Lyngngam is an

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

language of

Northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...

closely related to

Khasi language Khasi () is an Austroasiatic language with just over a million speakers in north-east India, primarily the Khasi people in the state of Meghalaya. It has associate official status in some districts of this state. The closest relatives of Khas ...

. Once listed as a dialect of

Khasi Khasi may refer to: * Khasi people, an ethnic group of Meghalaya, India * Khasi language, a major Austroasiatic language spoken in Meghalaya, India * Khāṣi language, an Indo-Aryan language of Jammu and Kashmir, India See also * Khasi Hills * ...

, Lyngngam has in recent literature been classified as a distinct language. Lyngngam speakers have food and dress similar to the neighboring

Garo people The Garo is a Tibeto-Burman ethnic tribal group from the Indian subcontinent, living mostly in the Indian states of Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, and Nagaland, and in neighbouring areas of Bangladesh, including Madhupur, Mymensingh, Haluagh ...

Phonology

Consonant inventory

The following table lists the consonants attested in Lyngngam. : The main difference with the Khasi language is that Lyngngam does not possess the voiced aspirated series. Furthermore, Lyngngam does not have the phoneme . Words which have in Khasi typically have or in Lyngngam, as in the following pairs of

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ef ...

s: :

Vowel inventory

The following table lists the vowel inventory of the language. The only vowels showing a length distinction are and , in contradistinction to Khasi, where length is distinctive for all vowels. : Words with diphthongs in Khasi have monophthongs in Lyngngam, as in the following pairs of cognates: :

References

* {{Hill tribes of Northeast India Khasian languages Languages of India Languages of Meghalaya