The Tedim or Zomi language is spoken mostly in

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 C. Wells, Joh ...

and

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 so ...

. In

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

(Khamtunggam), it is spoken in

Tedim Tedim (, , ( Zo: ''Tedim Khawpi'', pronounced ; is a town in and the administrative seat of Tedim Township, Chin State, in the north-western part of Burma. It is the second largest town in Chin State. The town's four major boroughs (''vengte'') a ...

and

Tonzang Tonzang(တွန်းဇန်) is a town, located in northern Chin State, western side of Myanmar. Tonzang is at about 37 miles north-eastern of Tedim town. The people who live in Tonzang are called Zo and Zomi. They speak Zo, Zomi and Burmese ...

townships, while in

Sagaing Division Sagaing Region ( my, စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းဒေသကြီး, ; formerly Sagaing Division) is an administrative region of Myanmar, located in the north-western part of the country between latitude 21° 30' north and lon ...

, it is spoken in

Kalay Kalay ( my, ကလေး), also known as Kale, is a town in the Sagaing Region of Myanmar. It is located upstream from Mandalay and Monywa on the Myittha River, a tributary of the Chindwin River. The town is the district headquarters of the Kalay ...

and

Mawlaik Mawlaik ( my, မော်လိုက် ; shn, မေႃႇလဵၵ်) is a town in Mawlaik District, Sagaing Region in north-west Myanmar, along the Chindwin River. Etymology " Mawlaik" derives from the Shan language The Shan language ...

townships (''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') 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 comprehensiv ...

''). Dialects are Sokte and Kamhau (also called Kamhao, Kamhow).

Clans

Sukte is a small Zomi clan. They generally live in the Tedim and Tonzang townships. "But there is no specific native language of Sukte. It is just a clan of Zomi." Zam Ngaih Cing (2011:170) lists some Zomi varieties as Losau, Sihzang, Teizang, Saizang, Dim, Khuano, Hualngo, Dim, Zou, Thado, Paite and

Vangteh Vangte or Vangteh is a large village in southern Tedim Township, Falam District, Chin State, in Myanmar. Vangteh is also the name of the village tract where Vangte lies. Name It is sometimes spelled as Wunkathe, probably a mispronunciation by B ...

History

Zomi language was the primary language spoken by

Pau Cin Hau Pau Cin Hau is the founder and the name of a religion followed by some Tedim, Hakha in Chin state and Kale in Sagaing division in the north-western part of Myanmar. Pau Cin Hau was born in the Tedim (Tiddim) in 1859; and lived until 1948. He sta ...

, a religious leader who lived from 1859 to 1948. He also devised a logographic and later simplified alphabetic script for writing materials in Zomi language.

Phonology

The phonology of Zomi language can be described as (C)V(V)(C)T order, where C represents a consonant, V represents a vowel, T represents a tone, and parentheses enclose optional constituents of a syllable. It is a subject-object verb language, and negation follows the verb.

Consonants

* Approximants

, w The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...

can be heard as allophones of vowels /i̯, u̯/ within diphthongs. * /x/ can also be heard as an aspirated velar stop ʰin free variation.

Vowels

* Sounds /ɛ, ɔ/ may have short allophones of more close

, o The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...

Tone

References

Kuki-Chin languages Languages of Mizoram Languages of Manipur {{Myanmar-stub