Lai Pawi language
| Hakha Chin | |
|---|---|
| Laiholh | |
| Native to | Burma, India, Bangladesh |
| Ethnicity | Chin |
|
Native speakers
|
(130,000 cited 1991–2001) |
|
Sino-Tibetan
|
|
| Latin script (Hakha alphabet),Burmese script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | haka1240 |
Hakha Chin (Baungshe, Pawi), or Lai, is a language spoken in southern Asia by 446,264 people. The total figure includes 2,000 Zokhua, and 60,100 Lai speakers. The speakers are largely concentrated in Mizoram in eastern India and Burma, with a small number of speakers in Bangladesh.
Even though there is no official language in Chin State (Burma), Lai holh is used as a communication language or lingua franca in most parts of Chin State. It is used as a native language in Hakha and Thantlang area. And it is used as a communication language or lingua franca in Matupi. As Hakha and Falam dialects are from the same Lai dialect and 85% of the phonetic and accent are exactly the same, people from Falam can easily communicate with Hakha language. Strictly speaking, as Hakha is the capital of Chin State; Chins people from many parts of Chin State settle down in Hakha, or serve or work temporarily as a government employee or business men and eventually they including their children learn and speak Hakha. In this way, nowadays Hakha (Lai) dialect is used as a communication or lingua franca in the present day Chin State.
Words in the Hakha Chin language are predominantly monosyllabic, with some sesquisyllables featuring a "reduced syllable." Full syllables are either open or closed, with a tone.
The Hakha Chin language differentiates between voiced, voiceless and voiceless aspirated obstruents. Additionally, two sets of sonorants are realised.
Consonants allowed in syllable codas are /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l, r, j, w/.
The unattested parent language, Proto-Chin, featured a voiced velar plosive ɡ. The phoneme itself was lost in all of its daughter languages, due to a spirantisation to ɣ, which a labialisation followed afterwards. No native words have the voiced velar plosive, but it is found in loanwords.
In the Hakha alphabet, ⟨h⟩ transcribes the glottal fricative in initial position, but a glottal stop in coda position. Voiceless approximants are distinguished in writing from their voiced counterparts with a prefixed ⟨h⟩.
There are five vowels in Hakha Chin and may either be long or short. Allophones occur for closed syllables.
Additionally, diphthongs exist in the Hakha language.
The literacy rates are lower for the older people and higher in the younger generations. The Hakha-Chin language uses the Latin script, unlike most languages of India and Bangladesh who use Devanagari or other southeast-Asian alphabets. Between 1978 and 1999 the Bible was translated into the language.
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Wikipedia