Chungli Ao is the prestige dialect of Ao and it is a

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

language of northeast India. It is the most widely spoken of the

Ao languages The Ao or Central Naga languages are a small family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by various Naga peoples of Nagaland in northeast India. Conventionally classified as "Naga", they are not clearly related to other Naga languages, and are con ...

which also comprise Mongsen Ao and Changki. It is taught up to the tenth grade in schools of the

Mokokchung district Mokokchung District (Pron:/ˌməʊkɒkˈtʃʌŋ/) is a district of Nagaland state in India. The town of Mokokchung is its headquarters. The district is the home of the Ao Nagas. It is bounded by the state of Assam to its north, Wokha Distr ...

. It is also spoken by the Ao Nagas of

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked States and union territories of India, state in the northeast India, 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 ...

, a hill state in northeast India. Being the official language of religion, the dialect has a Bible translation and is used in church services as well as to make public announcements. A local Chungli newspaper is also published online. The number of speakers who reported Chungli Ao as their mother tongue are approximately 130,000 according to the 2011 census report of India. A phonological reconstruction of Proto-Central-Naga has been compiled by Daniel Bruhn
''A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Central Naga''

History

During the American Baptist Mission to Naga Hills, Edwin Winter Clark, Dr E.W. Clark first came in contact with the Molungkimong village that paved the way for a common Ao language. Chungli Ao is spoken in Molungkimong and Molungyimsen and other villages throughout Ao territory by roughly 50% of the Ao-speaking population. The speech of Molungkimong is the

prestige dialect Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.) Prestige may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Films * ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnett ...

due to

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christianity, Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe ...

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

' influence. Most Ao can speak Chungli even if they are from Mongsen-speaking regions. Chungli is taught in schools. Various trans-Dikhu neighbouring dialects of Chungli Ao are spoken east of the

Dikhu River Dikhuiyeh ( fa, ديخوييه, also Romanized as Dīkhū’īyeh and Dikhoo’yeh; also known as Deh Kūh, Dehkuye, Dehkūyeh, and Dīkhū) is a village in Khabar Rural District, in the Central District of Baft County Baft County ( fa, ش ...

in Yacham, Tengsa, and Longla. These are poorly documented; Yacham and Tengsa may be separate languages (van Driem 2001).

Numbers

Phonology

Chungli Ao is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

. There are three distinct tonal levels: low, mid and high. There is evidence to prove that low and mid as well as low and high are contrastive. Chungli also has two contour tones, which are high-low and low-mid, though they are quite rare.

Vowels

Consonants

Morphology

1) Chungli ao is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...

where the verbs lack person and number marking. For example: PREFIX – STEM -LEXICAL SUFFIX – DERIV. SUFFIX – INFLEC. SUFFIX me- NEG -maʔ ‘completely’ -tsɨʔ BEN -tsɨ IRR te- PROH -et ‘persistently’ -tep RECIP -əɹ PRES etc. etc. etc. This applies for both finite and non-finite forms of the verb. 2) The following table shows the case marking present in Chungli Ao.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chungli Ao Language Ao languages Languages of Nagaland