Meitei (; ) also known as Manipuri ), is a Tibeto-Burman language of

northeast India Northeast India, officially the North Eastern Region (NER), is the easternmost region of India representing both a geographic and political Administrative divisions of India, administrative division of the country. It comprises eight States and ...

. It is the official language and the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

Manipur Manipur () is a state in northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the international border with Myanmar, specifically t ...

and an additional official language in four districts of

Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...

. It is one of the constitutionally scheduled official languages of the Indian Republic. Meitei is the most widely-spoken Tibeto-Burman language of India and the third most widely spoken language of northeast India after Assamese and Bengali. There are million Meitei native speakers in India according to the 2011 census, million of whom are found in the state of

, where they represent the majority of its population. There are smaller communities in neighbouring Indian states, such as

(),

Tripura Tripura () is a States and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a populat ...

(),

Nagaland Nagaland () is a States and union territories of India, state in the northeast India, north-eastern 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 Naga Sel ...

(), and elsewhere in the country (). The language is also spoken by smaller groups in neighbouring

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

and

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

. Meitei and Gujarati jointly hold the third place among the fastest growing

languages of India Languages of India belong to several list of language families, language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indian people, Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both fami ...

, following

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and Kashmiri. Meitei is not

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

: its status has been assessed as safe by ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' 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 comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' (where it is assigned to EGIDS level 2 "provincial language"). However, it is considered vulnerable by UNESCO. The Manipuri language is associated with the Ningthouja dynasty ( Mangangs), the Khuman dynasty, the Moirangs, the Angoms, the Luwangs, the Chengleis ( Sarang-Leishangthems), and the Khaba-Nganbas. Each had their respective distinct dialects and were politically independent from one another. Later, all of them fell under the dominion of the Ningthouja dynasty, changing their status of being independent "ethnicities" into those of "clans" of the collective

Meitei community The Meitei people, also known as Meetei people,P.20: "historically, academically and conventionally Manipuri prominently refers to the Meetei people."P.24: "For the Meeteis, Manipuris comprise Meeteis, Lois, Kukis, Nagas and Pangal." are a Ti ...

. The Ningthouja dialect was predominant, and received heavy influences from the speech forms of the other groups. Meitei is one of the advanced literary languages recognised by

Sahitya Akademi The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of the Indian government. Its off ...

, India's National Academy of Letters.

Classification

Meitei belongs to 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 speak ...

branch of the

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

languages. During the 19th and 20th centuries, different linguists tried to assign Meitei to various sub-groups. Early classifier George Abraham Grierson (1903–1924) put it in Kuki-Chin, Vegelin and Voegelin (1965) in Kuki-Chin-Naga, and Benedict (1972) in Kuki-Naga. Robbins Burling has suggested that Meitei belongs to none those groups. Current academic consensus agrees with

James Matisoff James Alan Matisoff ( zh, , t=馬蒂索夫, s=马蒂索夫, p=Mǎdìsuǒfū or zh, , t=馬提索夫, s=马提索夫, p=Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is an American linguist. He is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Cal ...

in placing Manipuri in its own subdivision of the Kamarupan group—a geographic rather than a genetic grouping. However, some still consider Meitei to be a member of the Kuki-Chin-Naga branch.

History

The Meitei language has existed for at least 2000 years. According to linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the

ancient Meitei literature Ancient Meitei literature, also termed as Old Manipuri literature, is literature written in the Old Manipuri language from the earliest texts until the time of King . All the ancient Meitei literary works are written in the traditional Meitei ...

dates back to 1500 to 2000 years

before present Before Present (BP) or "years before present (YBP)" is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Because ...

First Millennium CE

The earliest known Meitei language compositions is the ritual song '' Ougri'' (), which was used in religious and coronation ceremonies of Kangleipak. It may have existed before the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the ...

. Numit Kappa , a religious epic that tells the tale of how the night was divided from the day, was also composed in the first century. '' Poireiton Khunthok'' is a 3rd-century narrative work describing the establishment of a colony in Kangleipak by a group of immigrants led by Poireiton, the younger brother of the god of the underworld. The ''Yumbanlol'', a copper plate manuscript was composed in the 6th century or 7th century CE for the royal family of Kangleipak. It is a rare work of dharmashastra, covering sexuality, the relationships between husbands and wives, and instructions on how to run a household. The ''Khencho'' (), an early Meitei work of poetry was composed by the beginning of the 7th century CE. Although it is obscure and unintelligible to present-day Meiteis, it is still recited as part of the

Lai Haraoba Lai Haraoba (, ), also known as Umang Lai Haraoba, is a classical,———— ritualistic, theatrical dance and music festival, annually celebrated by the Meitei people, to please the Umang Lai deities of the traditional Meitei religion (San ...

festival. One of the best-preserved early Meitei language epigraphic records is a copper plate inscription dating to the reign of King Khongtekcha (). During the same time period, Akoijam Tombi composed the '' Panthoibi Khonggul'' (), an account of the romantic adventures of the deified Meitei princess Panthoibi.

Second Millennium CE

In 1100 CE, a written constitution, , was finalised by King Loiyumba () of Kangleipak. It was a codification of the proto-constitution drafted by King Naophangba in 429 CE. Before 1675 CE, the Meitei language experienced no significant influence from any other languages. Beginning in the late 17th century, Hindu influence on Meitei culture increased, and the Meitei language experienced some influences from other languages, on its

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

morphology (linguistics) In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, wh ...

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

and

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

. At the same time, the Hinduised King Pamheiba ordered that the

Meitei script The Meitei script (), also known as the Kanglei script () or the Kok Sam Lai script (), after its first three letters is an abugida in the Brahmic scripts family used to write the Meitei language, the official language of Manipur, Assam an ...

be replaced by the Bengali-Assamese script. ANDRO INSCRIBED STONE

In 1725 CE, Pamheiba wrote

Parikshit Parīkṣit (, ) was a Kuru king who reigned during the Middle Vedic period (12th–9th centuries BCE). Along with his son and successor, Janamejaya, he played a decisive role in the consolidation of the Kuru state, the arrangement of Vedic ...

, possibly the first piece of Meitei-language Hindu literature, based on the story of the eponymous king

of the

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...

Geographical distribution

The majority of Meitei speakers, about 1.5 million live in the Indian state of Manupur. Meitei is the official language of the

Government of Manipur The Government of Manipur (; /mə.ni.pur lə́i.ŋak/), also known as the State Government of Manipur, or locally as State Government, is the supreme governing authority of the Indian state of Manipur and its 16 districts. It consists of an ex ...

as well as its

There are nearly 170,000 Meitei-speakers in Assam, mainly in the Barak Valley, where it is the third most commonly-used language after Bengali and Hindi. Manipuri is also spoken by about 9500 people in Nagaland, in communities such as

Dimapur Dimapur () is the largest city and municipality in the Indian state of Nagaland. As of 2024 , the municipality had a population of 172,000. The city is the main gateway and commercial centre of Nagaland. Located near the border with Assam along ...

Kohima Kohima (; Tenyidie: Kewhira ()) is the capital of the North East Indian state of Nagaland. With a resident population of almost 100,000, it is the second largest city in the state. Kohima constitutes both a district and a municipality. The m ...

, Peren and

Phek Phek () is a town located in the south-eastern part of the Indian state of Nagaland. It is the administrative seat of Phek District. Demographics According to the 2011 census, Phek town had a population of 14,204, of which 44% were female, an ...

. Meitei is a

second language A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which ...

for various Naga and Kuki-Chin ethnic groups. Sylhet in Bangladesh

There are around 15,000 Meitei speakers in Bangladesh mainly are in the districts of

Sylhet Sylhet (; ) is a Metropolis, metropolitan city in the north eastern region of Bangladesh. It serves as the administrative center for both the Sylhet District and the Sylhet Division. The city is situated on the banks of the Surma River and, as o ...

, Moulvibazar, Sunamganj and Habiganj in the

Sylhet Division Sylhet Division () is a northeastern Divisions of Bangladesh, division of Bangladesh, renowned for its lush tea gardens, rolling hills and vibrant cultural heritage. Covering an area of approximately 12,298 square kilometres, it is bordered by t ...

of Bangladesh. In the past, there was a Meitei speaking population in

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; , ), List of renamed places in Bangladesh, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital city, capital and list of cities and towns in Bangladesh, largest city of Bangladesh. It is one of the list of largest cities, largest and list o ...

Mymensingh Mymensingh () is a metropolis, metropolitan city and capital of Mymensingh Division, Bangladesh. Located on the bank of the Old Brahmaputra River, Brahmaputra River, about north of the national capital Dhaka, it is a major financial center ...

and

Comilla Comilla (), officially spelled Cumilla, is a metropolis on the banks of the Gomti River in eastern Bangladesh. Comilla was one of the cities of ancient Bengal. It was once the capital of Tripura kingdom. Comilla Airport is located in the Duli ...

also. Manipuri is used as a second language by the Bishnupriya Manipuri people. Myanmar has a significant Meitei speaking population in the states of Kachin and Shan and the regions of

Yangon Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Dev ...

Sagaing Sagaing (, ) is a town in the Sagaing Region of Myanmar. It is located on the Irrawaddy River, to the south-west of Mandalay on the opposite bank of the river. Sagaing, with its numerous Buddhist monasteries, is an important religious and ...

, and Ayeyarwady, among others.

Name

According to the

, the alternative names of Meitei language are ''Kathe, Kathi, Manipuri, Meetei, Meeteilon, Meiteilon, Meiteiron, Meithe, Meithei, Menipuri, Mitei, Mithe, Ponna''. The name ''Meitei'' or its alternate spelling ''Meithei'' is preferred by many native speakers of Meitei over ''Manipuri.''Chelliah (1997: 2) The term is derived from the Meitei word for the language ''Meitheirón'' (''Meithei'' + ''-lon'' 'language', pronounced ). ''Meithei'' may be a compound from ''mí'' 'man' + ''they'' 'separate'. This term is used by most Western linguistic scholarship. Meitei scholars use the term ''Meit(h)ei'' when writing in English and the term ''Meitheirón'' when writing in Meitei. Chelliah (2015: 89) notes that the ''Meitei'' spelling has replaced the earlier ''Meithei'' spelling. The language (and people) is also referred to by the loconym ''Manipuri.'' The term is derived from the name of the state of

. ''Manipuri'' is the official name of the language for the

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n government and is used by government institutions and non-Meitei authors. The term ''Manipuri'' is also used to refer to the different

languages of Manipur Manipur () is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India, northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the ...

and to the people. Additionally, ''Manipuri,'' being a loconym, can refer to anything pertaining to the Manipur state. Speakers of Meitei language are known as ''"Kathe"'' by the

Burmese people Burmese people or the Myanmar people () are citizens from Myanmar (Burma), irrespective of their ethnic or religious background. Myanmar is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country. The Burmese government officially recognises ...

, ''"Moglie"'' or ''"Mekhlee"'' by the people of

Cachar Cachar district is an administrative district in the state of Assam in India. After independence, the pre-existing undivided Cachar district was split into four districts: Dima Hasao (formerly North Cachar Hills), Hailakandi, Karimganj, and the ...

, Assam ( Dimasas and Assamese) and ''"Cassay"'' by the

Shan people The Shan people (, , or , ), also known as the Tai Long (တႆးလူင်, ) or Tai Yai, are a Tai ethnic group of Southeast Asia. The Shan are the biggest minority of Burma (Myanmar) and primarily live in the Shan State, but also inhabi ...

and the other peoples living in the east of the Ningthee River (or Khyendwen River). ''"Ponna"'' is the Burmese term used to refer to the Meiteis living inside

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

Dialects

The Meitei language exhibits a degree of regional variation; however, in recent years the broadening of communication, as well as intermarriage, has caused the

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

al differences to become relatively insignificant. The only exceptions to this occurrence are the speech differences of the dialects found in Tripura, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The exact number of dialects of Meitei is unknown. The three main dialects of Meitei are: Meitei proper, Loi and Pangal. Differences between these dialects are primarily characterised by the extensions of new sounds and tonal shifts. Meitei proper is considered to be the

standard variety A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features and that stands ...

—and is viewed as more dynamic than the other two dialects. The brief table below compares some words in these three dialects: Devi (2002)Devi, L. Manimala. 2002. A comparative study of Imphal, Andro, Koutruk and Kakching dialects of Meiteiron. (Doctoral dissertation, Canchipur: Manipur University; 273pp.) compares the

Imphal Imphal (; , ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Manipur. The metropolitan centre of the city contains the ruins of Kangla Palace (officially known as Kangla Fort), the royal seat of the former Kingdom of Manipur, surrounded by a ...

, Andro, Koutruk, and Kakching dialects of Meitei.

Status

Meitei is the sole

official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...

of the

, and has been an official language of India since 1992. Meitei language was the court language of the historic

Manipur Kingdom The Manipur Kingdom, also known as Meckley, was an ancient kingdom at the India–Burma frontier. Historically, Manipur was an independent kingdom ruled by a Ningthouja dynasty, Meitei dynasty. But it was also invaded and ruled over ...

, and before it merged into the Indian Republic. The

, India's National Academy of Letters, recognised Meitei as one of the major advanced Indian literary languages in 1972, long before it became an official language in 1992. In 1950, the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...

did not include Meitei in its list of 14 official languages. A language movement, spearheaded by organisations including the

Manipuri Sahitya Parishad The Manipuri Sahitya Parishad () is a literary council dedicated to the active promotion and the development of literary works in the Meitei language in India. in national as well as international levels. It has its branches in the Manupur citi ...

and the All Manipur Students' Union demanded that Meitei be made an official language for more than 40 years, until Meitei was finally added to the

Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India lists the languages officially recognized by the Government of India. , 22 languages have been classified under the schedule. Definition As per the Constitution of India, the provisions belongi ...

in 1992. Meitei became an associate official language of

in 2024, following several years of effort by the Meitei associate official language movement to protect the identity, history, culture and tradition of Manipuris in Assam. The Meitei language is one of the 13 official languages of the India used to administer police, armed services, and civil service recruitment exams. The

Press Information Bureau The Press Information Bureau, commonly abbreviated as PIB, is a nodal agency of the Government of India under Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Based in National Media Centre, New Delhi, Press Information Bureau disseminates informati ...

of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting publishes in 14 languages, including Meitei.

Education

Meitei is a language of instruction in all in the educational institutions in Manipur. It is one of the 40 instructional languages offered by the

Central Board of Secondary Education The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is a national-level board of education in India for public and private schools, controlled and managed by the Government of India. Established in 1929 by a resolution of the government, the Board ...

(CBSE), controlled and managed by the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

. Meitei is taught as a subject up to the post-graduate level in Indian universities, including

Jawaharlal Nehru University Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU; ISO: Javāharalāla Neharū Viśvavidyālaya) is a public research university located in Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university ...

Delhi University The Delhi University (DU, ISO 15919, ISO: ), also and officially known as the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate research university, research Central university (India), central university located in Delhi, India. It ...

Gauhati University Gauhati University also known as GU, is a collegiate public state university located in Guwahati, Assam, India. It was established on 26 January 1948 under the provisions of an Act enacted by the Assam Legislative Assembly and is the oldest un ...

, and the

University of North Bengal The University of North Bengal (also North Bengal University, abbreviated as NBU) is a public state university in the North Bengal region of West Bengal, India. Its main campus is located in Raja Rammohanpur, Siliguri, Darjeeling district, in ...

Indira Gandhi National Open University Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is a National university, public Open university (concept), open & Distance education, distance learning university located in Delhi, India. Named after the former Prime Minister of India, prime ...

teaches Meitei to undergraduates.

Assam

Meitei language instruction has been offered in the lower primary schools of Assam since 1956. The Board of Secondary Education, Assam offers secondary education in Manipuri. The

Assam Higher Secondary Education Council The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) was a state education regulatory board under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Education, Government of Assam that is responsible to regulate, supervise and develop the system of Higher Seconda ...

of Assam offers both Meitei-language schooling and instruction in Meitei as a second language. Since 2020, the Assam Government has made an annual grant of to the

(Manipuri Language Council). It also invested in the creation of a corpus for the development of the Meitei language. The Department of Manipuri of

Assam University Assam University is a central public university located at Silchar, Assam, India. It was founded in the year 1994 by the provisions of an act enacted by the Parliament of India. Former Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha is the Chancellor, the Gover ...

offers education up to the Ph.D. level in Meitei language.

