The Saihriem (Faihriem, Syriem) language is spoken by a mixture of the Saihriem/
Faihriem people- a sub tribe of Hmar group of tribes of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo and other ethnically closely related people such as the
Aimol,
Kuki,
Vaiphei, in four neighbouring villages (Noxatilla, Bagbahar, Balisor, Nagathol & Saihriemkhuo villages) around Dwarbond in Bojalenga Block of
Cachar District
Cachar district is an administrative districts of Assam, district in the state of Assam in India. After independence the undivided Cachar district was split into four districts in Assam: Dima Hasao district (formerly North Cachar Hills), Cacha ...
,
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 ...
.
It is critically endangered, with the people who still speak the language numbering a few hundreds only. It was recorded wrongly as Sairang in the ''Census of India, 1901'' and there were mere 71 speakers of the language at that time. It belongs to the
Kuki-Chin branch of the
Tibeto-Burman
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 spea ...
family of languages.
Basic vocabulary
Numbers
Names of weeks
References
*1999, Robin D. Tribhuwan, Preeti R. Tribhuwan, ''Tribal dances of India ( Encyclopaedic profile of Indian tribes, volume 1)'', page 117:
€¦21 clans. They are Biete, Changsan, Chawrai, Darngawn, Faihriem,
€¦and Zote. The past tradition suggests that each clan had a dialect of its own but nowadays a common dialect used by the Hmar people was developed by Christian missionaries
*1902, B.C. Allen, B.A., I.C.S., ''Census of India, 1901. Volume IV. Assam. Part I. Report.'' Print. Chapter VIII, page 90.
Kuki-Chin languages
Languages of Assam
Endangered languages of India
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