Mizo language

Mizo, also known as , is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Mizoram, where it is the official language and lingua franca. It is the mother tongue of the Mizo people and some members of the Mizo diaspora. Other than Mizoram, it is also spoken in Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, and Assam states of India, Sagaing Region and Chin State in Myanmar, and Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. It is mainly based on the Lusei dialect but it has also derived many words from its surrounding Mizo clans such as Hmar, Pawi, etc.mzuir.inflibnet.ac.in (PDF)

The language is also known as Duhlian and Lushai, a colonial term, as the Duhlian people were the first among the Mizo people to be encountered by the British in the course of their colonial expansion.Lalthangliana, B., 'Mizo tihin ṭawng a nei lo' tih kha , see also Matisoff, 'Language names' section

Classification

Mizo is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family.Mc Kinnon, John and Wanat Bruksasri (Editors): The Higlangders of Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 65. Most linguist scholars classify Mizo as a part of the Central Kuki-Chin languages. In Mizo, the Kuki-Chin languages are recognised as . Within the central Kuki-Chin group, VanBik places it in the North Central group with other neighbouring languages such as Laiholh and Maraic. Other scholars, such as Schafer, classified it in the Kukish section of Burmese. Paul K. Benedict classified it under Central-Kuki under the Kuki-Chin-Naga branch.

Phonology Vowels Monophthongs Mizo has eight tones and intonations for each of the vowels a, aw, e, i and u, four of which are reduced tones and the other four long tones. The vowel o has only three tones, all of them of the reduced type. The vowels can be represented as follows:Weidert, Alfons, Component Analysis of Lushai Phonology, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV – Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, volume 2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1975. Front Central Back Close i , , u , , Mid e , , aw , , Open a , , , ,

Diphthongs Starting with aStarting with e Starting with i Starting with u ai (, or ) ei (, or ) ia ( , or ) ua ( or ) au (, ) eu (, or ) iu ( or ) ui ( or )

Triphthongs Mizo has the following triphthongs: iai, as in iai, piai iau as in riau ruau, tiau tuau etc. uai, as in uai, zuai, tuai, vuai uau, as in riau ruau, tiau tuau, suau suau

Consonants Mizo has the following consonants, with the first symbol being its orthographical form and the second one its representation in the IPA: Labial Dental Alveolar Velar Glottal median lateral Plosive/Affricate voiceless p t ch tl [t͡l] k h 1 aspirated ph th chh , thl kh [] voiced b d flapṭ [t͡ɾ]aspirated flapṭh Fricative voiceless f s h voiced v z Sonorant plain m n r l ng aspirated hm hn hr hl ngh glottalised1 rh [] lh []

The glottal and glottalised consonants appear only in final position.

Tone Mizo is a tonal language, as it has differences in pitch and pitch contour that can change the meanings of words.

The eight tones and intonations that the vowel a (and the vowels aw, e, i, u, which constitutes all the tones in Mizo) can have are shown by the letter sequence p-a-n-g, as follows:Zoppen Club, Mizo ṭawng thumal thar long high tone: páng long low tone: pàng peaking tone: pâng dipping tone: päng short rising tone: pǎng short falling tone: pȧng short mid tone: pang short low tone: pạng

+ Notation of vowels with intonation Short tones Long tones mid rising falling low peaking high dipping low a (ǎ / ă) / ả (ȧ / ã) / ą ạ â á ä à o (ǒ / ŏ) / ỏ / (ó) ọ / (ò) aw (ǎw / ăw) / ảw (ȧw / ãw) / ąw ạw âw áw äw àw u (ǔ / ŭ) / ủ (ů / ũ) / ų ụ û ú ü ù e (ě / ĕ) / ẻ (ė / ẽ) / ę ẹ ê é ë è i (ǐ / ĭ) / ỉ (ĩ) / į ị î í ï ì

Note that the exact orthography of tones with diacritics is still not standardised (notably for differentiating the four short tones with confusive or conflicting choices of diacritics) except for the differentiation of long tones by using the circumflex from short tones. As well, the need of at least seven diacritics may cause complications to design easy keyboard layouts, even if they use dead keys and even if not all basic Latin letters are needed for Mizo itself, and so publications may represent the short tones using digrams (e.g. by appending some apostrophe or glottal letter) to reduce the number of diacritics needed to only four (those used now for the long tones) on only two dead keys.

Grammar

Verbs

Conjugation In MizoSCERT, Mizo Grammar, class XI & XII textbook (2002–). verb tense is indicated by the aspect and the addition of particles, such as:SCERT, Mizo Grammar and Composition, 2002. ang (simple future), tawh (simple past and past perfect), mék (progressive tenses, present and past), dáwn (simple future), dáwn mék (near future),

Modification of verbs Mizo gerunds and past participles are formed by a change in word ending called ; the resulting modified forms are called stem II in English-speaking linguistics literature.

+Examples of verbmodified (stem II) form

Nouns Mizo nouns undergo declension into cases. +Mizo noun declensionnominative/accusativegenitiveergativeinstrumental (a proper noun)

Nouns are pluralised by suffixing -te, -ho, -teho or -hote. +Pluralisation examplessingularplural

Pronouns All Mizo pronouns occur in two forms, namely in free form and clitic form and are declined into cases.

+Mizo pronounsThis form is also used as the accusative nominative genitiveaccusativeergativeclitic formsfree forms

Negation For declarative sentences, negation is achieved by adding the particle lo (not) at the end of a sentence: SentenceNegationLala a lo kalLala is coming/Lala cameLala a lo kal loLala did not comePathumin paruk a sem theiThree divides sixPathumin paruk a sem thei loThree does not divide six

Cardinal numbers

Writing system The Mizo alphabet is based on the Roman alphabet and has 25 letters. A written script for Lushai was created in 1874 by Thomas Herbert Lwein.

Lettera aw b ch d e f g ng h i j kName

Letter l m n o p r s t ṭ u v zName

In its current form, it was devised by the first Christian missionaries of Mizoram, J. H. Lorrain and F. W. Savidge,Lalthangliana, B.: 2001, History and Culture of Mizo in India, Burma and Bangladesh, Aizawl. "Baptist Missionary Conference, 1892", p. 745 based on the Hunterian system of transliteration.

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, Ä, É, È, Ë, Í, Ì, Ï, Ó, Ò, Ö, Ú, Ù, Ü to indicate the long intonations and tones. However, this does not differentiate the different intonations that short tones can have.The Mizo Wiktionary uses the additional symbols ạ, ǎ, ȧ, and likewise for the other vowels aw, e, i and u, to differentiate these

Sample texts The following is a sample text in Mizo of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Literature

Mizo has a thriving literature, which has both written and oral traditions. It has undergone a considerable change in the 20th century.Lalthangliana, B., 'Mizo tihin ṭawng a nei lo' tih kha

The Mizoram Press Information Bureau lists some twenty Mizo daily newspapers just in Aizawl city, as of March 2013.

Mizo language

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