Mizo

[rotting bones]

I have decided to stop faffing about with every grammar on earth and actually get more languages down to a conversational level. I have chosen three candidates based on what I think would be the most fun for me. In decreasing order of usefulness, these are: German, Cantonese and Mizo.

I don't have enough materials for Mizo, only these: Preliminary Grammar in English Grammar in Mizo Texts in Mizo So I will be visiting Mizoram, the other state where a religious minority forms a local majority, to physically acquire them. Also, my mother is forcing me to take a vacation, so I will be staying for five days from Wednesday. I will buy the largest bilingual dictionary I can find, winners of Book of the Year from the Mizo Academy of Letters, as well as pedagogical grammars in other languages if I can find them. Any requests or advice? I may scan and upload the materials here if there is demand for them.

I am manually creating a rough lexicon from the grammar in that first link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ATxYZ ... xCy501KjuB (currently incomplete) Did I miss something, or is it impossible to distinguish between the consonant l and the numeral 1 marking high tone? For the lexicon, I've been resorting to guessing!

Comments on the grammar itself:

1. The oblique/instrumental marker is the ergative marker in high tone. That's understandable, but the genitive is indicated by word order and, "in most instances", pronouncing the possessor's final syllable in high tone. Vocatives are formed by dropping the gender suffix on names longer than two sylables and pronouncing the final syllable in low tone. Absolutive has a zero marker, except there is a non-ghostly absolutive pronoun clitic for objects in the first person. At least there is a separate locative marker featuring a distinct vowel and consonant, the consonant being the glottal stop. Rarely, the genitive case manifests a vowel too! Sometimes the locative is just its vowel without the glottal stop, in which case it's the same vowel as for the genitive, except in low tone. Is this normal? If I had seen this in a conlang, my first impression would be this is going too far, but maybe that's my lack of perspective.

2. Amusingly, the classifier for ten million literally means "broken tobacco pipes".

3. Also, Wikipedia says the default word order is OSV, but the grammar says it's SOV. Am I wrong to distrust Wikipedia on this?

Edit: I confused the absolutive pronoun clitic with something else the first time.

[WeepingElf]

I have looked this up in Wikipedia - and found an ANADEW for my bizarre Razaric affricates!

[Nortaneous]

I will be visiting Mizoram, the other state where a religious minority forms a local majority, to physically acquire them.

"The" - only two? (Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Jammu and Kashmir?)

Did I miss something, or is it impossible to distinguish between the consonant l and the numeral 1 marking high tone? For the lexicon, I've been resorting to guessing!

It's impossible to distinguish - many typewriters didn't have 0 and 1 keys, so you'd type capital O and lowercase L instead. (This caused a lot of problems in the early computer era, since typists weren't used to distinguishing them.)

I have looked this up in Wikipedia - and found an ANADEW for my bizarre Razaric affricates!

Trilled affricates aren't that rare, but are often prenasalized and tend to decay to retroflexes. (See Fijian, Malagasy, Nias.)

Ersu has a full series of (subapical) retroflex trilled affricates and a (postalveolar) retroflex trill, which is apparently articulated the same as the one in Toda: the first contact is postalveolar and subsequent contacts are alveolar, [ɽr].

How did the Mizo /tr tl/ series develop? Checking STEDT, apparently they're from Pr Pl - so it's the same place neutralization as in Tibetan Pr > Ʈ and Vietnamese *Pr > s. (cf. the Puritan Dlory to God shift.)

[rotting bones]

Thanks.

The other significant state. Maybe you think I'm being unfair? Meghalaya is still a rural conglomeration of tribes with more legal unity than social unity. Nagaland is a warzone. Its capital is infamous for being the second most unlivable city in India. Both have English as their only official state language. These places are legally states, but are they cultures? With Meghalaya, you get living root bridges and The Elephant Falls. With Mizoram, you get a country that was entirely tribal a century ago, where unmarried men lived in a communal hut, headhunting was the norm and the currency was ivory. Now it is the most urbanized and literate state in India after Kerala. Sure, the reason they are so urbanized might have something to do with the fact that the Indian army uprooted the rural population by concentrating them in detention centers during their independence uprising. And since Mizos have an ethnic majority, they harrass the Buddhist Chakmas and beat up their fellow Christians and ethnic siblings, the Chin refugees from Burma. Still, as someone who's more interested in culture than organic nature, I have to find out what that's like.

[mae]

-

[Vijay]

Nagaland is a warzone.

Hasn't Northeast India just in general been a war zone for over half a century now?

[rotting bones]

mae: Thanks, I should have gone through the claims myself.

Vijay: My understanding is that Mizoram is pretty much at peace. The Mizo National Front is running the state in cooperation with the central government.

[rotting bones]

Update: I couldn't find a Mizo grammar in English, but I purchased the following books:

Phrasebook:

English For All (Vocabulary & Simple Conversation) by R. Lalrawna & Lalthanzama

Mizo-English Dictionaries:

The Concise Learner's Dictionary of Mizo by Dr. J.T. Vanlalngheta (The author does not have a doctorate in linguistics, but this dictionary has tones marked.)
Dictionary of the Lushai Language by Lorrain (The Asiatic Society; from the 1940's)

English-Mizo Dictionaries:

Remkunga (the mighty)
English-Lushai Dictionary by J.F. Laldova

Literature:

Kawlkil Piah Lamthuang by C. Lalnunchanga (Fantasy novel. The Horizon Beyond The Road? Or is it The Road Beyond The Horizon? Can't remember the word order at the moment.)
Hringnun Hrualhrui by Mafaa Hauhnar
Savun Kawrfual by Lalhmingehhuanga Zongte

I'm already down thousands of rupees, and I'm not sure it will be wise to buy more. Another phrasebook, maybe?

BTW I'm posting from the Resort Country. I've never seen a place with so many butterflies before. Yesterday, I saw six butterflies, four yellow and two of other colors, sitting together on one patch of ground. There are often one or two fluttering next to the road. There are some flowers, but only occasionally, not as many as the number of butterflies might lead you to expect. The weather is mild. There is a sweet scent pervading the place. Either it's flowers blooming somewhere out of sight, or the sickly sweet stench of decaying vegetable matter. I'm not sure which. The jungle comes up to the edge of the city, and breaks out in patches right in the heart of the metropolis. There is strange vegetation resembling banana plants all over the place, even near the city center:



I don't know what these are.

We entered a restaurant in Thenzawl, but it served only plain rice and tea, no meat or vegetables of any kind. Leaving it, we ate at a roadside diner cum family living space in Hmuifang because my driver insisted it was safe. These are all villages, not cities like Kolasib and Lunglei. I saw a white insect that could have been a tick walking on the table next to me. Fortunately, there is no Lyme disease in Mizoram, unlike Nepal or Thailand. More likely, I have swallowed some parasites with the food they served me, Sawhchiar, boiled undrained rice with chicken stirred in, along with the obligatory Thingpui (great plant?), tea. My already tottering powers of resistance were further weakened by antihistamines I took to control my allergies the day before. Can't wait to find out what exciting parasites are preparing to turn my life into a medical drama.

Even getting here was an adventure, but that's a story for another time. The version posted in Ephemera is around 50% fictional.

ETA: I'd say Mizoram is a bit like the forested bits of Meghalaya, except the mountains look steeper, the jungles are wilder and the human settlements more built up at the same time. The number of buildings in Mizoram makes it immediately distinctive visually from the neighboring states. How much exactly did the government invest to build up the place like this?