Konyak is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the

Konyak people The Konyaks are one of the major Naga ethnic groups. In Nagaland, they inhabit the Mon District, which is also known as ''The Land of the Anghs''. The ''Anghs''/''Wangs'' are their traditional chiefs whom they hold in high esteem. Facial tattoo ...

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...

, northeastern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Dialects

'' Ethnologue'' lists the following dialects of Konyak. Tableng is the standard dialect spoken in Wanching and Wakching.

Phonology

There are three lexically contrastive

contour tone A tone contour, or contour tone, is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khoi ...

s in Konyak – rising (marked in writing by an acute accent – á), falling (marked by a grave accent – à) and level (unmarked).

Vowels

The vowels , and are lengthened before

approximants Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...

. doesn't occur finally.

Consonants

The stops and contrast with the aspirated and . and become voiced intervocalically across

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

boundaries. The dental is realised as an alveolar if preceded by a vowel with a rising tone. The

and are pronounced laxer and shorter after vowels; becomes tenser initially before high vowels. If morpheme-initial or intervocalic, is pronounced with audible friction. , , , , , and do not occur morpheme-finally, while does not appear morpheme-initially. Except for morpheme-initial and , consonant clusters occur only medially.

Dialects

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

References

Bibliography

Further reading