Meitei (), also known as Manipuri (, ), is a

Tibeto-Burman language The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spe ...

of north-eastern India. It is spoken by around 1.8 million people, predominantly in the state of

Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a States and territories of India, state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It ...

, but also by smaller communities in the rest of the country and in parts of neighbouring

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million pe ...

. It is native to the

Meitei people The Meitei people, also known as the Manipuri people,P.20: "historically, academically and conventionally Manipuri prominently refers to the Meetei people."P.24: "For the Meeteis, Manipuris comprise Meeteis, Lois, Kukis, Nagas and Pangal." is ...

, and within Manipur it serves as an official language and a lingua franca. It was used as a court language in the historic

Manipur Kingdom The Manipur Kingdom was an ancient independent kingdom at the India–Burma frontier that was in subsidiary alliance with British India from 1824, and became a princely state in 1891. It bordered Assam Province in the west and Britis ...

and is presently included among the 22 scheduled languages of India. Meitei is a tonal language whose exact classification within Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. It has lexical resemblances to Kuki and Tangkhul. Meitei is the most widely spoken Indian Sino-Tibetan language and the most spoken language in northeast India after

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the ...

and

Assamese Assamese may refer to: * Assamese people, a socio-ethnolinguistic identity of north-eastern India * People of Assam, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious people of Assam * Assamese language, one of the easternmost Indo-Aryan language ...

. There are million Meitei speakers in India according to the 2011 census. The majority of these, or million, are found in the state of

, where they represent just over half of its population. There are smaller communities in the Indian states of

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 ...

(),

Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the eas ...

(),

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 ...

(), and elsewhere in the country (). Additionally, there are around 200,000 L2 speakers. The language is also spoken by smaller groups in neighbouring

and

. Meitei is not

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...

: its status has been assessed as safe in '' Ethnologue'' (where it is assigned to EGIDS level 2 "provincial language"), but is considered

vulnerable Vulnerable may refer to: General * Vulnerability * Vulnerability (computing) * Vulnerable adult * Vulnerable species Music Albums * ''Vulnerable'' (Marvin Gaye album), 1997 * ''Vulnerable'' (Tricky album), 2003 * ''Vulnerable'' (The Used album) ...

in UNESCO's ''

Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger The UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' is an online publication containing a comprehensive list of the world's endangered languages. It originally replaced the ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' as a title in print after ...

''.

Name

The name ''Meitei'' or its alternate spelling ''Meithei'' is preferred by many native speakers of Meitei over ''Manipuri.''Chelliah (1997: 2) The term is derived from the Meitei word for the language ''Meitheirón'' (''Meithei'' + ''-lon'' 'language', pronounced ). ''Meithei'' may be a compound from ''mí'' 'man' + ''they'' 'separate'. This term is used by most Western linguistic scholarship. Meitei scholars use the term ''Meit(h)ei'' when writing in English and the term ''Meitheirón'' when writing in Meitei. Chelliah (2015: 89) notes that the ''Meitei'' spelling has replaced the earlier ''Meithei'' spelling. The language (and people) is also referred to by the loconym ''Manipuri.'' The term is derived from name of the state of

. ''Manipuri'' is the official name of the language for the

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

n government and is used by government institutions and non-Meitei authors. The term ''Manipuri'' is also used to refer to the different

languages of Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of ...

and people. Additionally, ''Manipuri,'' being a loconym, can refer to anything pertaining to Manipur state. The term ''Meetei'' is used by Meitei speakers who want political autonomy from

, so-called "revivalists". Speakers of Meitei language are known as ''"Kathe"'' by the

Burmese people Burmese people or Myanma people ( my, မြန်မာလူမျိုး) are citizens or people from Myanmar (Burma), irrespective of their ethnic or religious background. Myanmar is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual coun ...

