Wancho is a Konyak language of north-eastern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

. Wancho is spoken in 36 villages of southeastern

Longding district Longding district (Pron:/lɒŋˈdɪŋ/) is one of the 20 administrative districts of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. It was carved out of the south-western portion of the Tirap District. The district shares its boundary to the south and ...

, Tirap district,

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...

, as well as in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

and

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 ...

(''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

''). Alternate names include Banpara Naga, Joboka, Jokoba.

People

Wancho is spoken by the Wancho people who have a population of 56,866 according to a 2011 consensus, and mainly populate the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Although a minority, these inhabitants have a rich culture with rituals, ceremonial practices, religion, and various dialects of Wancho. Shukla Wancho Ngun

Dialects

'' lists the following dialects of Wancho. *Changnoi *Bor Muthun (Bor Mutonia) *Horu Muthun *Kulung Muthun (Mithan) There is significant variation among the dialects spoken in the upper and lower regions.

Orthography

Wancho is generally written in either

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

. Between 2001 and 2012, teacher Banwang Losu devised a unique alphabetic Wancho script which is taught in some schools. In 2019, the script was officially published into

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

12.0.

References

*Robbins Burling & Mankai Wangsu (1998
"Wancho Phonology and word list"
''Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area'' 21.2. Languages of Assam Languages of Arunachal Pradesh Languages of Nagaland Sal languages Endangered languages of India {{st-lang-stub