Meitei language

History

The Meitei language has existed for at least 2000 years. According to linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the ancient Meitei literature dates back to 1500 to 2000 years before present.

First Millennium CE

The earliest known Meitei language compositions is the ritual song Ougri (ꯑꯧꯒ꯭ꯔꯤ), which was used in religious and coronation ceremonies of Kangleipak. It may have existed before the Common Era. Numit Kappa (Meitei: ꯅꯨꯃꯤꯠ ꯀꯥꯞꯄ, lit. 'The Shooting of the Sun'), a religious epic that tells the tale of how the night was divided from the day, was also composed in the first century.

Poireiton Khunthok (Meitei: ꯄꯣꯢꯔꯩꯇꯣꯟ ꯈꯨꯟꯊꯣꯛ, lit. 'The Immigration of Poireiton') is a 3rd-century narrative work describing the establishment of a colony in Kangleipak by a group of immigrants led by Poireiton, the younger brother of the god of the underworld.

The Yumbanlol, a copper plate manuscript was composed in the 6th century or 7th century CE for the royal family of Kangleipak. It is a rare work of dharmashastra, covering sexuality, the relationships between husbands and wives, and instructions on how to run a household.

The Khencho (ꯈꯦꯟꯆꯣ), an early Meitei work of poetry was composed by the beginning of the 7th century CE. Although it is obscure and unintelligible to present-day Meiteis, it is still recited as part of the Lai Haraoba festival.

One of the best-preserved early Meitei language epigraphic records is a copper plate inscription dating to the reign of King Khongtekcha (r. c. 763 – 773 CE). During the same time period, Akoijam Tombi composed the Panthoibi Khonggul (ꯄꯥꯟꯊꯣꯏꯄꯤ ꯈꯣꯡꯀꯨꯜ), an account of the romantic adventures of the deified Meitei princess Panthoibi.

Second Millennium CE

In 1100 CE, a written constitution, Meitei: ꯂꯣꯏꯌꯨꯝꯄ ꯁꯤꯜꯌꯦꯜ, romanized: Loyumba Shinyen, was finalised by King Loiyumba (r. c. 1074 – 1112 CE) of Kangleipak. It was a codification of the proto-constitution drafted by King Naophangba in 429 CE.

Before 1675 CE, the Meitei language experienced no significant influence from any other languages. Beginning in the late 17th century, Hindu influence on Meitei culture increased, and the Meitei language experienced some influences from other languages, on its phonology, morphology (linguistics), syntax and semantics. At the same time, the Hinduised King Pamheiba ordered that the Meitei script be replaced by the Bengali-Assamese script.

In 1725 CE, Pamheiba wrote Parikshit, possibly the first piece of Meitei-language Hindu literature, based on the story of the eponymous king Parikshit of the Mahabharata.

Geographical distribution

The majority of Meitei speakers, about 1.5 million live in the Indian state of Manupur. Meitei is the official language of the Government of Manipur as well as its lingua franca.

There are nearly 170,000 Meitei-speakers in Assam, mainly in the Barak Valley, where it is the third most commonly used language after Bengali and Hindi. Manipuri is also spoken by about 9500 people in Nagaland, in communities such as Dimapur, Kohima, Peren and Phek. Meitei is a second language for various Naga and Kuki-Chin ethnic groups.

There are around 15,000 Meitei speakers in Bangladesh mainly are in the districts of Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Sunamganj and Habiganj in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh. In the past, there was a Meitei speaking population in Dhaka, Mymensingh and Comilla also. Manipuri is used as a second language by the Bishnupriya Manipuri people.

Myanmar has a significant Meitei speaking population in the states of Kachin and Shan and the regions of Yangon, Sagaing, and Ayeyarwady, among others.

Name

According to the Ethnologue, the alternative names of Meitei language are Kathe, Kathi, Manipuri, Meetei, Meeteilon, Meiteilon, Meiteiron, Meithe, Meithei, Menipuri, Mitei, Mithe, Ponna.

The name Meitei or its alternate spelling Meithei is preferred by many native speakers of Meitei over Manipuri. The term is derived from the Meitei word for the language Meitheirón (Meithei + -lon 'language', pronounced ). Meithei may be a compound from mí 'man' + they 'separate'. This term is used by most Western linguistic scholarship. Meitei scholars use the term Meit(h)ei when writing in English and the term Meitheirón when writing in Meitei. Chelliah (2015: 89) notes that the Meitei spelling has replaced the earlier Meithei spelling.

