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’. 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. ... Sino-Tibetan languages form a language family of about 250 languages of East Asia, in number of speakers worldwide second only to Indo-European. ... The Kuki-Chin-Naga languages form a sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman family. ... , Mizoram   is one of the Seven Sister States in northeastern India on the border with Myanmar. ... 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. ... The Mizos are a scheduled tribe in northeastern India, primarily in the state of Mizoram, where they are a majority. ... , Mizoram   is one of the Seven Sister States in northeastern India on the border with Myanmar. ... , Manipur   (Bengali: মণিপুর, Meitei Mayek: mnipur) is a state in northeastern India making its capital in the city of Imphal. ... Tripura   (Bengali: ত্রিপুরা, Hindi: त्रिपुरा) is a state in North East India. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ... The Chin Hills are a range of hills in northwestern Myanmar that cross over into Assam, India. ...

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. The Kuki-Chin-Naga languages form a sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman family. ... The Tibeto-Burman linguistic subfamily of the proposed Sino-Tibetan language family is spoken in various central and south Asian countries: Myanmar (Burmese language), Tibet (Tibetan language), northern Thailand (Mong language), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and the Ladakh region of...

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 A missionary is a propagator of religion, often an evangelist or other representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system. ...

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 monosyllabic 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. Yunan redirects here. ...

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. The Mizos are a scheduled tribe in northeastern India, primarily in the state of Mizoram, where they are a majority. ... // History Mizoram University was established on 2nd July 2001 by the Mizoram University Act, 2000 which appeared in the Gazette of India (Extraordinary) on 25th April, 2000 as a Central University having His Excellency, the President of India as its Visitor. ...

Statistics

Mizo (Dulien, Duhlian Twang, Kuki, Chin, Lusai, Lushai, Lusei, Lushei, Lukhai, Lusago, Sailau, 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

The Mizos are a scheduled tribe in northeastern India, primarily in the state of Mizoram, where they are a majority. ...

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

• 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