HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

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 ...
of
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
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 ...
, where they represent the majority of its population. There are smaller communities in neighbouring Indian states, such as
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 ...
(),
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 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 branch of the Sino-Tibetan 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 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 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. In 1725 CE, Pamheiba wrote Parikshit, possibly the first piece of Meitei-language Hindu literature, based on the story of the eponymous king Parikshit of the Mahabharata.


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 as well as its
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 ...
. 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, Kohima, Peren and Phek. 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. 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 and Comilla 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
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 ...
, 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
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 ...
. ''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, Assam ( Dimasas and Assamese) and ''"Cassay"'' by the Shan people 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—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, 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 Government of Manipur, and has been an official language of India since 1992. Meitei language was the court language of the historic Manipur Kingdom, and before it merged into the Indian Republic. The
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, 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 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 in 1992. Meitei became an associate official language 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 ...
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. Meitei is taught as a subject up to the post-graduate level in Indian universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Gauhati University, 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 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 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 Sahitya Parishad (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 offers education up to the Ph.D. level in Meitei language.


Tripura

Since 1998, the Government of Tripura 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 Ministry of Education 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 Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. It has lexical resemblances to Kuki and Tangkhul.


Tone

The Meitei language is a tonal language. 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
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 ...
() 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 Government of Manipur, 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'', a poem of 39,000 verses composed by Hijam Anganghal Singh and first published in 1940 () is regarded as the national epic 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 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.


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
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 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 ...
in
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 ...
.


Software

In 2021, Rudali Huidrom, a Manipuri researcher of the EBMT/NLP laboratory, Waseda University,
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
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. ...
. It was crawled and collected from ''thesangaiexpress.com'' – the news website of " The Sangai Express", a daily newspaper of
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 ...
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
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 ...
.


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 ...
):


See also

* Meitei language in India ** Meitei language in Assam ** Meitei language in Tripura * Meitei language in Bangladesh * Meitei language in Myanmar *
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 ...
* List of languages by number of native speakers in India * List of Meitei poets * Meitei inscriptions * Meitei literature * Meitei Language Day * List of epics in Meitei language * List of Sahitya Akademi Award winners for Meitei * List of Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize winners for Meitei * List of Yuva Puraskar winners for Meitei * List of Bal Sahitya Puraskar winners for Meitei * Vikaspedia


Footnotes


References


Further reading

* 1. ''A Short History of Kangleipak (Manipur) Part-I'', by Chingtamlen, 2005 * 2. ''A Short History of Kangleipak (Manipur) Part-II'', by Chingtamlen, 2007 * 3. ''A Short History of Kangleipak (Manipur) Part-III'', by Chingtamlen, 2008 * 4. ''The Meetei and the Bishnupriya'', by Chingtamlen, 2008


Culture

* Brara, N. Vijaylakshmi. (1998). ''Politics, society, and cosmology in India's North East''. Delphi:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
. * Budha, W. (1992). ''Indigenous games of the Meiteis''. Manipur: Wangkeimayum Publications. * Kshetrimayum, Otojit. (2014). ''Ritual, Politics and Power in North East India: Contexualising the Lai Haraoba of Manipur''. Delhi: Ruby Press & Co. * Singh, M. Kirti. (1988). ''Religion and culture of Manipur''. Delhi: Manas Publications. * Singh, M. Kirti. (1993). ''Folk culture of Manipur''. Delhi: Manas Publications. * Singh, Saikhom Gopal. (2014). ''The Meeteis of Manipur: A Study in Human Geography''. Delhi: Ruby Press & Co.


Language

* Bhat, D. N. S.; & Ningomba, S. (1997). ''Manipuri grammar''. Munich: Lincom Europa. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1990). Experiencer subjects in Manipuri. In V. M. Manindra & K. P. Mohanan (Eds.), ''Experiencer subjects in South Asian languages'' (pp. 195–211). Stanford: The Center for the Study of Language and Information. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1992). Tone in Manipuri. In K. L. Adams & T. J. Hudak (Eds.), ''Papers from the first annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1991'' (pp. 65–85). Tempe, AZ:
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...
. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1992). Bracketing paradoxes in Manipuri. In M. Aronoff (Ed.), ''Morphology now'' (pp. 33–47). Albany:
State University of New York Press The State University of New York Press (more commonly referred to as the SUNY Press) is a university press affiliated with the State University of New York system. The press, which was founded in 1966, is located in Albany, New York and publishe ...
. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1994). Morphological change and fast speech phenomena in the Manipuri verb. In K. L. Adams & T. J. Hudak (Eds.), ''Papers from the second annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1992'' (pp. 121–134). Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1997). ''A grammar of Meitei''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. . * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). Early Meitei manuscripts. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), ''Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000'' (pp. 59–71). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). A glossary of 39 basic words in archaic and modern Meitei. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), ''Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000'' (pp. 189–190). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. * * * Singh, Ningthoukhongjam Khelchandra. (1964). ''Manipuri to Manipuri & English dictionary''.


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