Tangkhul language

Tangkhul
Luhupa
Native to	India
Region	Manipur, Nagaland
Ethnicity	Tangkhul Naga
Native speakers	670,000 including Khangoi (2019)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tangkhulic Tangkhul
Dialects	Ukhrul Kupome (Luhupa) Phadang
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nmf
Glottolog	tang1336

Tangkhul (Tangkhul Naga) is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Tangkhulic branch. It is spoken in 168 villages of Ukhrul district, Manipur, India, with speakers scattered in Nagaland and Tripura as well.

Within Ukhrul district, Manipur, Tangkhul is spoken in the villages of Hundung, Shiroi, Langdang, Lamlang Gate, Litan, Yangangpokpi, and other locations (Arokianathan 1995).

Tangkhul is not close to other Naga languages. It is a dialect continuum, in which speakers from neighboring villages may be able to understand each other, but a dialect farther north or south will be less easily understood, if at all. The lingua franca is the Hunphun (Ukhrul) dialect. Languages in the northern villages of chingjaroi, razai , jessami and soraphung have languages under the Angami-pochuri group of languages.

The language dialect spoken by the people of Hunphun (the traditional name of Ukhrul) became the most common dialect among the Tangkhuls because the British set up their administration in Ukhrul. The American Baptist missionary Rev. William Pettigrew translated the Bible into the Hunphun dialect.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p		t		k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ		kʰ
Affricate					tʃ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s			h
	nasalized			s̃
	voiced			z
Nasal		m		n		ŋ
Rhotic				r
Lateral				l
Approximant		w	ʋ		j

• Stop sounds /p t tʃ k/ may have voiced allophones [b d dʒ ɡ] in free variation.
• /m/ may be heard as [ɱ] when preceding /f/ or /ʋ/.
• /r/ can be heard as [r] or [ɾ] in free variation.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open	a

• /i e a u/ can have allophone sounds of [ɪ ɛ ɐ ɯ] in free variation.