Pangkhua (Pangkhu), or Paang, is a Kuki-Chin language primarily spoken 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 ...

and

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 ...

. Most speakers of Pangkhu are bilingual in Bengali or Mizo in the respective countries and most education in Pangkhu is conducted in that language. Since there is essentially no literature in Pangkhua, other than oral folk tales and songs, the Pangkhua community members use Lushai literature. There are minimal language differences between Pangkhua, Tlanglau,

Falam Chin Falam Chin (also known as Lai) is a Kuki-Chin language in Falam Township, Chin State, Myanmar, Falam Chin is closely related to most Central Chin languages, especially Hakha Chin. The Falam people are primarily Christian and have translated t ...

, Bawm and Mizo.

Dialects

The dialects of the two main communities that use Pangkhu, Bilaichari and Konglak, share 88% of their basic vocabulary. Residents of Pangkhua Para refer to their village as Dinthar (IPA: ; from Mizo ''d̪in'' 'stay' and Mizo and Pangkua ''t̪ʰar'' 'new')

Phonology

Pangkhu has twenty-one consonant phonemes: However, only unaspirated voiceless stops, /h/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and /l/ may occur at syllable coda. When stops occur in coda position, they are not audibly released. The glottal fricative /h/ may be deleted syllable-initially. There are also seven vowel phonemes: The vowel �serves as an allophone of /e/ and serves as an allophone of /u/. Vowel length contrasts occur only in closed syllables and diphthongs. There are 9 diphthongs, these being /ɑi/, /ɑu/, /ei/, /eu/, /əu/, /ou/, /iɑ/, /uɑ/, and /ui/. Diphthongs and long vowels are monophthongized following another syllable. The basic syllable structure of Pangkhu is (C)(L)V(X), with L being a lateral consonant and X being a coda consonant. There are two tones: a high tone and low tone.

Morphology

Derivational affixes

Diminutive and augmentative

Augmentative ''-pui'' and diminutive ''-te'' can be affixed to kinship terms in order to denote relative age or size.

Gender

The gender suffixes ''-pɑ'' and -''mɑ'' may derive a new referent from a root, as in ''lɑl'' 'monarch', ''lɑlpɑ'' 'king, and ''lɑlnu'' 'queen'.

Negation

Negation -ləu can be suffixed to a root to denote its opposite, as in ''dam'' 'healthy' and ''damləu'' 'sick'.

Noun forms

In Pangkhua, only human nouns can be marked for plurality and only animate marked for gender. Relator nouns share a function similar to adpositions in other languages.

References

Bibliography

External links

Endangered Languages Profile for Panghku
{{Languages of Northeast India Kuki-Chin languages Tibeto-Burman languages Kuki-Chin–Naga languages Languages of Bangladesh Languages of Mizoram