, ''"Moglie"'' or ''"Mekhlee"'' by the people of Cachar, Assam ( Kacharis and

) and ''"Cassay"'' by the

Shan people The Shan people ( shn, တႆး; , my, ရှမ်းလူမျိုး; ), also known as the Tai Long, or Tai Yai are a Tai ethnic group of Southeast Asia. The Shan are the biggest minority of Burma (Myanmar) and primarily live in t ...

and the other people living in the east of the

Ningthee River , , image = Homalin aerial.jpg , image_size = , image_caption = The Chindwin at Homalin. The smaller, meandering Uyu River can be seen joining the Chindwin. , map = Irrawaddyrivermap.jpg , map_size = , map_alt = , map_caption ...

(or Khyendwen River). ''"Ponna"'' is the Burmese term used to refer to the Meiteis living inside

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

Dialects

The Meitei language exhibits a degree of regional variation; however, in recent years the broadening of communication, as well as intermarriage, has caused the

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...

al differences to become relatively insignificant. The only exceptions to this occurrence are the speech differences of the dialects found in Tripura, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The exact number of dialects of Meitei is unknown. The three main dialects of Meitei are: Meitei proper, Loi and Pangal. Differences between these dialects are primarily characterised by the extensions of new sounds and tonal shifts. Meitei proper is considered to be the

standard variety A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...

—and is viewed as more dynamic than the other two dialects. The brief table below compares some words in these three dialects: Devi (2002)Devi, L. Manimala. 2002. A comparative study of Imphal, Andro, Koutruk and Kakching dialects of Meiteiron. (Doctoral dissertation, Canchipur: Manipur University; 273pp.) compares the

Imphal Imphal ( Meitei pronunciation: /im.pʰal/; English pronunciation: ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Manipur. The metropolitan centre of the city contains the ruins of Kangla Palace (also known as Kangla Fort), the royal seat of the ...

, Andro, Koutruk, and

Kakching ) , native_name_lang = mni , other_name = , settlement_type = town , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , nickname = , pushpin_map ...

dialects of Meitei.

Status

Meitei is the sole

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

of the Government of Manipur. It is used for all official purposes, except for some interstate cases. Meitei is included among the languages that stand apart of the

Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India lists the official languages of the Republic of India. At the time when the Constitution was enacted, inclusion in this list meant that the language was entitled to representation on the Officia ...

, thus granting it the status of a "scheduled language". It was the court language of the historic

(Meeteileipak), and was declared as such in the kingdom's 1947 Constitution, before it merged into the Indian Republic. Meitei was recognised by the National

Sahitya Akademi The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...

as one of the major Indian languages in 1972. The Meitei language has been recognised (under the name ''Manipuri'') by the Indian Union and was included in the list of scheduled languages (included in the 8th schedule by the 71st amendment of the constitution in 1992). It has been recognised by the National

Sahitya Academy The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...

for its rich literary traditions. Besides being a medium of instructions in the educational institutions in Manipur, it is taught as a subject up to the post-graduate level (Ph.D.) in major universities of India, including

Jawaharlal Nehru University Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a public major research university located in New Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university is known for leading faculties and r ...

Delhi University Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate Central university (India), central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and ...

, Gauhati University, and

University of North Bengal University of North Bengal (abbreviated as NBU) is a public state collegiate major research university in North Bengal region of West Bengal, which is located in Raja Rammohanpur, Siliguri, Darjeeling district, in the Indian state of West ...

. In the modern era, several Meitei language movements have been in existence, including the '' linguistic purism movement, scheduled language movement, classical language movement, associate official language movement''. There is a proposal for the language to be granted the elite status of "

Classical Languages of India Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians, both families together are sometimes kno ...

". Besides, it is also proposed to be recognised as an ''"associate official language"'' of the Government of Assam. According to

Leishemba Sanajaoba Maharaja Leishemba Sanajaoba is the current titular king of Manipur, India, and a politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party from Manipur. In 2020, he was elected as the member of Rajya Sabha from Manipur. Debates on bills Leish ...

, the present titular king of

and a

Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha A Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (abbreviated: MP) is the representative of the Indian states to the one of the two houses of the Parliament of India (Rajya Sabha). Rajya Sabha MPs are elected by the electoral college of the elected ...

from Manipur state, by recognising Meitei as an ''associate official language'' of

, the identity, history, culture and tradition of Manipuris residing in Assam could be able to get protected and preserved.