The language (and people) is also referred to by the loconym Manipuri. The term is derived from the name of the state of Manipur. Manipuri is the official name of the language for the Indian government and is used by government institutions and non-Meitei authors. The term Manipuri is also used to refer to the different languages of Manipur and to the people. Additionally, Manipuri, being a loconym, can refer to anything pertaining to the Manipur state.

Speakers of Meitei language are known as "Kathe" by the Burmese people, "Moglie" or "Mekhlee" by the people of Cachar, Assam (Dimasas and Assamese) and "Cassay" by the Shan people and the other peoples living in the east of the Ningthee River (or Khyendwen River). "Ponna" is the Burmese term used to refer to the Meiteis living inside Burma.

Dialects

The Meitei language exhibits a degree of regional variation; however, in recent years the broadening of communication, as well as intermarriage, has caused the dialectal differences to become relatively insignificant. The only exceptions to this occurrence are the speech differences of the dialects found in Tripura, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The exact number of dialects of Meitei is unknown.

The three main dialects of Meitei are: Meitei proper, Loi and Pangal. Differences between these dialects are primarily characterised by the extensions of new sounds and tonal shifts. Meitei proper is considered to be the standard variety—and is viewed as more dynamic than the other two dialects. The brief table below compares some words in these three dialects:

Devi (2002) compares the Imphal, Andro, Koutruk, and Kakching dialects of Meitei.

Status

Meitei is the sole official language of the Government of Manipur, and has been an official language of India since 1992.

Meitei language was the court language of the historic Manipur Kingdom, and before it merged into the Indian Republic. The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, recognised Meitei as one of the major advanced Indian literary languages in 1972, long before it became an official language in 1992. In 1950, the Government of India did not include Meitei in its list of 14 official languages. A language movement, spearheaded by organisations including the Manipuri Sahitya Parishad and the All Manipur Students' Union demanded that Meitei be made an official language for more than 40 years, until Meitei was finally added to the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India in 1992.

Meitei became an associate official language of Assam in 2024, following several years of effort by the Meitei associate official language movement to protect the identity, history, culture and tradition of Manipuris in Assam.

The Meitei language is one of the 13 official languages of the India used to administer police, armed services, and civil service recruitment exams.

The Press Information Bureau of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting publishes in 14 languages, including Meitei.

Education

Meitei is a language of instruction in all in the educational institutions in Manipur. It is one of the 40 instructional languages offered by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), controlled and managed by the Ministry of Education. Meitei is taught as a subject up to the post-graduate level in Indian universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Gauhati University, and the University of North Bengal. Indira Gandhi National Open University teaches Meitei to undergraduates.

Assam

Meitei language instruction has been offered in the lower primary schools of Assam since 1956. The Board of Secondary Education, Assam offers secondary education in Manipuri. The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council of Assam offers both Meitei-language schooling and instruction in Meitei as a second language.

Since 2020, the Assam Government has made an annual grant of ₹5 lakh (equivalent to ₹6.4 lakh or US$6,700 in 2026) to the Manipuri Sahitya Parishad (Manipuri Language Council). It also invested ₹6 crore (equivalent to ₹7.7 crore or US$800,000 in 2026) in the creation of a corpus for the development of the Meitei language.

The Department of Manipuri of Assam University offers education up to the Ph.D. level in Meitei language.

Tripura

Since 1998, the Government of Tripura has offered Meitei language as a "first language" subject at primary level in 24 schools throughout the state.

In December 2021, Tripura University proposed to the Indian Ministry of Education and the University Grants Council (UGC), regarding the introduction of diploma courses in Meitei, along with international languages like Japanese, Korean and Nepali.

Phonology

The exact classification of the Meitei language within Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. It has lexical resemblances to Kuki and Tangkhul.

Tone

The Meitei language is a tonal language. There is a controversy over whether there are two or three tones.

Segments

Meitei distinguishes the following phonemes:

Consonants

Vowels

Note: the central vowel /ɐ/ is transcribed as <ə> in recent linguistic work on Meitei. However, phonetically it is never [ə], but more usually [ɐ]. It is assimilated to a following approximant: /ɐw/ = [ow], /ɐj/ = [ej].

