Chungli Ao language
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Through Nagaland and Missionary
History
During the American Baptist Mission to Naga Hills, Dr E.W. Clark first came in contact with the Molungkimong village that paved the way for a common Ao language. Chungli Ao is spoken in Molungkimong and Molungyimsen and other villages throughout Ao territory by roughly 50% of the Ao-speaking population. The speech of Molungkimong is the prestige dialect due to Baptist missionaries' influence. Most Ao can speak Chungli even if they are from Mongsen-speaking regions. Chungli is taught in schools. Various trans-Dikhu neighbouring dialects of Chungli Ao are spoken east of the Dikhu River in Yacham, Tengsa, and Longla. These are poorly documented; Yacham and Tengsa may be separate languages (van Driem 2001).
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Numbers
Phonology
Chungli Ao is a tonal language. There are three distinct tonal levels: low, mid and high. There is evidence to prove that low and mid as well as low and high are contrastive. Chungli also has two contour tones, which are high-low and low-mid, though they are quite rare.
Vowels
Consonants
Morphology
1) Chungli Ao is an agglutinative language where the verbs lack person and number marking. For example:
PREFIX – STEM -LEXICAL SUFFIX – DERIV. SUFFIX – INFLEC. SUFFIX
me- NEG -maʔ ‘completely’ -tsɨʔ BEN -tsɨ IRR te- PROH -et ‘persistently’ -tep RECIP -əɹ PRES etc. etc. etc.
This applies for both finite and non-finite forms of the verb.
2) The following table shows the case marking present in Chungli Ao.