Khasi language

Khasi (Ka Ktien Khasi) is an Austroasiatic language spoken primarily in Meghalaya state in India by the Khasi people. It is also spoken by a sizeable population in Assam and Bangladesh. Khasi is part of the Austroasiatic language family, and is related to Khmer, Palaung, Vietnamese and Mon languages of Southeast Asia, and the Munda and Nicobarese branches of that family, which are spoken in east–central India and in the Nicobar Islands, respectively.

Although most of the 1.6 million Khasi speakers are found in Meghalaya, the language is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam bordering with Meghalaya and by a sizeable population of people living in Bangladesh, close to the Indian border. Khasi has been an associate official language of some districts within Meghalaya since 2005, and as of May 2012, was no longer considered endangered by UNESCO. There are demands to include this language to the Eighth schedule to the constitution of India.

Speakers

Khasi speakers are mostly found in the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills region of Meghalaya. It is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam and by a small population of people living in Bangladesh. Khasi has been an associate official language in Meghalaya since 2005.

Khasi is written using the Latin and Bengali-Assamese scripts. Both scripts are taught as part of the compulsory Khasi language subject in elementary up to high school in Meghalaya and Bangladesh respectively.

The main dialects of Khasi spoken are Sohra and Shillong dialect. Shillong dialects form a dialect continuum across the capital region. Sohra dialect, due to strong colonial patronisation, came to be regarded as Standard Khasi.

Phonology

This section discusses mainly the phonology of Standard Khasi as spoken in and around the capital city, Shillong.

Khasi, mainly spoken in Meghalaya, is surrounded by unrelated languages: Assamese to the north and east, Bengali to the south (both Indo-Aryan languages), Garo (a Tibeto-Burman language) to the west, and a plethora of other Tibeto-Burman languages including Manipuri, Mizo and Bodo.

Although over the course of time, language change has occurred, Khasi retains some distinctive features:

• Khasi remains a stress language, without tones, unlike many of its Tibeto-Burman neighbors.
• Like its Mon-Khmer relatives, Khasi has a large inventory of phonemic vowels (see below)
• The syllable structure of Khasi words resembles that of many Mon-Khmer languages, with many lexical items showing a CCVC shape, in which many combinations of consonants are possible in the onset (see examples below).

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

				Labial		Dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal				m		n						ɲ		ŋ
Stop		Unaspirated		p	b	t̪		d				c		k		ʔ
		Aspirated		pʰ	bʱ	t̪ʰ		dʱ						kʰ
Affricate		Unaspirated						dʒ
		Aspirated						dʒʱ
Fricative								s		ʃ						h
Approximant												j		w
Trill						r
Lat. Approximant						l

Examples

		IPA	Translation			IPA	Translation
m	mrad		animal	n	nar		iron
ɲ	ñia		aunt	ŋ	ngen		wane
p	pan		ask	pʰ	phylla		special
b	blang		goat	bʱ	bhoi		Bhoi
t̪	tdong		tail	tʰ	thah		ice
d	dur		picture	dʱ	dheng		park
c	beit		straight
k	krung		rib	kʰ	khring		entice
ʔ	pyut		rotten
dʒ	jlaw		howl	dʒʱ	jhieh		wet
s	syiem		monarch	ʃ	shñiuh		hair
h	hynmen		sibling
r	rynsan		platform	l	lieh		white
j	ïor		snow	w	wah		river

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

			Front		Central		Back
			Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close			ɪ	iː	ɨ		ʊ	uː
Mid-Close			e	eː			o	oː
Mid-Open			ɛ	ɛː			ɔ	ɔː
Open					a	aː

Examples

		IPA	Translation			IPA	Translation
ɪ	dinɡ		fire	iː	ih		cooked
ɨ	ynda		until
ʊ	plunɡ		plump	uː	ruh		also
e	miet		niɡht	eː	iermat		eyelash
o	lum		hill	oː	ud		moan
ɛ	renɡ		horn	ɛː	erïonɡ		whirlwind
ɔ	onɡ		say	ɔː	Shillonɡ		Shillonɡ
a	sat		spicy	aː	sad		ceilinɡ

Morphology

Khasi is an Austroasiatic language and has its distinct features of a large number of consonant conjuncts, with prefixing and infixing.

Nouns and noun phrases

Word order

The order of elements in a Khasi noun phrase is (Case marker)-(Demonstrative)-(Numeral)-(Classifier)-(Article)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Prepositional phrase)-(Relative clause), as can be seen from the following examples:

Gender

Khasi has a pervasive gender system. There are four genders in this language:

u masculine

ka feminine

i diminutive

ki plural

Humans and domestic animals have their natural gender:

ka kmie `mother’

u kpa `father’

ka syiar `hen’

u syiar `rooster’

Rabel (1961) writes: “the structure of a noun gives no indication of its gender, nor does its meaning, but Khasi natives are of the impression that nice, small creatures and things are feminine while big, ugly creatures and things are masculine….This impression is not borne out by the facts. There are countless examples of desirable and lovely creatures with masculine gender as well as of unpleasant or ugly creatures with feminine gender”

Though there are several counterexamples, Rabel says that there is some semantic regularity in the assignment of gender for the following semantic classes:

Feminine	Masculine
times, seasons
clothes	reptiles, insects, flora, trees
physical features of nature	heavenly bodies
manufactured articles	edible raw material
tools for polishing	tools for hammering, digging
trees of soft fibre	trees of hard fibre

The matrilineal aspect of the society can also be observed in the general gender assignment, where so, all central and primary resources associated with day-to-day activities are signified as Feminine; whereas Masculine signifies the secondary, the dependent or the insignificant.

Feminine	Masculine
Sun (Ka Sngi)	Moon (U Bnai)
Wood (Ka Dieng)	Tree (U Dieng)
Honey (Ka Ngap)	Bee (U Ngap)
House (Ka Ïing)	Column (U Rishot)
Cooked rice (Ka Ja)	Uncooked rice (U Khaw)

Classifiers

Khasi has a classifier system, apparently used only with numerals. Between the numeral and noun, the classifier tylli is used for non-humans, and the classifier ngut is used for humans, e.g.

Adjectives

There is some controversy about whether Khasi has a class of adjectives. Roberts cites examples like the following:

In nearly all instances of attributive adjectives, the apparent adjective has the prefix /ba-/, which seems to be a relativiser. There are, however, a few adjectives without the /ba-/ prefix:

When the adjective is the main predicate, it may appear without any verb ‘be’:

In this environment, the adjective is preceded by an agreement marker, like a verb. Thus it may be that Khasi does not have a separate part of speech for adjectives, but that they are a subtype of verb.

Prepositions and prepositional phrases

Khasi appears to have a well-developed group of prepositions, among them

bad ‘with, and’

da ‘with (instrumental)’

na ‘from’

ha ‘in, at’

Sha ‘in, at’

jong ‘of’

The following are examples of prepositional phrases:

Verbs and verb phrases

Agreement

Verbs agree with 3rd person subjects in gender, but there is no agreement for non-3rd persons (Roberts 1891):

	Singular	Plural
1st person	nga thoh ‘I write’	ngi thoh ‘we write’
2nd person	me thoh ‘he (masc) writes’ pha thoh ‘she (fem) writes’	phi thoh ‘you (pl). write’
3rd person	u thoh ‘he writes’ ka thoh ‘she writes’	ki thoh ‘they write’

The masculine and feminine markers /u/ and /ka/ are used even when there is a noun phrase subject (Roberts 1891:132):