Khasi (language)
| Khasi | ||
|---|---|---|
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Spoken in |
India (states Meghalaya , Assam ), Bangladesh | |
| speaker | over 1.5 million | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in | Meghalaya | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
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| ISO 639 -2 |
kha |
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| ISO 639-3 |
kha |
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Khasi is the language of the indigenous people of the Khasi , who live in the north of India in the small state of Meghalaya and make up half of the population there. Khasi belongs to the group of Mon-Khmer languages within the Austro-Asian language family and is written in the Latin script with a few special characters.
Khasi is spoken by over 1.5 million people. The main distribution area of the language is Meghalaya, notable minorities of Khasi speakers live in the neighboring areas of Assam (≈16,000) and Bangladesh (≈85,000). In Meghalaya, Khasi has had the status of an associated official language since the Meghalaya State Language Act was passed in 2005 .
The Khasi language is divided into numerous dialects - especially Khasi, Jaintia, Lyngngam and War (names of Khasi tribes ) - and does not resemble the Indian languages. It is assumed that they are related to some isolated languages in central India: Khasi could have a bridge function between these and the large Austro-Asian language family (originally from China).
The modern standard language is based on the dialect spoken in and around Cherrapunji . Some of the other dialects, some of which differ greatly, may be separate Mon-Khmer languages, but insufficient scientific knowledge is available.
Language development
The first attempt to write down spoken Khasi was made in the early 18th century by KC Pal from the Serampore mission station (today West Bengal ): Pal adopted the Bengali characters to write some passages from the Christian Bible in Khasi. The locals reacted with rejection and were of the opinion that the foreign characters on paper would make them blind. The actual written Khasi language originated in 1841 when the Welsh Methodist missionary Thomas Jones introduced the Latin script to describe the Khasi - as a result, the spelling he chose is similar to the orthography of Welsh in Great Britain. Jones was shortly afterwards accused by the British East India Company of acting against their interests and calling on the locals to resist their occupation - he had to flee the Khasi Mountains and died in Calcutta in 1849 . In 1889 the first newspaper appeared in Khasi, published monthly by the Scottish Presbyterian William Williams (1859-1892); Already in the first year the Khasi member Rabon Singh Kharsuka wrote his first treatise on the religion of the Khasi ( Niam Khasi ) . From 1890 the first Khasi-English dictionary and a translated edition of the Bible appeared.
Today Khasi is an extremely living language in both written and spoken form; a literary tradition has developed since the late 19th century. Several Khasi newspapers appear in Meghalaya, there are also radio programs and two television channels that broadcast exclusively in Khasi. In 2000, the Meghalayas Ministry of Culture organized two symposia on the life and works of Khasi and Jaintia authors (Life and Works of Khasi / Jaintia Authors in the field of Khasi Literature) in the capital, Shillong, and a conference in 2001 to promote Khasi and the neighboring Garo (Growth and Development of Khasi and Garo Languages) ; The Ministry also awarded the first literary prize, State Literary Award 2000 for Khasi book .
- phawar
Part of the traditional khasi folklore is a special form of individual poetry and singing , called ka phawar (" couplets "): With imaginative lectures in rhymed two-line lines, one's own advantages are emphasized and the weaknesses of opponents are mocked (compare mocking song ). Such virtuoso and sometimes improvised speeches are mainly used in khasi archery , their favorite sport , but also at festivals, for community work or joint hunting projects.
vocabulary
Most of the vocabulary is of indigenous origin, even if there has certainly been some reciprocal language contact with neighboring Tibeto-Burmese languages . However, Khasi has borrowed a large number of vocabulary from Bengali , Hindi and English , with English words in recent times mostly being consistently adapted to their own orthography.
grammar
The most striking feature of the Khasi is its ability to use prefixes , prepositions and free morphemes almost exclusively to form grammatical relationships . Both suffixes and the infixes found in other Mon-Khmer languages are unknown.
The two grammatical genders , feminine and masculine, are marked in nouns , adjectives and verbs by preceding, free syllables, which work similarly to certain articles in nouns. The syllable i is used to form the diminutive . The plural is formed for all genders by placing ki in front. The diminutive and plural morphemes are also repeated before verbs and adjectives.
| Feminine singular |
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Plural | ki briew | ||||
| Masculine singular |
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| Diminutive singular |
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To create indefinite forms, gender markers and the number wei (one) are combined. The gender marker must then be repeated anyway.
| Feminine singular |
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Plural | kiwei ki briew | ||||||
| Masculine singular |
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| Diminutive singular |
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Accusative , dative and genitive are formed by prepositions, with the genitive following the owner of the property.
The grammatical categories of verbs are mostly distinguished by Asked before the verb syllables, for example la for the past tense or la lah for the pluperfect , partly by prefixes, such pyn- for the causative .
The sentence order is always subject , predicate , object , both in statements and questions that differ only in their tone of voice.
literature
- Wilhelm Schmidt : Fundamentals of a phonology of the Khasi language in its relationship to that of the Mon-Khmer languages . Roth, Munich 1904 ( full version on bsb-muenchen.de).
Web links
- Khasi: A language of India. Gary F. Simons, Charles D. Fennig (Eds.): Ethnologue : Languages of the World. 21st Edition, SIL International, Texas, 2018, accessed November 21, 2018 .
- KH Gruessner: Short Khasi course. University of Tübingen, accessed on November 21, 2018 (very detailed despite the title, suitable for travelers).
- Khasi. In: The Resource Center for Indian Language Technology Solutions. Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, accessed on November 21, 2018 (English, language description with detailed phonetic part and literature list, date possibly 2009).
- Dictionary German - Khasi (Khasi → German) . Relaxed Communications, Hamburg, accessed on November 21, 2018 (free dictionary; 1300 entries, but neither “mother”, “daughter” or “Khasi”; author possibly KH Gruessner, University of Tübingen).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b A-11 State Primary Census Abstract for Individual Scheduled Tribes. ( MS-Excel ) government document. In: censusindia.gov.in. Government of India 2011, accessed November 21, 2018 ( all states ), Sum Khasi: 1,411,775 of 2,964,007 total population in Meghalaya = 47.6% (2011).
- ↑ Khasi: A language of India. Gary F. Simons, Charles D. Fennig (Eds.): Ethnologue : Languages of the World. 21st Edition, SIL International, Texas, 2018, accessed November 21, 2018 .
- ↑ Questions and Answers: Official Languages. Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, March 21, 2006. Retrieved November 21, 2018; Quote: “Dr. DD Lapang (Chief Minister) [...] "Khasi & Garo Languages have been recognized and notified as Associate Official Languages of the State [...] on the 1st May, 2005 [...]" ".
- ↑ Hugh R. Page Jr .: Khasi: Orientation. In: Countries and Their Cultures. Gale Group, USA 1996 (English). Retrieved November 21, 2018.
- ↑ Wanphrang Diengdoh: Politics of Religion in Khasi Jaintia Hills. In: Raiot - Challenging the Consensus. Human Rights Blog, Northeast India, April 10, 2016, accessed November 21, 2018.
- ^ Research branch of the Directorate: Research. Department of Arts and Culture, Government of Meghalaya, undated, accessed November 21, 2018.
- ↑ Desmond L. Kharmawphlang: Poetry, Lore and Language: The Khasi Phawar Tradition. In: MD Muthukumaraswamy (Ed.): Folklore as Discourse. National Folklore Support Center (NFSC), India 2006, ISBN 81-901481-6-8 , pp. 95-101 (English; folklore researcher from Northeastern Hill University, Shillong; full text in the Google book search).