Phonological processes

A velar deletion is noted to occur on the suffix -lək when following a syllable ending with a /k/ phoneme.

Meitei has a dissimilatory process similar to Grassmann's law found in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, though occurring on the second aspirate. Here, an aspirated consonant is deaspirated if preceded by an aspirated consonant (including ) in the previous syllable. The deaspirated consonants are then voiced between sonorants.

/tʰin-/

pierce

+

/-kʰət/

upward

→

/tʰinɡət/

pierce upwards

/səŋ/

cow

+

/kʰom/

udder

→

/səŋɡom/

milk

/hi-/

trim

+

/-tʰok/

outward

→

/hidok/

trim outwards

Writing systems

Meitei script

The Meitei script (ꯃꯩꯇꯩ ꯃꯌꯦꯛ, Meitei mayek) is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Meitei mayek is also known as Kanglei script (ꯀꯪꯂꯩ ꯃꯌꯦꯛ, kanglei mayek) or kok sam lai script (ꯀꯣꯛ ꯁꯝ ꯂꯥꯏ ꯃꯌꯦꯛ, kok sam lai mayeke), after its first three letters. Its earliest known appearance is on 6th century coins. It was used until the 18th century, when it was replaced by the Bengali script, and then revived in again massively in the 20th. In 2021, the use of Meetei Mayek to write Manipuri was officially adopted by the government of Manipur, alongside Bengali script, with the Bengali script remaining co-official for a period of ten years until 2031.

The Roman alphabet has been used in medium for teaching basic Meitei as a second language teaching by the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur. More recently, the Board has issued a directive that no more Manipuri textbooks using the Latin alphabet be published. Meitei language editions of the Bible in Roman script are very commonly used by the Christians in Manipur.

The Naoriya Phulo script is a constructed script, invented by Laininghan Naoriya Phulo (1888–1941). It shares many similarities with Devanagari and Bengali script. It was championed by Apokpa Marup, but was never widely adopted.

Grammar

Sentences in the Meitei language use the subject–object–verb word order (SOV). For example, in the sentence Ei chak chai (ꯑꯩ ꯆꯥꯛ ꯆꯥꯢ), which translates to I eat rice, the gloss is "ei" (I), "chak" (rice), "chai" (eat).

Nouns

Nouns and pronouns are marked for number in Meitei. The plural is indicated by the suffixes -khoi (for personal pronouns and human proper nouns) and -sing (for all other nouns). Verbs associated with the pluralised nouns are unaffected. Examples are demonstrated below:

When adjectives are used to be more clear, Meitei utilises separate words and does not add a suffix to the noun. Examples are show in the chart below:

Compound verbs

Compound verbs are created by combining root verbs each ending with aspect markers. While the variety of suffixes is high, all compound verbs utilise one of two:

Aspect markers appear as suffixes that clarify verb tense and appear at the end of the compound verb. Overall, the formula to construct a compound verb becomes [root verb] + [suffix] + [aspect marker]:

Compound verbs can also be formed utilising both compound suffixes as well, allowing utterances such as pithokningle meaning "want to give out".

Number words

Literature

The Khamba Thoibi Sheireng, a poem of 39,000 verses composed by Hijam Anganghal Singh and first published in 1940 (Meitei: ꯈꯝꯕ ꯊꯣꯏꯕꯤ ꯁꯩꯔꯦꯡ, romanized: Poem on Khamba Thoibi) is regarded as the national epic of the Manipuris. It is a classical Meitei language epic poem based on the ancient romantic adventure tale of Khamba and Thoibi of Moirang. It is regarded as the greatest of all Meitei epic poems.

The Meitei classical language movement seeks to gain recognition for Meitei as one of the Classical Languages of India.

Annual events

Various annual events are organised to promote, protect and develop Meitei language, in the sovereign states of India and Bangladesh in particular as well as in other parts of the world in general.

