Tangkhul (Tangkhul Naga) is a
Sino-Tibetan language of the
Tangkhulic branch. It is spoken in 168 villages of
Ukhrul district,
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 ...
, India, with speakers scattered in
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
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 ...
as well.
Within
Ukhrul district,
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 ...
, Tangkhul is spoken in the villages of
Hundung,
Shiroi,
Langdang
Langdang is a village located north of Ukhrul in Ukhrul district, Manipur state, India. The village is 13 kilometers from Ukhrul. National Highway 150 Imphal-Kohima via Jessami passes through the village. The village is divided into two major par ...
,
Lamlang Gate
Lamlang ( fa, لاملنگ, also Romanized as Lāmlang; also known as Lālang) is a village in Anjirabad Rural District, in the Central District of Gorgan County, Golestan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran ...
,
Litan,
Yangangpokpi, and other locations (Arokianathan 1995).
Tangkhul is not close to other
Naga languages. It is a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
, in which speakers from neighboring villages may be able to understand each other, but a dialect farther north or south will be less easily understood, if at all. The ''
lingua franca'' is the Hunphun (
Ukhrul
Ukhrul/Hunphun ( Meitei pronunciation:/ˈuːkˌɹəl or ˈuːkˌɹʊl/) is a town in the state of Manipur, India. Ukhrul is the home of the Tangkhul Nagas. It is the administrative headquarter of the Ukhrul district. There are also four sub- ...
) dialect. Languages in the northern villages of
Chingjaroi,
Razai,
Jessami and Soraphung have languages under the
Angami–Pochuri group of languages.
The language
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 ...
spoken by the people of Hunphun (the traditional name of Ukhrul) became the most common dialect among the Tangkhuls because the British set up their administration in Ukhrul. The American Baptist missionary Rev.
William Pettigrew translated the Bible into the Hunphun dialect.
Phonology
Consonants
* Stop sounds /p t tʃ k/ may have voiced allophones
d dʒ ɡin free variation.
* /m/ may be heard as
when preceding /f/ or /ʋ/.
* /r/ can be heard as
or
in free variation.
Vowels
* /i e a u/ can have allophone sounds of
ɛ ɐ ɯin free variation.
References
{{Languages of Northeast India
Tangkhulic languages
Languages of Manipur
Languages of Nagaland