Chittagong Hill Tracts (Bilaichari, Jorachari, Barkal & Baghaichari districts and parts of Rangamati district) and Mizoram (Chamdur valley and Adjacent hills in Lawngtlai district, Tlabung and West Phaileng subdivision)
Pangkhua (Pangkhu), or Paang, is a Kuki-Chin language primarily spoken in Bangladesh and India. Most speakers of Pangkhu are bilingual in Bengali or Mizo in the respective countries and most education in Pangkhu is conducted in that language.
Since there is essentially no literature in Pangkhua, other than oral folk tales and songs, the Pangkhua community members use Lushai literature. There are minimal language differences between Pangkhua, Tlanglau, Falam Chin, Bawm and Mizo.[2]
Dialects
The dialects of the two main communities that use Pangkhu, Bilaichari and Konglak, share 88% of their basic vocabulary. Residents of Pangkhua Para refer to their village as Dinthar (IPA: /d̪int̪ʰar/; from Mizo d̪in 'stay' and Mizo and Pangkua t̪ʰar 'new')
However, only unaspirated voiceless stops, /h/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and /l/ may occur at syllable coda. When stops occur in coda position, they are not audibly released. The glottal fricative /h/ may be deleted syllable-initially.
The vowel [æ] serves as an allophone of /e/ and [o] serves as an allophone of /u/. Vowel length contrasts occur only in closed syllables and diphthongs. There are 9 diphthongs, these being /ɑi/, /ɑu/, /ei/, /eu/, /əu/, /ou/, /iɑ/, /uɑ/, and /ui/. Diphthongs and long vowels are monophthongized following another syllable.
The basic syllable structure of Pangkhu is (C)(L)V(X), with L being a lateral consonant and X being a coda consonant.
Augmentative -pui and diminutive -te can be affixed to kinship terms in order to denote relative age or size.
Pangkhua diminutives and augmentatives
Root
Gloss
Diminutive
Augmentative
pɑ
father
pɑte 'father's younger brother'
pɑpui 'father's elder brother'
nu
mother
nute 'mother's younger sister'
nupui 'mother's elder sister'
thing
tree
thingte 'tree-plant'
thingpui 'big tree'
tui
water
tuite 'small river'
tuipui 'river'
kut
hand
kutte 'little finger'
kutpui 'thumb'
Gender
The gender suffixes -pɑ and -mɑ may derive a new referent from a root, as in lɑl 'monarch', lɑlpɑ 'king, and lɑlnu 'queen'.
Negation
Negation -ləu can be suffixed to a root to denote its opposite, as in dam 'healthy' and damləu 'sick'.
Noun forms
In Pangkhua, only human nouns can be marked for plurality and only animate marked for gender. Relator nouns share a function similar to adpositions in other languages.
↑Akter, Zahid (2024). A Grammar of Pangkhua. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783111387673.
Bibliography
Akter, Zahid (2024). A Grammar of Pangkhua. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783111387673.
Further reading
Hock, Hans Henrich (2016). "The languages, their histories, and their genetic classification". In Hans Henrich Hock; Elena Bashir (eds.). The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. pp.9-240 [145]. doi:10.1515/9783110423303-003.
DeLancey, Scott (2021). "Classifying Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages". In Paul Sidwell; Mathias Jenny (eds.). The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia: A comprehensive guide. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. pp.207-224 [215-216]. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-012.