Khiamniungan 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. ...

spoken by the

Khiamniungan people Khiamniungan is a major Naga ethnic group, with approximately 35% of the population found in Noklak District of Nagaland, India and the rest in Naga Self Administered Zone and Hkhamti district of Myanmar. They were also called Kalyo-Kengnyu ("sl ...

in east-central

Noklak District Noklak District is the 12th district of the Indian state of Nagaland. It was established on January 20, 2021. The district headquarter is located in the town of Noklak. History Noklak district was created on 21 December 2017 as the 12th distr ...

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 ...

in northeastern India and in northwestern Burma. Most of the Khiamniungans in India are known to Pathso-Nyu which remains the main language within their geographical region.

Names

Alternate names for Khiamniungan include Aoshedd, Khiamnga, Kalyokengnyu, Khiamngan, Khiamniungan, Nokaw, Tukhemmi, and Welam (''Ethnologue'').

Distribution and status

There are approximately 50,000 speakers of Khiamniungan. There are an estimated 29 Khiamniungan villages in India and 132 in Burma. "Khiamniungan" is the

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

for the language, which means "the source of water" or "water people", whereas ''Kalyokengnyu'' is an

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

meaning "dwelling in stone", given to the group by European anthropologists after the slate roof houses the people lived in. The low number of speakers of Khiamniugan makes it vulnerable, but it is taught in schools and supported by the government through cultural programs.

Writing system

Like most languages spoken in Nagaland, Khiamniungan is written in a

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

, due to the early Christian missionary presence in the region.

History of scholarship

Most of the information of Khiamniungan comes from its inclusion in studies of the Naga or

Konyak languages The Konyak languages, or alternatively the Konyakian or Northern Naga languages, is a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by various Naga peoples in southeastern Arunachal Pradesh and northeastern Nagaland states of northeastern India. They ...

by the

Central Institute for Indian Languages The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) is an Indian research and teaching institute based in Mysuru, part of the Language Bureau of the Ministry of Education. It was founded on 17 July 1969. Centres The Central Institute of Indian Lan ...

in Mysore. There is also a Khiamniungan vocabulary published in 1974 by Nagaland Bhasha-Parishad.Kumāra, B. Bihārī. (1975). Hindi khiyamanna Angreji sabda-suci = Hindi Khiamngan English Vocabulary. Kohima: Nagaland Bhasha Parishad

References

External links

Khiamniungan Naga at the Endangered Languages Project
{{Languages of Northeast India Languages of Myanmar Languages of Nagaland Sal languages Endangered languages of India Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages