Wikipedia / Zou language
Wikipedia / Zou language
Zou (also spelled Zo and known as Zoham or Zokam) is a language of the Northeastern branch of Kuki-Chin languages originating in western Burma and spoken also in Mizoram and Manipur in northeastern India.
The term Zou (more often "Zo") is sometimes used as a blanket term for the languages spoken by the Kuki-Chin-Mizo peoples.
Phonology
The set of 23 Zou consonantal phonemes can be established on the basis of the following minimal pairs or overlapping words. Besides these 23 Phonemes, 1 consonant is a borrowed phoneme (i.e. /r/), which is found only in loan words, in very rare cases (e.g. /r/ in /rəŋ/ "color"). Along with these consonants, Zou has 7 vowels: i, e, a, ɔ, o, u, ə.
Writing system
Zou is often written in a Latin script developed by Christian missionary J.H. Cope (see below). In 1952, M. Siahzathang of Churachandpur created an alternative script known as Zolai or Zoulai, an alphabetic system with some alphasyllabic characteristics. The user community for the script is growing—Zou cultural, political, and literary organizations began to adopt the script beginning in the 1970s, and more recently, the Manipur State Government has shown support for both Siahzathang and the script.
Vowels
a - [a]
aw - [ɔ]
e - [e/ə]
i - [i~j]
o - [o]
u - [u~w]
Consonants
b - [b]
ch - [c]
d - [d]
g - [g]
h - [h], [ʔ] at the end of a syllable
j - [ɟ]
k - [k]
kh - [kʰ]
l - [l]
m - [m]
n - [n]
ng - [ŋ]
p - [p]
ph - [pʰ]
r - [r]
s - [s]
t - [t]
th - [tʰ]
v - [ʋ]
z - [z]
Grammar
Verbs
Zou verbs can be classified into three types: Stem (1), Stem (2), Stem (3) as given below:
Numbers
Zou numbers are counted as follows:
Linguistic relations
Zou among the Northeastern Kuki-Chin languages is closely related to the Central languages such as the Duhlian (Lusei/Lushai) or Mizo language (endonym in Duhlian or Lushai is Mizo ṭawng), the lingua franca language of Mizoram.
Zou as spoken in India is similar to the Paite language of the Paite, though Zou lacks the word-final glottal stops present in Paite.
Geographical extent
At its largest extent, the geographic area covered by the language group is a territory of approximately 60,000 square miles (160,000 km2) in size, in Burma, India and Bangladesh. However political boundaries and political debates have distorted the extent of the area in some sources.
In Burma
It is used in Chin State, Tiddim, and the Chin Hills. Use of Burmese has increased in the Zo speaking Chin State since the 1950s. Ethnologue reports that Zou is spoken in the following townships of Myanmar.
Chin State: Tonzang, Hakha, and Tedim townships
Sagaing Division: Kalay, Khampat, and Tamu townships
In India
Chandel district: Singngat subdivision and the Sungnu Sachih / Kana area
In Bangladesh
In Bangladesh it is used by the Bawm people.
References
Further reading
External links