Tripura

Since 1998, the

Government of Tripura The Government of Tripura, also known as the State Government of Tripura, or locally as State Government, is the supreme governing authority of the Indian state of Tripura and its 8 districts. It consists of an executive, led by the Governor ...

has offered Meitei language as a "first language" subject at primary level in 24 schools throughout the state. In December 2021, Tripura University proposed to the Indian

and the University Grants Council (UGC), regarding the introduction of diploma courses in Meitei, along with international languages like Japanese, Korean and Nepali.

Phonology

The exact classification of the Meitei language within

remains unclear. It has lexical resemblances to Kuki and Tangkhul.

Tone

The Meitei language is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...

. There is a controversy over whether there are two or three tones.

Segments

Meitei distinguishes the following

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

: Consonants Vowels Note: the central vowel /ɐ/ is transcribed as <ə> in recent linguistic work on Meitei. However, phonetically it is never � but more usually � It is assimilated to a following approximant: /ɐw/ = w /ɐj/ = j

Phonological processes

A velar deletion is noted to occur on the suffix -lək when following a syllable ending with a /k/ phoneme. Meitei has a dissimilatory process similar to

Grassmann's law Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an Aspiration (phonetics), aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant ...

found in Ancient Greek and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

, though occurring on the second aspirate. Here, an aspirated consonant is deaspirated if preceded by an aspirated consonant (including ) in the previous syllable. The deaspirated consonants are then voiced between sonorants.

Writing systems

Meitei script

The

() is one of the

official scripts of the Indian Republic There are several official scripts of India, which are either used officially by the Union government or by the state governments. The official languages of the Indian Union are Hindi and English, whereas the Devanagari script is used to write Hin ...

. Meitei mayek is also known as Kanglei script or kok sam lai script , after its first three letters. Its earliest known appearance is on 6th century coins. It was used until the 18th century, when it was replaced by the

Bengali script The Bengali script or Bangla alphabet (, Romanization of Bengali, romanized: ''Bāṅlā bôrṇômālā'') is the standard writing system used to write the Bengali language, and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. ...

, and then revived in again massively in the 20th. In 2021, the use of Meetei Mayek to write Manipuri was officially adopted by the

, alongside Bengali script. The Roman alphabet has been used in medium for teaching basic Meitei as a second language teaching by the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur. More recently, the Board has issued a directive that no more Manipuri textbooks using the Latin alphabet be published. Meitei language editions of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

in Roman script are very commonly used by the

Christians A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words '' Christ'' and ''C ...

in Manipur. The Naoriya Phulo script is a constructed script, invented by Laininghan Naoriya Phulo (1888–1941). It shares many similarities with

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

and Bengali script. It was championed by Apokpa Marup, but never widely adopted.

Grammar

Sentences in the Meitei language use the

subject–object–verb word order In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam apples ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as oppos ...

(SOV). For example, in the sentence ''Ei chak chai'' (ꯑꯩ ꯆꯥꯛ ꯆꯥꯢ), which translates to ''I eat rice'', the gloss is "ei" (I), "chak" (rice), "chai" (eat).

Nouns

Nouns and pronouns are marked for number in Meitei. The plural is indicated by the suffixes -khoi (for personal pronouns and human proper nouns) and -sing (for all other nouns). Verbs associated with the pluralised nouns are unaffected. Examples are demonstrated below: When adjectives are used to be more clear, Meitei utilises separate words and does not add a suffix to the noun. Examples are show in the chart below:

Compound verbs

Compound verbs are created by combining root verbs each ending with aspect markers. While the variety of suffixes is high, all compound verbs utilise one of two: Aspect markers appear as suffixes that clarify verb tense and appear at the end of the compound verb. Overall, the formula to construct a compound verb becomes oot verb+ uffix+ spect marker Compound verbs can also be formed utilising both compound suffixes as well, allowing utterances such as ''pithokningle'' meaning "want to give out".

