Tedim
Zomi
Zopau
Native toMyanmar, India
EthnicityZomi
Native speakers
(340,000 cited 1990)[1]
Latin
Pau Cin Hau script
Language codes
ISO 639-3ctd
Glottologtedi1235
ELPTiddim Chin

The Tedim or Zomi language is spoken mostly in Myanmar and India. In Chin State (Khamtunggam), it is spoken in Tedim and Tonzang townships, while in Sagaing Division, it is spoken in Kalay and Mawlaik townships (Ethnologue). Dialects are Sokte and Kamhau (also called Kamhao, Kamhow). It is a subject-object verb language, and negation follows the verb.

Clans

Sukte is a small Zomi clan. They generally live in the Tedim and Tonzang townships. "But there is no specific native language of Sukte. It is just a clan of Zomi." Zam Ngaih Cing (2011:170) lists some Zomi varieties as Losau, Sihzang, Teizang, Saizang, Dim, Khuano, Hualngo, Dim, Zou, Thado, Paite and Vangteh.[2]

History

Zomi was the primary language spoken by Pau Cin Hau, a religious leader who lived from 1859 to 1948. He also devised a logographic and later simplified alphabetic script for writing materials in Zomi.

Phonology

The phonology of Zomi can be described as (C)V(V)(C)T order, where C represents a consonant, V represents a vowel, T represents a tone, and parentheses enclose optional constituents of a syllable.[3]

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Alveolo-
palatal		 Velar Glottal
Plosive/
Affricate		 voiceless p t tɕ k ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ tɕʰ (kʰ)
voiced b d ɡ
Fricative voiceless f s x h
voiced v z
Nasal m n ŋ
Approximant l lˀ
  • Approximants [j, w] can be heard as allophones of vowels /i̯, u̯/ within diphthongs.
  • /x/ can also be heard as an aspirated velar stop [kʰ] in free variation.

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i iː u uː
Mid ɛ ɛː ɔ ɔː
Open a aː
Diphthongs
Front Central Back
Close iu̯ i̯a ui̯ uːi̯ u̯a
Mid ei̯ ɛːi̯ eu̯ ɛːu̯ ou̯ oi̯ ɔːi̯
Open ai̯ aːi̯ au̯ aːu̯
  • Sounds /ɛ, ɔ/ may have short allophones of more close [e, o].[4]

Tone

References

Tedim language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
  1. ↑ Tedim at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ "But there is no language of Sukte, meaning it is only a clan of Zomi." Source: Cing, Zam Ngaih. "Linguistic Ecology of Tedim Chin." In Singh, Shailendra Kumar (ed). Linguistic Ecology of Manipur. Guwahati: EBH Publishers.
  3. ↑ "Proposal to Encode the Pau Cin Hau Alphabet in ISO/IEC 10646" (PDF). unicode.org. Retrieved 15 September 2023.
  4. ↑ Otsuka, Kosei (2014). Tiddim Chin. Toshihide Nakayama and Noboru Yoshioka and Kosei Otsuka (eds.), Grammatical Sketches from the Field: Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. pp. 109–141.
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