Khasi language

Geographic distribution and status

Khasi is natively spoken by 1,038,000 people in India (as of 2011). It is the first language of one-third of the population of Meghalaya, or 997,000, and its speakers are mostly found in the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills regions. There are also small Khasi-speaking communities in neighbouring states of India, the largest of which is in Assam: 34,600 people. There is also a very small number of speakers in Bangladesh.

Khasi has been an associate official language of some districts within Meghalaya since 2005, as of 2012, was no longer considered endangered by UNESCO, and since 2026, it became a full-fledged official language of Meghalaya. There are demands to include this language to the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India.

A sizable number of books have been published in Khasi, including novels, poetry, religious works, school textbooks and non-fiction. The most famous Khasi poet is U Soso Tham (1873–1940), whose death is commemorated annually as a regional holiday in the state of Meghalaya. Khasi sees everyday use on the internet, including blogs and several online newspapers.

Dialects

The Sohra dialect is taken as the standard form of Khasi, and it was the first dialect to be written in Latin and Bengali scripts by the British. Although standard Khasi is spoken by a majority in Shillong, it is significantly different from the other Shillong dialects which form a dialect continuum across the capital region.

Khasi has significant dialectal variation, and this presents a challenge with regard to classifying the Khasic languages. The following are the dialects that are spoken among the Khasi tribes:

• Sohra Khasi (Sohra dialogue is a local and mass Communication among the Khasi Tribes which is well known as Khasi language)
• Mylliem Khasi
• Mawlai Khasi
• Nongkrem Khasi
• War Khasi, not to be confused with the closely associated War language
• Bhoi Khasi
• Nonglung

Pnar, Maram (including Langrin) and Lyngngam have also been listed as varieties of Khasi. However, more recent studies seem to indicate that these are sister languages to Khasi, and that Khasi began as a marginal Pnar dialect.

Bhoi, from Nongpoh, and Nonglung from Umsning, in Ri Bhoi District, differ substantially from standard Khasi in their word order. They are different enough from standard Khasi to be sometimes considered separate languages, with Bhoi sometimes classified as intermediate between Khasi and Pnar, and Nonglung being part of Mnar, variously classified as a dialect of War or Pnar.

Phonology

This section discusses mainly the phonology of standard Khasi as spoken in and around the capital city, Shillong.

Khasi, mainly spoken in Meghalaya, is surrounded by unrelated languages: Assamese to the north and east, Sylheti to the south (both Indo-Aryan languages), Garo (a Tibeto-Burman language) to the west, and a plethora of other Tibeto-Burman languages including Manipuri, Mizo and Bodo.

Although over the course of time, language change has occurred, Khasi retains some distinctive features:

• Khasi remains a stress language, without tones, unlike many of its Tibeto-Burman neighbors.
• Like its Mon-Khmer relatives, Khasi has a large inventory of phonemic vowels (see below)
• The syllable structure of Khasi words resembles that of many Mon-Khmer languages, with many lexical items showing a CCVC shape, in which many combinations of consonants are possible in the onset (see examples below).

Consonants

Vowels

Script

Before British colonization, some of the Khasi Syiems (Royals) used to keep official records and communicate with one another on paper primarily using the Bengali script. William Carey wrote the language with the Bengali script between 1813 and 1838, even sponsoring a Bible translation in Khasi with the assistance of Alexander B. Lish.

The Welsh missionary Thomas Jones arrived in Sohra on 22 June 1841 and proceeded to write down the local language in the Latin script. As a result, the modified Latin alphabet of the language has a few similarities with the Welsh alphabet. In 1842, the "First Khasi Reader" and a Rhodd Mam catechism became the first publications in the Khasi language. The first journal in Khasi was U Nongkit Khubor (The Messenger) published at Mawphlang in 1889 by William Williams. The first book in the Khasi language written by a native Khasi writer, Jeebon Roy, was published in 1897, and was entitled Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi (The Religion of the Khasi).

Khasi alphabet

Khasi in Latin script has a system distinct from that of English. Khasi uses a 23-letter alphabet by removing the letters c, f, q, v, x and z from the basic Latin alphabet and adding the diacritic letters ï and ñ, and the digraph ng, which is treated as a letter in its own right. The diagraph ng is also present in Welsh alphabet.