Number words

Literature

The ''

Khamba Thoibi Sheireng The Khamba Thoibi Sheireng, also spelled as the Khamba Thoibi Seireng (), is a Classical Meitei language epic poem based on the ancient love story of Khuman prince Khamba and Moirang princess Thoibi of Ancient Moirang kingdom of Ancien ...

'', a poem of 39,000 verses composed by Hijam Anganghal Singh and first published in 1940 () is regarded as the

national epic A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks to or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group wi ...

of the Manipuris. It is a classical Meitei language

epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...

based on the ancient romantic adventure tale of

Khamba and Thoibi The ancient legend of Khamba and Thoibi () is a classic, as well as one of the epic cycles of incarnations of Meitei mythology and folklore, that is originated from Ancient Moirang kingdom of Ancient Kangleipak (early Manipur). It is referr ...

of Moirang. It is regarded as the greatest of all Meitei epic poems. The Meitei classical language movement seeks to gain recognition for Meitei as one of the

Classical Languages of India The Indian Classical languages, or the Śāstrīya Bhāṣā ''(Hindi)'' or the Dhrupadī Bhāṣā (''Assamese, Bengali'') or the Abhijāta Bhāṣā (''Marathi'') or the Cemmoḻi (''Tamil''), is an umbrella term for the languages of India ha ...

Annual events

Various annual events are organised to promote, protect and develop Meitei language, in the sovereign states of India and Bangladesh in particular as well as in other parts of the world in general. * Manipuri language day () is observed annually on 20 August, commemorating the day in 1992 when Manipuri was made one of the

official languages of India , 22 languages have been classified as scheduled languages under the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. There is no national language of India. While the constitution was adopted in 1950, article 343 declared that Hindi would be th ...

. * Manipuri poetry day (), is an annual literary event that promotes Meitei language poetry and the traditions of Meitei literature. Events are held in

and in and by Meitei-speakers in

Northeast India Northeast India, officially the North Eastern Region (NER), is the easternmost region of India representing both a geographic and political Administrative divisions of India, administrative division of the country. It comprises eight States and ...

and

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

. *The Manipuri Language Festival () is an annual cultural event that aims to protect and develop of the Meitei language, script and

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

Software

In 2021, Rudali Huidrom, a Manipuri researcher of the EBMT/NLP laboratory,

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, created a

text corpus In linguistics and natural language processing, a corpus (: corpora) or text corpus is a dataset, consisting of natively digital and older, digitalized, language resources, either annotated or unannotated. Annotated, they have been used in corp ...

named "EM Corpus" (shortened form of "Emalon Manipuri Corpus"). It is the first comparable text to text corpus built for Meitei language (mni) and English language (eng) pair from sentences. The writing system used for Meitei language in this corpus is

. It was crawled and collected from ''thesangaiexpress.com'' – the news website of " The Sangai Express", a daily newspaper of

from August 2020 to 2021. In version 1, she created the monolingual data, having 1,034,715 Meitei language sentences and 846,796 English language sentences. In version 2, she created the monolingual data, having 1,880,035 Meitei language sentences and 1,450,053 English language sentences. EM-ALBERT is the first ALBERT model available for Meitei language. EM-FT is also

FastText fastText is a library for learning of word embeddings and text classification created by Facebook's AI Research (FAIR) lab. The model allows one to create an unsupervised learning or supervised learning algorithm for obtaining vector representati ...

word embedding available for Meitei language. These resources were created by Rudali Huidrom and are now available at free of cost at the European Language Resources Association catalogue (ELRA catalogue) under CC-BY-NC-4.0 licence. On 11 May 2022,

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

added Meitei-language (under the name ''"Meiteilon (Manipuri)"'') during its addition of 24 new languages to the translation tool. The writing system used for Meitei language in this tool is

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Modern Meitei of the Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...

(by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Footnotes

References

External links

* ** * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Meitei Language Official languages of India Languages of Manipur Languages of Assam Languages of Tripura Languages of Bangladesh Languages of Myanmar Languages written in Latin script Languages written in Brahmic scripts Lingua francas Meitei culture Meitei literature Standard languages Subject–object–verb languages Tonal languages Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages