Tone systems have developed independently in many daughter languages, largely by simplifications in the set of possible syllable-final and syllable-initial consonants. The glottal and glottalised consonants appear only in final position.Īs Mizo is a tonal language, differences in pitch and pitch contour can change the meanings of words.Mizo has the following consonants, with the first symbol being its orthographical form and the second one its representation in the IPA: uau, as in riau r uau, tiau t uau, s uau s uau.However, the vowels can be represented as follows: The vowel o has only three tones, all of them of the reduced type it has almost exactly the same sound as the diphthong /oʊ/ found in American English. The Mizo language 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 following few words suggest that Mizo and the Burmese are of the same family: kun ("to bend"), kam ("bank of a river"), kha ("bitter"), sam ("hair"), mei ("fire"), that ("to kill"), ni ("sun"), hnih ("two"), li ("four"), nga ("five") etc. References for the above table: Mizo and Burmese Tan-di/Hra-di('di' is suffix to denote 'to' here) Thǝuk (be worth, have certain value be lucky) The words given are cognates, whose origins could be traced back to the proto-language Proto-Sino-Tibetan (given in the first column of the table). The following table illustrates the similarity between Mizo and other members of the Sino-Tibetan family. The Kuki-Chin-Mizo languages (which native Mizo speakers call Zohnahthlâk ṭawngho/ Mizo ṭawngho) have a substantial number of words in common. The Mizo language is related to the other languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. However, this does not differentiate the different intonations that short tones can have. 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. F.W.Savidge based on Hunterian system of transliteration.Ī 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. In its current form, it was devised by the first Christian missionaries of Mizoram, Rev. The Mizo alphabet is based on the Roman script and has 25 letters, namely: to become the Mizo language and the lingua franca of the Mizo peoples due to its extensive and exclusive use by the Christian missionaries and the later young generation. The numerous clans of the Mizo had respective dialects, amongst which the Lusei dialect was the most common, and evolved with significant influenced from Hmar, Lai and Paite, etc. The Mizo language belongs to the Kuki-Chin-Mizo branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Mizo is the official language of Mizoram, along with English, and there have been efforts to have it included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. Many poetic languages are derived from Pawi, Paite, and Hmar, and most known ancient poems considered to be Mizo are actually in Pawi. Now, Mizo language or Mizo ṭawng is the lingua franca of Mizoram and its surrounding areas and to a lesser extent of Myanmar and Bangladesh and in India in some parts of Assam, Tripura and Manipur. The Mizo language is mainly based on Lusei dialect but it has also derived many words from its surrounding Mizo sub-tribes and sub-clan. The language is also known as Duhlian and Lushai, a colonial term, as the Duhlian people were the first among the Mizos to be encountered by the British in the course of their colonial expansion. The Mizo language, or Mizo ṭawng, is a Kuki-Chin-Mizo language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages, spoken natively by the Mizo people in the Mizoram state of India and Chin State in Myanmar. Mizo language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator