The Tangkhulic and Tangkhul languages are a group of

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

spoken mostly in northeastern

Manipur Manipur () is a state in northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the international border with Myanmar, specifically t ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, 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 by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. Conventionally classified as "Naga," they are not clearly related to other

Naga languages The Naga languages are a geographic and ethnic grouping of Tibeto-Burman, spoken mostly by Naga peoples. Konyak languages, Northern Naga languages do not fall within the group, in spite of being spoken by Naga groups; instead, these form part ...

, and (with Maringic) are conservatively classified as an independent Tangkhul–Maring branch of Tibeto-Burman, pending further research. The Maringic languages appear to be closely related to the Tangkhulic family, but not part of it.

Languages

Tangkhulic languages include: * Tangkhul (Indian Tangkhul) * Somra (Burmese Tangkhul) * Akyaung Ari * Kachai * Huishu * Tusom * Suansu * Challow * Kongai The Tangkhulic languages are not particularly close to each other. Suansu, Challow, and Kongai were only documented starting from 2019. Brown's "Southern Tangkhul" ( Southern Luhupa?) is a Kuki-Chin rather than Tangkhulic language. It has strong links with the recently discovered Sorbung language, which is also not Tangkhulic despite being spoken by ethnic Tangkhul. some northern villages ( Chingjaroi, Jessami, Soraphung Razai) in Tangkhul area have language more closely related to the Angami-Pochuri language group.

Koki Koki may refer to: Places *Koki (village), a medieval aul in Ingushetia * Koki, Comoros, a village on the island of Anjouan in the Comoros * Koki, Senegal, a town in the Louga region of Senegal * Koki, Estonia, village in Lümanda Parish, Saare ...

, Long Phuri, Makuri, and Para are "Naga" languages spoken in and around Leshi Township, Myanmar. These four languages could possibly classify as Tangkhulic languages or

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 India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of cou ...

.Barkman, Tiffany. 2014
''A descriptive grammar of Jejara (Para Naga)''
MA thesis, Chiang Mai: Payap University.

Classification

Mortensen (2003:5) classifies the Tangkhulic languages as follows. *Tangkhulic **Northern: Huishu **North-Central: Champhung **East-Central ***Eastern **** Kachai **** Phadāng ***Central ****Standard Tangkhul ****

Ukhrul Ukhrul District( Tangkhul pronunciation:/ˈuːkˌɹəl or ˈuːkˌɹʊl/ is one of the hilly disctrict in the state of Manipur, India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries an ...

**Southern ***Brown's 'Central Tangkhul' ***South-Central **** Khangoi ****Brown's 'Northern Tangkhul'

Reconstruction

Proto-Tangkhulic, the reconstructed ancestral

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

of the Tangkhulic languages, has been reconstructed by Mortensen (2012).Mortensen, David R. 2012
''Database of Tangkhulic Languages''
(unpublished ms. contributed to STEDT). Mortensen (2003:5-7)Mortensen, David R. (2003). �
Comparative Tangkhul
” Unpublished Qualifying Paper, UC Berkeley. lists the following phonological innovations (

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

s) from Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) to Proto-Tangkhulic. * PTB *s- > *''th''-; PTB *ts-, *sy- > *''s''- *PTB *dz-, *dzy-, *tsy- > *''ts''- *PTB *ky-, *gy- > *''ʃ''- *PTB *kr-, *tsy- > *''c''- *Neutralization of vowel length distinctions in non-low vowels *Dissimilation of aspiration in prefixes Proto-Tangkhulic also has the nominalizing prefix *''kV''-. Proto-Tangkhulic lexical innovations are: * *war ‘mushroom’ (found exclusively in Tangkhulic) * *kɔ.phuŋ ‘mountain’ (found exclusively in Tangkhulic) * *kɔ.mi ‘to give’ (found exclusively in Tangkhulic) * *khaj ‘fish’ (also found in some Zeme and Angami languages) * *pan ‘hand’ (also found in some Zeme languages) * *pej ‘foot’ (also found in some Zeme and Angami languages)

References

*George van Driem (2001) ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill. *Mortensen, David R. and James A. Miller (2013). �
A reconstruction of Proto-Tangkhulic rhymes
” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 36(1): 1-32. *Mortensen, David R. (2012)
''Database of Tangkhulic Languages''
(unpublished ms. contributed to STEDT). *Mortensen, David R. (2003). �
Comparative Tangkhul
” Unpublished Qualifying Paper, UC Berkeley. *Mortensen, David. 2014
The Tangkhulic Tongues - How I Started Working on Endangered Languages
{{Languages of Northeast India Languages of India