Falam Chin (also known as Lai) is a

Kuki-Chin language The Kuki-Chin languages (also called Kukish or South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages) are a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most not ...

Falam Township Falam Township () is the only township of Falam District in the Chin State of Myanmar. Its administrative seat is the town of Falam. The population, as of 2014, is 41,457 (male:20,350; female: 21,107). Out of this population, 9,092 live in Falam ...

Chin State Chin State (, ) is a state in western Myanmar. Chin State is bordered by Sagaing Division and Magway Division to the east, Rakhine State to the south, the Chattogram Division of Bangladesh to the west, and the Indian states of Mizoram to th ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

, Falam Chin is closely related to most Central Chin languages, especially Hakha Chin. The Falam people are primarily Christian and have translated the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

into Falam Chin.

Dialects

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' 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 comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' lists the following dialects of Falam: * Tlaisun (Shunkla, Sunkhla, Taishon, Tashom, Tashon) * Laizo (Laiso, Laizao, Laizo-Shimhrin) * Zahao (Lyen-Lyem, JaHau Yahow, Zahau, Zahau-Shimhrin, Za-How) * Sim Falam takes its name from a village, founded by the Tlaisun (in English, ) tribe, and Tashon was the original language spoken in Falam. Falam grew in population from the surrounding tribes from Sunthla (also ), Sim and Zahau (also ) that created a new language based on these three tribes, very different from the Tlaisun language. This language was later popularly known as ''Laizo''. Laizo was recorded as the first language used in the official radio broadcasting dialect of Chin in

Myanmar (Burma) Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. In order to be inclusive in Laizo, the name was later changed to Falam, although its official name is still Laizo. Rupini and Koloi are also quite different. The Chorei and Zanniat dialects (collectively known as ''Baro Halam'') may be considered separate languages. Tapong has lower intelligibility with other Falam Chin dialects, having 75%

lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

with Zanniat. Dialects once misleadingly called Southern Luhupa are actually Northern Kuki-Chin, and evidently Falam. ''Ethnologue'' reported the following speaker populations of Falam dialects in 1983: 9,000 Taisun, 16,000 Zanniat, 7,000 Khualsim, 4,000 Lente, 14,400 Zahau, 18,600 Laizo.

Phonology

The Falam language has five spoken vowels, but in writing, six are used. Of the five spoken, three of them, /u/, /a/, and /ɔ/ are spoke from the back of the mouth, /i/ is spoken from the top of the mouth, and /e/ is spoken from the middle. /ɔ/ can be pronounced as aw or o.

Writing system

A written script for Falam (Laizo) was created in 1924 by Rev. Dr. Herbert Cope. Falam Chin is written using the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a 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 Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, with the exception of the letters Q, Y, J and X. The consonants ''ṭ'' (t with dot), ''ng'' (Guttural sound), and ''aw'' vowel ( IPA [] or []) are frequently used in both Chin literature and speaking. This is a sample of written Falam Chin:

Dialects

Phonology

Writing system

References

Further reading