Phonology

Tone

The Meitei language 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 is a controversy over whether there are two or three tones.

Segments

Meitei distinguishes the following

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

: Consonants Vowels Note: the central vowel /ɐ/ is transcribed as <ə> in recent linguistic work on Meitei. However, phonetically it is never � but more usually � It is assimilated to a following approximant: /ɐw/ = /ow/, /ɐj/ = j

Phonological processes

A velar deletion is noted to occur on the suffix -lək when following a syllable ending with a /k/ phoneme. Meitei has a

dissimilatory In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and / ...

process similar to Grassmann's law found in Ancient Greek and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

, though occurring on the second aspirate. Here, an aspirated consonant is deaspirated if preceded by an aspirated consonant (including ) in the previous syllable. The deaspirated consonants are then voiced between sonorants.

Writing systems

Meitei script

Meitei has its own script, which was used until the 18th century. Its earliest use is not known.

Pamheiba Gharib Nawaz (born Pamheiba, 1690–1751) was a Meetei king of Manipur, ruling from c. 1709 until his death. He introduced Hinduism as the state religion of his kingdom (1717) and changed the name of the kingdom to the Sanskrit ''Manipur'' (17 ...

, the ruler of the

who introduced

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or ''dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global po ...

, banned the use of the Meitei script and adopted the Bengali script. Now in schools and colleges, the Bengali script is gradually being replaced by the Meitei script. The local organisations have played a major role in spreading awareness about their own script. Many Meitei documents were destroyed at the beginning of the 18th century during the reign of Hindu converted King Pamheiba, under the instigation of the Bengali Hindu missionary, Shantidas Gosai. Between 1709 and the middle of the 20th century, the Meitei language was written using the

script. During the 1940s and 1950s, Meitei scholars began campaigning to bring back the Old Meitei (Old Manipuri) alphabet. In 1976 at a writers conference, all the scholars finally agreed on a new version of the alphabet containing a number of additional letters to represent sounds not present in Meitei when the script was first developed. The current Meitei alphabet is a reconstruction of the ancient Meitei script. Since the early 1980s, the Meitei alphabet has been taught in schools in

It is a syllabic alphabet in which consonants all have an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are written as independent letters or by using diacritical marks that are written above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to. Each letter is named after a part of the human body.

Latin script

There exists an informal, but fairly consistent practical spelling of Meitei in Latin script. This spelling is used in the transcription of personal names and place names, and it is extensively used on the internet (Facebook, blogspots, etc.). It is also found in academic publications, for the spelling of Meitei book titles and the like (examples can be seen in the References, below). This spelling, on the whole, offers a transparent, unambiguous representation of the Meitei sound system, although the tones are usually not marked. It is practical in the sense that it does not use extra-alphabetical symbols, and can, therefore, be produced easily on any standard keyboard. The only point of ambiguity is found in the spelling of the vowels /ɐ/ and /a/, which are usually both written "a", except when they occur before an approximant (see table below). The vowel /a/ is sometimes written as "aa" to distinguish it from /ɐ/.

Bengali script

Meitei language in Bangladesh and India currently use the Bengali script, alongside the Meitei script.

Grammar

Sentences in the Meitei language use the format Subject + Object + Verb (SOV). For example, in the sentence ''Ei chak chai'' (ꯑꯩ ꯆꯥꯛ ꯆꯥꯢ), which translates to ''I eat rice'', the gloss is "ei" (I), "chak" (rice), "chai" (eat).

Number agreement

Agreement in nouns and pronouns is expressed to clarify singular and plural cases through the addition of the suffixes -khoi (for personal pronouns and human proper nouns) and -sing (for all other nouns). Verbs associated with the pluralised nouns are unaffected. Examples are demonstrated below: When adjectives are used to be more clear, Meitei utilises separate words and does not add a suffix to the noun. Examples are show in the chart below:

Compound verbs

Compound verbs are created by combining root verbs each ending with aspect markers. While the variety of suffixes is high, all compound verbs utilise one of two: Aspect markers appear as suffixes that clarify verb tense and appear at the end of the compound verb. Overall, the formula to construct a compound verb becomes oot verb+ uffix+

spect marker Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT, or less commonly, SPET) is a nuclear medicine tomographic imaging technique using gamma rays. It is very similar to conventional nuclear medicine planar imaging using a gamma camera (that is, ...

Compound verbs can also be formed utilising both compound suffixes as well, allowing utterances such as ''pithokningle'' meaning "want to give out".

Number words

Literature

Linguistic tradition

The culture involved with the Meitei language is rooted deeply with pride and tradition based on having respect to the community elders. Young children who do not know about the tales that have been passed on from generation to generation are very rare. Regarding the history behind the ancient use of

proverb A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbial ...

s that defines the way conversation is held with the Meitei language, it is a way of expressing and telling stories and even using modern slang with old proverbs to communicate between one another. The Meitei language had its own script. The history behind the Meitei language itself comes primarily from the ancient period of northeastern India.

Literary Awards

Media

All the Meitei newspapers will be using the Meitei script instead of the Bengali script from , according to a joint meeting consensus of the ''"Meetei Erol Eyek Loinasillol Apunba Lup"'' (MEELAL), ''"All Manipur Working Journalists’ Union"'' (AMWJU) and ''"Editors' Guild Manipur"'' (EGM) in

Language Day

The ''

Meitei Language Day ) , type = cultural , image = "Meitei Language Day" alias "Manipuri Language Day" written in Meitei script and Latin script.jpg , imagesize = 300px , caption = Meitei translation of "Meitei Language Day" written in ...

'' (Meitei Longi Numit; /mei-tei lon-gee noo-meet/), also known as the ''

Manipuri Language Day ) , type = cultural , image = "Meitei Language Day" alias "Manipuri Language Day" written in Meitei script and Latin script.jpg , imagesize = 300px , caption = Meitei translation of "Meitei Language Day" written in ...

'' (Manipuri Longi Numit; /ma-nee-poo-ree lon-gee noo-meet/), is observed on 20 August every year, in memory of the day on which the language was included in the

and made one of the

languages with official status in India There is no national language in India. However, article 343(1) of the Indian constitution specifically mentions that, "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official ...

on 20 August 1992.

Software

In 2021, Rudali Huidrom, a Manipuri researcher of the EBMT/NLP laboratory,

Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...

, Japan, created a

text corpus In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical ...

named "EM Corpus" (shortened form of "Emalon Manipuri Corpus"). It is the first comparable text to text corpus built for Meitei language (mni) and English language (eng) pair from sentences. The writing system used for Meitei language in this corpus is Bengali script. It was crawled and collected from ''thesangaiexpress.com'' - the news website of "The Sangai Express", a daily newspaper of

from August 2020 to 2021. In version 1, she created the monolingual data, having 1,034,715 Meitei language sentences and 846,796 English language sentences. In version 2, she created the monolingual data, having 1,880,035 Meitei language sentences and 1,450,053 English language sentences. EM-ALBERT is the first ALBERT model available for Meitei language. EM-FT is also FastText word embedding available for Meitei language. These resources were created by Rudali Huidrom and are now available at free of cost at the European Language Resources Association catalogue (ELRA catalogue) under CC-BY-NC-4.0 license. On 11 May 2022,

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an A ...

added Meitei-language (under the name ''"Meiteilon (Manipuri)"'') during its addition of 24 new languages to the translation tool. The writing system used for Meitei language in this tool is Meitei script.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Modern Meitei of the Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...

(by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

Footnotes

References

External links

* ** * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Meitei Language Official languages of India Formal languages used for Indian scriptures Languages of Manipur Languages of Assam Languages of Tripura Languages of Nagaland Languages of Bangladesh Languages of Myanmar Languages with own distinct writing systems Languages written in Latin script Languages officially written in Indic scripts Lingua francas Meitei culture Meitei literature Sahitya Akademi recognised languages Standard languages Subject–object–verb languages Tonal languages Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages