Khasi language
Encyclopedia
Khasi is an Austro-Asiatic language
spoken primarily in Meghalaya
state in India
by the Khasi people. Khasi is part of the Austroasiatic family of languages, and is fairly closely related to the Munda
branch of that family, which is spoken in east&endash;central India.
Although most of the 865,000 Khasi speakers are found in Meghalaya state, the language is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam
bordering with Meghalaya and by a sizable population of people living in Bangladesh
, close to the Indian border.
Khasi is rich in folklore and folktale, and behind most of the names of hills, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, birds, flowers, and animals there is a story.
between 1813 and 1838. A large number of Khasi books were written in the Eastern Nagari script
, including the famous book Ka Niyiom Jong Ka Khasi or The Rule of the Khasis, which is an important manuscript of the Seng Khasi religion. The Welsh
missionary
, Thomas Jones
, in 1841 wrote the language in the Roman script. As a result, the orthography
of the language in Roman script has a few similarities to the Welsh orthography
. As it was more easily adapted to the Khasi language, the Roman script for Khasi was adopted.
(Case marker)-(Demonstrative)-(Numeral)-(Classifier)-(Article)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Prepositional phrase)-(Relative clause), as can be seen from the following examples:
:ˀuu masculine
Humans and domestic animals have their natural gender:
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 born 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:
In nearly all instances of attributive adjectives, the apparent adjective has the prefix /ba-/, which seems to be a relativizer. 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.
The following are examples of prepositional phrases:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| ?uu ||slap || ?uu|| the?|| na|| ?uu|| bneŋ
|-
| masc || rain || masc||pour||from||masc||sky
|-
| colspan="7"|`Rain poured from the sky.'
|}
The masculine and feminine markers /u/ and /ka/ are used even when there is a noun phrase subject (Roberts 1891:132):
However, VSO order is also found, especially after certain initial particles, like haŋta 'then' (Rabel 1961).
as well"
It appears from Roberts (1891) that Khasi has differential object marking
, since only some objects are marked accusative. Roberts notes that nouns that are definite usually have the accusative and those that are indefinite often do not.
Rabel (1961) says "the use of /ya/ is optional in the case of one object. In the case of two objects one of them must have /ya/ preceding.... If one of the objects is expressed by a pronoun, it must be preceded by /ya/."
This type of passive is used, even when the passive agent is present in a prepositional phrase:
Wh-questions don't involve moving the wh-element:
Relative clauses follow the nouns that they modify and agree in gender:
Austro-Asiatic languages
The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...
spoken primarily in Meghalaya
Meghalaya
Meghalaya is a state in north-eastern India. The word "Meghalaya" literally means the Abode of Clouds in Sanskrit and other Indic languages. Meghalaya is a hilly strip in the eastern part of the country about 300 km long and 100 km wide, with a total area of about 8,700 sq mi . The...
state in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
by the Khasi people. Khasi is part of the Austroasiatic family of languages, and is fairly closely related to the Munda
Munda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
branch of that family, which is spoken in east&endash;central India.
Although most of the 865,000 Khasi speakers are found in Meghalaya state, the language is also spoken by a number of people in the hill districts of Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
bordering with Meghalaya and by a sizable population of people living in Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, close to the Indian border.
Khasi is rich in folklore and folktale, and behind most of the names of hills, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, birds, flowers, and animals there is a story.
Script
In the past, the Khasi language had no script of its own. William Carey attempted to write the language with the Eastern Nagari scriptEastern Nagari script
The Eastern Nagari script is an Abugida system of writing belonging to the Brahmic family of scripts which use is associated with the two main languages Assamese and Bengali and other related variants such as, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Maithili, Mising, Meitei Manipuri, Sylheti, and Chittagonian...
between 1813 and 1838. A large number of Khasi books were written in the Eastern Nagari script
Eastern Nagari script
The Eastern Nagari script is an Abugida system of writing belonging to the Brahmic family of scripts which use is associated with the two main languages Assamese and Bengali and other related variants such as, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Maithili, Mising, Meitei Manipuri, Sylheti, and Chittagonian...
, including the famous book Ka Niyiom Jong Ka Khasi or The Rule of the Khasis, which is an important manuscript of the Seng Khasi religion. The Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
, Thomas Jones
Thomas Jones (missionary)
Thomas Jones was a Welsh missionary, best remembered for his work in recording the Khasi language in Roman script...
, in 1841 wrote the language in the Roman script. As a result, the orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
of the language in Roman script has a few similarities to the Welsh orthography
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
. As it was more easily adapted to the Khasi language, the Roman script for Khasi was adopted.
Alphabet
- Capital letters A, B, K, D, E, G, Ng, H, I, Ï, J, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Y.
