Kachari language
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Kachari is a
Sino-Tibetan language Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
of the Boro-Garo subgroup, spoken in
Assam, India 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 to ...
. With fewer than 60,000 speakers recorded in 1997, and the Asam 2001 Census reporting a literacy rate of 81% the Kachari language is currently ranked as threatened. Kachari is closely related to surrounding languages, including
Tiwa Tiwa and Tigua may refer to: * Tiwa Puebloans, an ethnic group of New Mexico, US * Tiwa (Lalung), an ethnic group of north-eastern India * Tiwa language (India), a Sino-Tibetan language of India * Tiwa languages, a group of Tanoan languages of the ...
, Rābhā, Hajong,
Kochi Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...
and
Mechi Mechi ( ne, मेची अञ्चल ) was one of the fourteen zones of Nepal until the restructuring of zones to provinces, comprising four districts; namely Ilam, Jhapa, Panchthar and Taplejung. Its headquarters are at Ilam. It comes und ...
. While there are still living adult speakers, many children are not learning Kachari as their primary language, instead being assimilated into the wider Assamese speaking communities. * Some alternative names are Boro, Bara, Cachari, Plains Kachari and Hill Kachari. * Geographic distribution: Kachari is spoken in 16 villages total in
North Cachar Hills district Dima Hasao district (), earlier called North Cachar Hills district, is an administrative district in the state of Assam, India. As of 2011, it is the least populous district of Assam. Dima Hasao district is one of the two autonomous hill distr ...
,
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 ...
, and Dimapur and Dhansiri administrative circles of
Kohima district Kohima District () is a List of districts of Nagaland, district of the Indian state of Nagaland. It is the home of the Angami Naga, Angami Naga people, Nagas. As of 2011, it is the second most populous district of Nagaland (out of then-List of d ...
,
Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the 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 Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...
.


Division

According to LSI, Kachari language was divided into Plain Kachari or Bårå(Boro) and Hill Kachari or Dimasa.


Phonology


Consonants

Kachari consists of the 13 consonants shown below and three Non-syllabics,(Frictional: h, frictionless palatal: y, frictionless rounded velar: w) :


Vowels


Prosody

* Tone ** Kachari is a tonal language, consisting of 4 tones high, mid, low and neutral (1, 2, 3, 0)


Grammar


''Syntax''


The word order of Kachari is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).

* Kachari uses many instances of "compound words" to denote meaning. For example, the word for "boy", is really the combination of the Kachari words for "male" and "child". This also correlates with Kachari verbs, which can be agglutinated to form "compound verbs". While Kachari is not polysynthetic, its verbs act as a stem for descriptive adjective, adverbs or affixes to change its meaning. For example, the "conjugation of the regular verb active, 'nu-nǔ.' to see" results in the following:


''Tense''


Future Tense

As can be seen from the chart above, the future tense is indicated with -gan, while -si- indicates that the future event will occur soon or in the near future. One example is "Bí faigan", he will come, as opposed to "Bí faisigan", he will come (almost at once) or he is about to come. Present Tense Present tense is shown through three affixes, "ǔ", "dong" and "gô". The first two forms represent indefinite and definite forms and are far more common that "gô", which is frequently only used to answer questions in the affirmative.


Adjectives

Most
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s can be added both before or after the noun it is describing, though it gains the case ending if it follows the noun, rather than precedes it. This follows the identification of as a strongly suffixing language. However, this classification goes against Konwar's description of Kachari and a related language, Karbi, as primarily prefixing to create adjectives. Numerical adjectives are always inserted after the noun it is describing. For example, "ten goats" is "Burmá má-zǔ" with "Burmá" meaning goat, "má" being the classifier for "animal" and the number ten being "zǔ".


''Morphology''

Gender - Common nouns such as father, mother, brother or sister have distinct masculine and feminine words while other nouns including animals, will typically have the words for male and female, -jelá and -jeu respectively, added on as a suffix to denote gender. Other common masculine and feminine suffix forms that may be used include -zǎlá/-zǔ, -bundā/-bundi, -bóndá/-bóndi, -phántá/-phánti and -pherá/-pheri.


Number System

Kachari has a decimal system and counts to 10 with unique words, after which the number words combine to add to the larger number as shown in the chart below.


References


Bibliography

* * *Joseph, U.V., and Burling, Robbins. 2006. ''Comparative phonology of the Boro Garo languages''. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages Publication. *Wood, Daniel Cody. 2008
''An Initial Reconstruction of Proto-Boro-Garo''
M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon. {{Languages of Northeast India Sal languages Languages of Assam Subject–object–verb languages