Mizo language

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

Mizo has eight tones and intonations for each of the vowels a, aw, e, i and u, four of which are reduced tones and the other four long tones. The vowel o has only three tones, all of them of the reduced type. The vowels can be represented as follows:

Diphthongs

Triphthongs

Mizo has the following triphthongs:

• iai, as in iai, piai
• iau as in riau ruau, tiau tuau etc.
• uai, as in uai, zuai, tuai, vuai
• uau, as in riau ruau, tiau tuau, suau suau

Consonants

Mizo has the following consonants, with the first symbol being its orthographical form and the second one its representation in the IPA:

1. The glottal and glottalised consonants appear only in final position.

Tone

Mizo is a tonal language, as it has differences in pitch and pitch contour that can change the meanings of words.

The eight tones and intonations that the vowel a (and the vowels aw, e, i, u, which constitutes all the tones in Mizo) can have are shown by the letter sequence p-a-n-g, as follows:

• long high tone: páng
• long low tone: pàng
• peaking tone: pâng
• dipping tone: päng
• short rising tone: pǎng
• short falling tone: pȧng
• short mid tone: pang
• short low tone: pạng

Note that the exact orthography of tones with diacritics is still not standardised (notably for differentiating the four short tones with confusive or conflicting choices of diacritics) except for the differentiation of long tones by using the circumflex from short tones. As well, the need of at least seven diacritics may cause complications to design easy keyboard layouts, even if they use dead keys and even if not all basic Latin letters are needed for Mizo itself, and so publications may represent the short tones using digrams (e.g. by appending some apostrophe or glottal letter) to reduce the number of diacritics needed to only four (those used now for the long tones) on only two dead keys.

Grammar

Verbs

Conjugation

In Mizo verb tense is indicated by the aspect and the addition of particles, such as:

• ang (simple future),
• tawh (simple past and past perfect),
• mék (progressive tenses, present and past),
• dáwn (simple future),
• dáwn mék (near future),

Modification of verbs

Mizo gerunds and past participles are formed by a change in word ending called tihdanglamna; the resulting modified forms are called stem II in English-speaking linguistics literature.

Nouns

Mizo nouns undergo declension into cases.

Nouns are pluralised by suffixing -te, -ho, -teho or -hote.

Pronouns

All Mizo pronouns occur in two forms, namely in free form and clitic form and are declined into cases.

Negation

For declarative sentences, negation is achieved by adding the particle lo (not) at the end of a sentence:

Cardinal numbers

• (pa)khat, 'one'
• (pa)hnih, 'two'
• (pa)thum, 'three'
• (pa)li, 'four'
• (pa)ngá, 'five'
• (pa)ruk, 'six'
• (pa)sarih, 'seven'
• (pa)riat, 'eight'
• (pa)kua, 'nine'

• sàwm, 'ten'
• sàwmpakhat, 'eleven'
• sàwmpakua, 'nineteen'
• sawmhnih, 'twenty'
• sawmthum, 'thirty'
• sawmküa, 'ninety'
• zà, 'one hundred'

• zangá, 'five hundred'
• säng(khat), 'one thousand'
• sïng(khat), 'ten thousand'
• nûaih(khat), 'one hundred thousand'
• maktadûaih, 'one million'
• vaibelchhia, 'ten million'
• vaibelchhetak, 'one hundred million'
• tlûklehdingäwn, 'one billion'

Writing system

The Mizo alphabet is based on the Roman alphabet and has 25 letters. A written script for Lushai was created in 1874 by Thomas Herbert Lwein.

In its current form, it was devised by the first Christian missionaries of Mizoram, J. H. Lorrain and F. W. Savidge, based on the Hunterian system of transliteration.

A circumflex ^ was later added to the vowels to indicate long vowels, viz., Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û, which were insufficient to fully express Mizo tone. Recently, a leading newspaper in Mizoram, Vanglaini, the magazine Kristian Ṭhalai, and other publishers began using Á, À, Ä, É, È, Ë, Í, Ì, Ï, Ó, Ò, Ö, Ú, Ù, Ü to indicate the long intonations and tones. However, this does not differentiate the different intonations that short tones can have.

Sample texts

The following is a sample text in Mizo of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Mizo: Mi zawng zawng hi zalèna piang kan ni a, zahawmna leh dikna chanvoah intluk tláng vek kan ni. Chhia leh ṭha hriatna fím neia siam kan nih avangin kan mihring puite chungah inunauna thinlung kan pu tlat tur a ni.

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

Literature

Mizo has a thriving literature, which has both written and oral traditions. It has undergone a considerable change in the 20th century.

The Mizoram Press Information Bureau lists some twenty Mizo daily newspapers just in Aizawl city, as of March 2013.