people

v â€¢ d â€¢ e  (Official) Languages of the Republic of India
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia