Karbi language

The Karbi language (US: /kɑːrbi/ ) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Karbi (also known as Mikir or Arlêng) people of Northeastern India.

Karbi
Arlêng
Region	Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh
Ethnicity	Karbi
Native speakers	528,503 (2011)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Central Tibeto-Burman languages (?) Kuki-Chin–Naga Karbi
Dialects	Amri
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mjw – Karbi ajz – Plains Karbi (Amri)
Glottolog	karb1240
ELP	Karbi
Map showing where Karbi is spoken.

A Karbi speaker speaking Karbi and English, recorded in India.

It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, but its position is unclear. Grierson (1903) classified it under Naga languages, Shafer (1974) and Bradley (1997) classify the Mikir languages as an aberrant Kuki-Chin branch, but Thurgood (2003) leaves them unclassified within Sino-Tibetan. Blench and Post (2013) classify it as one of the most basal languages of the entire family.

History

Originally, there was no written form of the language, and like most languages of Northeast India, Karbi writing system is based on Roman script, occasionally in Assamese script. The earliest written texts in Karbi were produced by Christian missionaries, in Roman script, especially by the American Baptist Mission and the Catholic Church. The missionaries brought out a newspaper in Karbi titled Birta in the year 1903, Rev. R.E. Neighbor's 'Vocabulary of English and Mikir, with Illustrative Sentences' published in 1878, which can be called the first Karbi dictionary. Sardoka Perrin Kay's 'English–Mikir Dictionary' published in 1904, Sir Charles Lyall and Edward Stack's The Mikirs in 1908, the first ethnographic details on the Karbis and G.D. Walker's 'A Dictionary of the Mikir Language' published in 1925 are some of the earliest known books on the Karbis and the Karbi language and grammar.

The Karbis have a rich oral tradition. The Mosera (recalling the past), a lengthy folk narrative that describes the origin and migration ordeal of the Karbis, is one such example.

Varieties

There is little dialect diversity except for the Dumurali / Kamrup Karbi dialect, which is distinct enough to be considered a separate Karbi language.

Konnerth (2014) identifies two main variations of the Karbi language:

• Hills Karbi: Rongkhang or Ronghang dialect of Karbi Anglong, West Karbi Anglong district, Assam
• Plains Karbi (Dumra Karbi): spoken in Kamrup district and Morigaon district, Assam, and in Ri-Bhoi district, Meghalaya.

Phonology

Data below are from Konnerth (2017).

Consonants

Initial consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	p	t	c	k
	Voiced	b	d	ɟ~j
	Aspirated	pʰ~ɸ	tʰ		kʰ
Fricative		βべーた~w	s			h
Nasal		m	n
Rhotic			r~ɾ
Approximant			l	ɟ~j

• Palatal /ɟ~j/ constitutes free variation between a stop and a glide production.
• Also, allophonic alternations typical for the area include /pʰ~ɸ/ (within the same speaker) and /r~ɾ~ɹ/ (intergenerational and interdialectal).

Final consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop		p	t		k
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Rhotic			r~ɾ~ɹ

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	/i/		/u/
Close-mid	/e/		/o/
Low		/a/

Diphthongs of Karbi	(ei)	ai	oi	ui

Syllable structure

Karbi syllables may be the open (C)(C)V(V) or the closed (C)(C)VC. Possible onset consonant cluster combinations are as follows: /pl pr pʰl pʰr tʰr kl kr kʰr/.

Geographical distribution

India

Karbi is spoken in the following areas of Northeast India (Ethnologue).

• Assam:
  • Darrang district
  • Dima Hasao district (formerly North Cachar district)
  • East Kamrup district
  • Hojai district
  • Kamrup Metropolitan district
  • Karbi Anglong district
  • Lakhimpur district
  • Marigaon district
  • Nagaon district
  • Sonitpur district
  • Biswanath district
  • Lakhimpur district
  • South Kamrup district
  • West Karbi Anglong district
• Arunachal Pradesh:
  • Papum Pare district (Balijan circle)
• Meghalaya:
  • East Khasi Hills district
  • Jaintia Hills district
  • Ri-Bhoi district
  • West Khasi Hills district
• Nagaland:
  • foothills around Dimapur

Bangladesh

An estimate 1500 Karbi live in Bangladesh.

See also

• Karbi script

External links

• Karbi Language Resource collection of Karbi language documentation in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive
• Karbi texts collection in ELAR

References

• Konnerth, Linda (2014). A Grammar of Karbi (PhD). University of Oregon. hdl:1794/17928.
• Konnerth, Linda; Tisso, Sikari (2018). "Karbi texts A fully glossed corpus of different genres". Himalayan Linguistics. 17 (2). doi:10.5070/H917239461.