Mara (; , ; ) is a
Kuki-Chin language spoken by
Mara people, mostly the
Tlosai tribe living in 30 villages of
Chhimtuipui district, southern
Mizoram
Mizoram is a states and union territories of India, state in northeastern India, with Aizawl as its Capital city, capital and largest city. It shares 722-kilometres (449 miles) of international borders with Bangladesh to the west, and Myanmar t ...
, India and the adjacent villages in Myanmar (Burma).
The Mara (Tlosai) languages belong to the
Kuki-Chin branch of the
Sino-Tibetan language family
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a language family, family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European languages, Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan languag ...
. The speakers of the languages are also known as Mara (Tlosais).
Mara is a recognised language in the
Mara Autonomous District Council (MADC) school curriculum. Mara is a compulsory subject for all schools up to class VII (middle school) under the Board of School Education, MADC.
Written script
A written script for Mara was first created in 1852 by Captain S.R. Tickell.
Further scripts were invented in 1869 by Captain T.H. Lewin, in 1908 by Rev. F.W. Savidge and by R.A. Lorain.
Mara alphabet (capital letters)
A, AW, Y, B, CH, D, E, F, H, I, K, L, M, N, NG, O, Ô, P, R, S, T, U, V, Z
Mara alphabet (lowercase letters)
a, aw, y, b, ch, d, e, f, h, i, k, l, m, n, ng, o, ô, p, r, s, t, u, v, z
Mara diphthongs
ao, yu, ai, ei, ia, ie, ua
Grammar
Plurals
The plural form of a noun is formed by affixing one of the following terms to the end of the noun:
* ()
* ()
*
* ()
Today the Mara language has its own alphabet; words inside brackets show author N.E. Parry's transliterations from 1937.
Interrogative words in Mara
Pronouns
''Singular''
*1st person: , - I
*2nd person: , - you
*3rd person: , or ''-'' he, she, it
''Plural''
*1st person: - we
*2nd person: ''-'' you
*3rd person: - they
Possessive Pronouns
''Singular''
* - my
* - mine
* - thy (you)
* - thine (yours)
* - him, her, it
* - his, hers, its
''Plural''
* - our
* - ours
* - your
* - anyone
* - someone, a certain one
* - some . . . others
* - another, others
* - all
Phonology
Consonants
* A glottal stop
may occur in onsets as a result of morphological combinations.
* /t/ can be dental as
̪before /ɑ/ or /i/.
* /k/ can also be heard as uvular
before /ɑ/ or /i/.
* /s, z/ when preceding /i/ can be heard as alveolo-palatal
, ʑ
* Pre-aspiration can also be heard among nasals as
m, ʱn
Vowels
* Sounds /o/ and /ɑ̝/ can be heard in free variation as
, ɐʊand
References
External links
The Mara peopleMaraland: The Home of the Maras on the internet''A grammar and dictionary of the Lakher language''
by Fred W. Savidge (1908) (Scanned at Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
)
*Mara language o
Ethnologue
{{Authority control
Kuki-Chin languages
Languages of Mizoram
Endangered languages of India