Meitei-lon Meitei-lon
Spoken in:	Northeast India, Bangladesh, Myanmar
Total speakers:	3.3 million
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan  Tibeto-Burman   Meitei-lon
Writing system:	Eastern Nagari, Meitei Mayek[1]
Official status
Official language of:	India (Manipur)
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	mni
ISO 639-3:	mni
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Meitei-lon , also Meitei-lol, and Manipuri (and sometimes, the 19th century British term, Meithei, which is the name of the people, not of the language), is the predominant language and lingua-franca in the Southeastern Himalayan state of Manipur, in northeastern India. It is the official language in government offices. Meitei-lon is also spoken in the Indian states of Assam and Tripura, and in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Sino-Tibetan languages form a putative language family composed of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. ... The Tibeto-Burman family of languages (often considered a sub-group of the Sino-Tibetan language family) is spoken in various central and south Asian countries, including Myanmar (Burma), northern Thailand, and parts of Western China (Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai (Amdo), Gansu, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal... Writing systems of the world today. ... The Kanai Baraxiboa rock inscription near Guwahati. ...   Sample of Meitei Mayek script, showing the main consonants in the alphabet Meitei Mayek script (also Meithei Mayek, Meetei Mayek, Manipuri script) (Manipuri: Meetei Mayek) is a syllabic script used for the Meitei language (Manipuri), one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_India. ... , Manipur   (Bengali: মণিপুর, Meitei Mayek: mnipur) is a state in northeastern India making its capital in the city of Imphal. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the worlds writing systems. ... , Manipur   (Bengali: মণিপুর, Meitei Mayek: mnipur) is a state in northeastern India making its capital in the city of Imphal. ... Assam   (Assamese: অসম Ôxôm) is a north eastern state of India with its capital at Dispur, a part of Guwahati. ... Tripura   (Bengali: ত্রিপুরা, Hindi: त्रिपुरा) is a state in North East India. ...

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

Meitei-lon has been recognized, as "Manipuri", by the Indian Union and has been included in the list of scheduled languages (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.

Although Meitei-lon is also called Manipuri, it should not be confused with the Indo-Aryan language, as classified by linguists, of the Bishnupriya Manipuris who claim, controversially at best and dismissed by Meiteis, was spoken in Manipur between the 13th and 19th centuries. The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ...

Sounds

Meitei is a tonal language. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Grammar

Writing

Meitei-lon had its own script named Meitei-mayek, which was in use until the 18th century. Its earliest use is dated between the 11th and 12th centuries C.E. The script is derived from the Tibetan group of scripts, themselves derived from the Gupta Brahmi. Subsequently, and particularly with the advent of British Rule in 1891, the Eastern Nagari script better known as the Bengali script, was adopted and is being used today. However, efforts are being made to revive the Meitei-mayek script. The Kanai Baraxiboa rock inscription near Guwahati. ... Sample of Meitei Mayek script, showing the main consonants in the alphabet Meitei Mayek script (also Meithei Mayek, Meetei Mayek, Manipuri script) (Manipuri: Meetei Mayek) is a syllabic script used for the Meitei language (Manipuri), one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur. ...

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

See also

• Languages of India
• List of national languages of India
• List of Indian languages by total speakers

Map of South Asia in native languages. ... India has a diverse list of spoken languages among different groups of people. ... Indian languages spoken by more than ten million people are given below. ...

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.

Language

• Bhat, D. N. S.; & Ningomba, S. (1997). Manipuri grammar. Munich: Lincom Europa.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1990). Experiencer subjects in Manipuri. In V. M. Manindra & K. P. Mohanan (Eds.), Experiencer subjects in South Asian languages (pp. 195-211). Stanford: The Center for the Study of Language and Information.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1992). Tone in Manipuri. 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 Manipuri. 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 Manipuri 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 languages: 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 languages: 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 Language, 28 (2), 363-386.
• Singh, Ningthoukhongjam Khelchandra. (1964). Manipuri to Manipuri & English dictionary.

External links

• Meitei language at Ethnologue
• Meetei Mayek (Meitei Script)
  • Manipuri/ Meiteilon: An Introduction
• Meetei Mayek Alphabet
• Learn to speak Manipuri, with the right pronunciation
• Learn Manipuri
• Learn Meitei Mayek (Meitei Script) - E-Pao.net
• Manipuri Poetry
• Contemporary Poetry In Manipuri
• Seirangba Marup, the language based Yahoo Group of Manipuri Art and Literature