LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:9 September 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Contrastive Study of Select Linguistic Characteristics of
Mizo and Manipuri

Dr Thongam Dhanajit Singh

Abstract

Mizo and Manipuri are two important languages mainly spoken in Northeast India. Considered to be Tibeto-Burman languages by most linguists, these two languages show a strong linguistic affinity in terms of phonological, morphological, and syntactic features which hint at their common origin. This paper is a contrastive analysis of the select linguistic characteristics of the two languages to explain the affinity and dissimilarity between the two. The selected linguistic features include case, gender, number, syntax, and vocabulary.

Keywords: Manipuri, Mizo, Tibeto-Burman, contrastive analysis.

Introduction

Manipuri, also known as Meiteilon or Meeteilon, is the official language of the Indian state of Manipur. It is spoken by 17,61,079 people in India (Census of India 2011) and considered to be a language which belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It is the mother tongue of the Meitei community. Meitei settlement is primarily in the valley of Manipur though many of them are in Assam, Tripura and Bangladesh and Myanmar. Meiteis claim that they have a history of more than two thousand years. Historians believe that the history of Meitei kingdom started in 33 AD with the coronation of Nongda Lairen Pakhangba as their first king. They have their own Scripts (Meitei Mayek) for writing though it was substituted by the Bengali script during the reign of King Garibniwaz in the 18th century. Only in the recent past this script has been reintroduced in the school curriculum replacing the Bengali script. Available records suggest that the number of phonemes and alphabets Meitieis used changed from time to time.

Mizo, also known as Duhlian or Lushei, is the mother tongue of the Mizos. It is spoken by 8,30,846 people in India (Census of India 2011). Majority of them are in the Indian state of Mizoram while many of them are also in Manipur, Tripura, Assam, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. According to Lalzama, the original home of the Mizos is “somewhere in Tibet and China wherefrom they migrated to Burma and then to Mizoram through many centuries” (120). He further argues that “Of the various tribes belonging to the Tibeto-Burman race, the Mizo are more identical to the Manipuri, the Burmese and the Kachyen than the others” (124). This is ascertained by the close affinity Mizo language has with the other Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by these communities. Mizo as a language does not have its own script till the arrival of the Christian Missionaries. The absence of the script is the major hurdle in the study of how this language evolved through different historical phases. Linguists and philologists put Mizo and Manipuri as cognate languages under Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Figure 1 shows a schematic chart of the language family that these two languages belong.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr Thongam Dhanajit Singh
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Mizoram University, Aizawl – 796004, India
dthongam@gmail.com
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