• Manipuri language day (Meitei: ꯂꯣꯟꯒꯤ ꯅꯨꯃꯤꯠ, romanized: Manipuri Lon-gi Numit) is observed annually on 20 August, commemorating the day in 1992 when Manipuri was made one of the official languages of India.
• Manipuri poetry day (Meitei: ꯃꯅꯤꯄꯨꯔꯤ ꯁꯩꯔꯦꯡꯒꯤ ꯅꯨꯃꯤꯠ, romanized: Manipuri Sheirenggi Numit), is an annual literary event that promotes Meitei language poetry and the traditions of Meitei literature. Events are held in Manipur and in and by Meitei-speakers in Northeast India and West Bengal.
• The Manipuri Language Festival (Meitei: ꯃꯅꯤꯄꯨꯔꯤ ꯂꯣꯟꯒꯤ ꯀꯨꯝꯃꯩ, romanized: Manipuri Lon-gi Kummei) is an annual cultural event that aims to protect and develop of the Meitei language, script and culture in Bangladesh.

Literary awards

• Manipur State Literature Awards
• Meitei language day awards
• Sahitya Akademi Award for Meitei
• Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize for Meitei
• Yuva Puraskar for Meitei
• Bal Sahitya Puraskar for Meitei
• Manipur State Kala Akademi Awards
• Manipuri Sahitya Parishad Awards

Software

In 2021, Rudali Huidrom, a Manipuri researcher of the EBMT/NLP laboratory, Waseda University, Japan, created a text corpus named "EM Corpus" (shortened form of "Emalon Manipuri Corpus"). It is the first comparable text to text corpus built for Meitei language (mni) and English language (eng) pair from sentences. The writing system used for Meitei language in this corpus is Bengali script. It was crawled and collected from thesangaiexpress.com – the news website of "The Sangai Express", a daily newspaper of Manipur from August 2020 to 2021. In version 1, she created the monolingual data, having 1,034,715 Meitei language sentences and 846,796 English language sentences. In version 2, she created the monolingual data, having 1,880,035 Meitei language sentences and 1,450,053 English language sentences.

EM-ALBERT is the first ALBERT model available for Meitei language. EM-FT is also FastText word embedding available for Meitei language. These resources were created by Rudali Huidrom and are now available at free of cost at the European Language Resources Association catalogue (ELRA catalogue) under CC-BY-NC-4.0 licence.

On 11 May 2022, Google Translate added Meitei-language (under the name "Meiteilon (Manipuri)") during its addition of 24 new languages to the translation tool. The writing system used for Meitei language in this tool is Meitei script.

MT, NMT & LLM

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Modern Meitei of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (by the United Nations):

ꯃꯤꯑꯣꯏꯕ ꯈꯨꯗꯤꯡꯃꯛ ꯄꯣꯛꯄ ꯃꯇꯝꯗ ꯅꯤꯡꯇꯝꯃꯤ, ꯑꯃꯗꯤ ꯏꯖꯖꯠ ꯑꯃꯁꯨꯡ ꯍꯛ ꯃꯥꯟꯅꯅ ꯂꯧꯖꯩ ꯫ ꯃꯈꯣꯏ ꯄꯨꯝꯅꯃꯛ ꯋꯥꯈꯜ ꯂꯧꯁꯤꯡ ꯁꯦꯡꯏ, ꯑꯐ ꯐꯠꯇ ꯈꯪꯏ, ꯑꯗꯨꯅ ꯑꯃꯅ ꯑꯃꯒ ꯂꯣꯏꯅꯕ ꯃꯇꯝꯗ ꯃꯆꯤꯟ ꯃꯅꯥꯎꯒꯨꯝꯅ ꯂꯣꯏꯅꯒꯗꯕꯅꯤ ꯫ (in Meitei script)

মিওইবা খুদিংমক পোকপা মতমদা নিংতম্মী, অমদি ইজ্জৎ অমসুং হক মান্ননা লৌজৈ । মখোই পুম্নমক ৱাখল লৌশিং শেঙই, অফ ফত্তা খঙই, অদুনা অমনা অমগা লোইনবদা মচীন মনাওগুম্না লোইনগদবনি । (in Bengali script)

Mioiba khudingmak pokpa matamda ningtammi amadi ijjat amasung hak mānnana leijei, makhoi pumnamak wākhal loushing shengi, apha phatta khangi, aduna amana amaga loinabada machin manāogumna loinagadabani. (Roman transliteration)

(IPA transliteration).

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.