Wui (autonym: ''tʰa³³wɛ⁵² ma³³lan⁵²'', lit. 'crab language') is a

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 ...

language spoken in Wui village,

Noklak District Noklak District is the 12th List of districts of Nagaland, district of the Indian state of Nagaland.The district is the home of the Khiamniungan Nagas, Noklak, the eponymous town, is the headquarters of the district. History Noklak district wa ...

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 ...

, India (). There are just under 1,000 speakers.

Background

Wui is spoken in the single village of Wui, which has about 150 houses. Wui village is situated 10 km west of the India-Myanmar border on the Patsho Range in eastern

. It is estimated that there are less than 1,000 speakers. Nearby languages include Tikhir (Aoic) and various Khiamniunganic (Konyakian) varieties. Wui speakers consider themselves to be an ethnic subgroup of the Khiamniungan people and also speak

Patsho Khiamniungan Patsho Khiamniungan is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Noklak district in the state of Nagaland, India. Alphabet The Patsho Khiamniungan alphabet consists of the following letters: Patsho Range Students' Union (2023): Patsho Khiamniungan ...

. Many Wui people are fluent in Nagamese.

Classification

Due to its divergent lexicon and typological features, the classification of Wui is uncertain. Coupe (2023) suggests a divergent Central Naga affiliation. However, Wui lacks rhotics, which are characteristic of most Central Naga languages.

Phonology

The phonological inventory of Wui is as follows. There are three phonemic tones in Wui, which are: *high level /55/ *mid level /33/ *high falling /52/

Pronouns

Wui personal pronouns are as follows.

Lexicon

Below are some

Swadesh list A Swadesh list () is a compilation of cultural universal, tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. That is, a Swadesh list is a list of forms and concepts which all languages, without exception, have terms for, such as ...

items for Wui as provided in Coupe (2023).Coupe, Alexander R. (2023). "Swadesh 100 list comparisons – Wui v. Aoic & Patsho Khiamniungan". Supplementary material in ''Preliminary Report on Wui: An Undocumented Language of Eastern Nagaland''. 56th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 10-12 October 2023. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.

References

{{Languages of Northeast India Ao languages Languages of Nagaland