Pronunciation

• Vowel length is not usually marked in the orthography, although it can be marked optionally by an acute accent (sim "bird" vs. rí "country").
• The peculiar placement of k is due to it replacing c. c and ch were originally used in place of k and kh. When c was removed from the alphabet, k was put in its place.
• The inclusion of g is only due to its presence in the letter ng. It is not used independently in any word of native origin.
• h represents both the fricative sound as well as the glottal stop(ʔ) word-finally.
• y is not pronounced as in year, but is used for writing the close central unrounded vowel ([]) and the glottal stop between vowels. The sound in year is written with ï.

Digraphs

Besides ng, which is considered a single letter in the alphabet, Khasi has 8 other digraphs:

• Aspirated consonants are represented by digraphs kh, ph and th.
• Breathy voiced consonants are represented by digraphs bh, dh and jh.
• The /ʃ/ in Khasi is written sh.
• The digraph ie represents the /e/ sound, as opposed to e, which represents the sound /ɛ/.

This digraphs are not treated as single letters but rather as combinations of letters.

Lost Khasi Script

A local legend tells of how the Khasi people received their script from God, and that subsequently the Khasi people lost their script in a great flood. In 2017, it was reported that there is evidence of an undeciphered script, currently stored at the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samity Library in Guwahati, Assam, that is considered to be Khasi in origin.

Grammar

Khasi is an Austroasiatic language and has its distinct features of a large number of consonant conjuncts, with prefixing and infixing.

Pronouns

Nouns and noun phrases

Word order

The order of elements in a Khasi noun phrase is (Case marker)-(Demonstrative)-(Numeral)-(Classifier)-(Article)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Prepositional phrase)-(Relative clause), as can be seen from the following examples:

ar

two

tylli

CLF

ki=sim

PL=bird

'two birds'

kato

that:F

ka=kɨnthei

F=girl

kaba

F-relative

wan

come

mynnin

yesterday

'that girl who came yesterday'

ka

F

kmie

mother

jong

of

phi

you

'your mother'

Gender

Khasi has a pervasive gender system. There are four genders in this language:

Humans and domestic animals have their natural gender:

ka kmie "mother"

u kpa "father"

ka syiar "hen"

u syiar "rooster"

Rabel (1961) writes: "the structure of a noun gives no indication of its gender, nor does its meaning, but Khasi natives are of the impression that nice, small creatures and things are feminine while big, ugly creatures and things are masculine....This impression is not borne out by the facts. There are countless examples of desirable and lovely creatures with masculine gender as well as of unpleasant or ugly creatures with feminine gender"

Though there are several counterexamples, Rabel says that there is some semantic regularity in the assignment of gender for the following semantic classes:

The matrilineal aspect of the society can also be observed in the general gender assignment, where so, all central and primary resources associated with day-to-day activities are signified as Feminine; whereas Masculine signifies the secondary, the dependent or the insignificant.

Note: However do note that there are no such universal rules for gender assignment of nouns in Khasi. There are a lot of exceptions and one such is syntiew ('flower'), which is stereotypically considered feminine but is accompanied with masculine gender signifier "u" i.e. u syntiew. This gender assignment to nouns is highly depended on what the native speakers assign the noun which they all naturally agree upon but which can vary sometimes like according to the mood or tone.

Classifiers

Khasi has a classifier system, apparently used only with numerals. Between the numeral and noun, the classifier tylli is used for non-humans, and the classifier ngut is used for humans, e.g.

Don

there:are

ar

two

tylli

CLF

ki=sim

PL=bird

ha

in

ruh.

cage

'There are two birds in the cage.'

Don

there:are

lai

three

ngut

CLF

ki=Sordar

PL=chief

ha

in

shnong.

village

'There are three chiefs in the village.'

Adjectives

There is some controversy about whether Khasi has a class of adjectives. Roberts cites examples like the following:

u

3SG.MASC

briew

man

ba-bha

REL-good

'a good man'

In nearly all instances of attributive adjectives, the apparent adjective has the prefix /ba-/, which seems to be a relativiser. There are, however, a few adjectives without the /ba-/ prefix:

u

3SG.MASC

'riew

man

sníew

bad

'a bad man'

When the adjective is the main predicate, it may appear without any verb 'be':

U

3SG.MASC

ksew

dog

u=lamwir.

M=restless

'The dog is restless.'

In this environment, the adjective is preceded by an agreement marker, like a verb. Thus it may be that Khasi does not have a separate part of speech for adjectives, but that they are a subtype of verb.

Prepositions and prepositional phrases

Khasi appears to have a well-developed group of prepositions, among them

• bad "with, and"
• da "with (instrumental)"
• na "from"
• ha "in, at"
• sha "in, at"
• jong "of"

The following are examples of prepositional phrases:

ka

FEM

kmie

mother

jong

of

phi

you

'your mother'

u

3SG.MASC

slap

rain

u=ther

M=pour

na

from

ka

FEM

bneng

sky

'Rain poured from the sky.'

Verbs and verb phrases

Agreement

Verbs agree with 3rd person subjects in gender, but there is no agreement for non-3rd persons (Roberts 1891):

The masculine and feminine markers /u/ and /ka/ are used even when there is a noun phrase subject (Roberts 1891:132):

Ka

FEM

miaw

cat

ka

FEM

pah.

meow

'The cat meows.'

Tense marking

Tense is shown through a set of particles that appear after the agreement markers but before the verb. The future marker is fused with subject pronouns, plural marker, as well as gender marker. Past is a particle /la/ and future is /yn/ (contracted to 'n after a vowel):

Negation

Negation is also shown through an enclitic, =ɨm (contracted to 'm after a vowel), which appears between the agreement and the tense particle. There is a special past negation particle ʃɨm in the past which replaces the ordinary past /la/ (Roberts 1891):

u=m

3SG.M=NEG

baːm

eat

'He does not eat.'

ka=n=ɨm

3SG.F=FUT=NEG

ʈʰja

sleep

'She will not sleep.'

Another negation particle, kʰlem, is equivalent to the past tense negative construct =m ʃɨm la, can also be used as a negative subordinator:

kʰlem

NEG

baːm

eat

u

3SG.M

la

PST

leʲt

go

'He left without eating.'

Copulas

The copula is an ordinary verb in Khasi, as in the following sentence:

U

3SG.MASC

Blei

God

u=long

M=be

jingïeid.

love

'God is love'

Causative verbs

Khasi has a morphological causative /pn-/ (Rabel 1961). (This is spelled pyn in Roberts (1891)):

Sentences

Word order

Word order in simple sentences is subject–verb–object (SVO):

U

3SG.M

ksew

dog

u=baːm

M=eat

doh.

flesh

'The dog eats meat.'

However, VSO order is also found, especially after certain initial particles, like hangta 'then' (Rabel 1961).

hangta

then

la

PAST

ong

say

i

DIM

khnai

mouse

ja

ACC

ka

FEM

Naam

Naam

'Then said the (little) mouse to Naam ... '

Case marking

Sometimes the object is preceded by a particle ya (spelled ia in Roberts 1891). Roberts says "ia, 'to', 'for', 'against' implies direct and immediate relation. Hence its being the sign of the dative and of the accusative case as well"

U

3SG.M

la

PAST

ái

give

ja

ACC

ka=kitab

FEM=book

ja

ACC

nga.

me

'He gave the book to me.'

It appears from Roberts (1891) that Khasi has differential object marking, since only some objects are marked accusative. Roberts notes that nouns that are definite usually have the accusative and those that are indefinite often do not.

Rabel (1961) says "the use of ïa is optional in the case of one object. In the case of two objects one of them must have ïa preceding.... If one of the objects is expressed by a pronoun, it must be preceded by ïa."

Broadly speaking, Khasi have 8 prepositions on NPs to indicate relations between arguments in constituent clauses, with the nominative case remaining unmarked, for a total of nine cases. They are fairly pervasive and play an important role in Khasi syntax.

All case markers can appear with or without the prenominal markers/articles u, ka, i and ki, and are placed before the prenominal markers.

Passive

Khasi has a passive, but it involves removing the agent of the sentence without putting the patient in subject position. (A type called the 'non-ascensional passive'). Compare the following active-passive pair (Roberts 1891) where the patient continues to have accusative case and remains in the object position:

Ki

PL

dang

contin

tháw

build

ja

ACC

ka

FEM

ïing

house

da

with

ki

PL

dieng..

wood

'They are building the house with wood.'

Dang

contin

tháw

build

ja

ACC

ka

FEM

ïing.

house

'The house is being built.'

This type of passive is used, even when the passive agent is present in a prepositional phrase:

La

PAST

lah

PFV

pyniap

kill

ja

ACC

ka

FEM

masi

cow

da

by

U Míet.

U‍ Miet

'The cow was killed by U Miet.'

Questions

Yes–no questions seem to be distinguished from statements only by intonation:

Phi

you

kit

are carrying

khoh

a basket

Til?

Til?

'Will you take a basket, Til?

Wh-questions do not involve moving the wh-element:

u

MASC

leit

go

shaei?

where

Where is he going?'

Embedded clauses

Subordinate clauses follow the main verb that selects them (Roberts 1891:169):

Nga

I

tip

know

ba

that

phi

you

la

PAST

leh

do

ja

ACC

kata.

that

'I know that you have done that'

Relative clauses follow the nouns that they modify and agree in gender:

Ka

FEM

samla kynthei

girl

ka-ba

FEM-relative

wan

come

mynhynnin

yesterday

ka

FEM

la

PAST

iáp.

die

'The girl who came yesterday has died.'

Contractions and other reduced forms

Contractions

A variety of Khasi prepositions and other words are contracted or reduced both in spoken and written language. One of the most common form of contractions is when a pronoun is grouped with the verbs "yn" or "ym" (for e.g. u yn contracts to u'n). Or when a preposition is grouped with a vowel-like gender identifier such as "u" and "i" (for e.g. ha u contracts to h'u).

Reduced words

Reduced form of words are common in the Khasi language. Most of the time, one or a couple of letters are dropped at the beginning of a word (for e.g. briew can become 'riew). There's no clear rule behind this process but usually these words that undergo reduction begins with more than one consonants; the reduced word is accompanied by an apostrophe from the start to mark so. The reduced form of the word is still understood by its context of usage and since its last inner syllabus and letters (i.e. rhyme) are always preserved.

These reduced forms of words are mostly seen in compound forms where the reduced word is affixed with other words to give rise to new words with new meanings. In compound form, the apostrophe is not used anymore. For e.g. 'riew as in riewkhlaw, riewspah, riewhyndai etc.

Sample text in Khasi

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Khasi Alphabet

Ïa ki bynriew baroh la kha laitluid bad ki ïaryngkat ha ka burom bad ki hok. Ha ki la bsiap da ka bor pyrkhat bad ka jingïatiplem bad ha ka mynsiem jingsngew shipara, ki dei ban ïatrei bynrap lang.

(Jinis 1 jong ka Jingpynbna-Ïar Satlak ïa ki Hok Longbriew-Manbriew)

Assamese script যা কি বৃনৰ‌্যের বাৰহ লা খা লাচলোছ বাড কী যৰূঙ্কট হা কি বুৰম বাড ক হক. হাকি লা বৃস্যপ দা ক বৰ-পৃৰ্খট বাড ক চিংযাতিপলেম বাড হা ক মৃন্স্যেম চিংস্ঙেউ শীপাৰা, কী দেই বাণ যত্ৰেই বৃনৰাপ লাং.

(জিনিস বানৃঙ্গং জং ক চিংপৃনবৃনা-যাৰ সত্লাক যা কি হক লংব্ৰ্যের-মানব্র্যের.)

IPA

jaː ki bɨnreʊ baːrɔʔ laː kʰaː lacloc bat ki jaːrɨŋkat haː kaː burɔm bat ki hɔk. haː ki laː bsjap daː kaː bɔːr pɨrkʰat bat kaː dʒɪŋjaːtɪplɛm bat haː kaː mɨnseːm dʒɨŋsŋɛʊ ʃiparaː ki dɛɪ ban jaːtrɛɪ bɨnrap laŋ

(dʒinɪs banɨŋkɔŋ dʒɔŋ kaː dʒɨŋpɨnbnaː-jaːr satlak jaː ki hɔk lɔŋbreʊ manbreʊ)

Gloss

To the human all are born free and they equal in the dignity and the rights. In them are endowed with the power thought and the conscience and in the spirit feeling fraternity they should to work assist together.

(Article first of the Declaration Universal of the Rights Humanity)

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should work towards each other in a spirit of brotherhood.

Basic vocabulary

Numbers