- Small letters a, b, k, d, e, g, ng, h, i, ï, j, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y,
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:
| ar | tylli | ki | sim | |||
| two | classifier | plural | bird | |||
| 'two birds' | ||||||
| kata | ka | samla | ka-ba | wan | mynhynnin | ||
| that:fem | fem | girl | fem-relative | come | yesterday | ||
| 'that girl who came yesterday' | |||||||
| ka | kmie | jong | phi |
| fem | mother | of | you |
| 'your mother' | |||
Gender
Khasi has a pervasive gender system. There are four genders in this language::ˀuu masculine
- ka feminine
- ˀii diminutive
- kii plural
Humans and domestic animals have their natural gender:
- ka kmi `mother'
- ˀuu kpa `father'
- ka sˀiar `hen'
- ˀuu s?iar `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 born 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 | flowers, plants, trees |
| clothes | reptiles, insects |
| 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 |
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.| Don | ar | tylli | ki | sim | ha | ruh. |
| there:are | two | classifier | plural | bird | in | cage |
| 'There are two birds in the cage.' | ||||||
| Don | lai | tylli | ki | sím | hapoh | shnong. |
| there:are | three | classifier | plural | chief | in | village |
| 'There are three chiefs in the village.' | ||||||
Adjectives
There is some controversy about whether Khasi has a class of adjectives. Roberts cites examples like the following:| u | briew | ba-bhá | ||||
| masc | man | rel-good | ||||
| 'a good man' | ||||||
In nearly all instances of attributive adjectives, the apparent adjective has the prefix /ba-/, which seems to be a relativizer. There are, however, a few adjectives without the /ba-/ prefix:
| u | 'riew | sníew | ||||
| masc | man | bad | ||||
| 'a bad man' | ||||||
When the adjective is the main predicate, it may appear without any verb 'be':
| U | ksew | u | lamwir. | |||
| masc | dog | masc | mad | |||
| 'The dog is mad.' | ||||||
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'
- joŋ 'of'
The following are examples of prepositional phrases:
| ka | kmi | joŋ | phii |
| fem | mother | of | you |
| 'your mother' | |||
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| ?uu ||slap || ?uu|| the?|| na|| ?uu|| bneŋ
|-
| masc || rain || masc||pour||from||masc||sky
|-
| colspan="7"|`Rain poured from the sky.'
|}
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 | mé thoh ‘you (fam.) write’ phi thoh ‘you (form.) write’ | 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):
| Ka | mïáw | ka | pah. |
| fem | cat | fem | meow |
| ‘The cat meows.’ | |||
Tense marking
Tense is shown through a set of particles that appear after the agreement markers but before the verb. Past is a particle /la/ and future is /yn/ (contracted to 'n after a vowel):| Khasi | English |
|---|---|
| U thoh. | He writes. |
| U la thoh. | He wrote. |
| U'n thoh | He will write. |
Negation
Negation is also shown through a particle, /ym/ (contracted to 'm after a vowel), which appears between the agreement and the tense particle. There is a special past negation particle /shym/ in the past which replaces the ordinary past /la/(Roberts 19891):| Khasi | English |
|---|---|
| U'm thoh. | He doesn't write. |
| U'm shym thoh. | He didn't write. |
| U'm yn thoh | He won't write. |
Copulas
The copula is an ordinary verb in Khasi, as in the following sentence:| U | Blei | u | long | jingïeit. |
| masc | God | masc | be | love |
| ‘God is love’ | ||||
Causative verbs
Khasi has a morphological causative /pn-/ (Rabel 1961). (This is spelled pyn in Roberts (1891):| Base verb | Gloss | Causative verb | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| hiar | come down | pnhiar | let down, export |
| tip | know | pntip | make known |
| phu? | blossom | pnphu? | beautify |
| iaid | walk | pyn-iaid | drive, put agoing |
| jot | perish | pyn-jot | destroy |
| poi | arrive | pyn-poi | send |
Word order
Word order in simple sentences is subject–verb–object (SVO):| U | ksew | u | bám | doh. |
| masc | dog | masc | eat | flesh |
| ‘The dog eats flesh.’ | ||||
However, VSO order is also found, especially after certain initial particles, like haŋta 'then' (Rabel 1961).
| haŋta | la | ?oŋ | ?ii | khnaay | ya | ka | Naam |
| then | past | say | dimin | mouse | accusative | fem | Naam |
| 'Then said the (little) mouse to Naam ...' | |||||||
Case marking
Sometimes the object is preceded by a particle ya (spelled ia in Roberts 1891). Roberts says "ia, 'to', 'for', 'against' implies direct and immediate relation. Hence its being the sign of the dative and of the accusative caseAccusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
as well"
| U | la | ái | ia | ka | kitab | ia | nga. |
| masc | past | give | accusative | fem | book | accusative | me |
| 'He gave the book to me.' | |||||||
It appears from Roberts (1891) that Khasi has differential object marking
Differential object marking
Differential object marking is a linguistic phenomenon that is present in more than 300 languages; the term was coined by Georg Bossong. In languages where DOM is active, direct objects are divided in two different classes, depending on different meanings, and, in most DOM languages, only one of...
, since only some objects are marked accusative. Roberts notes that nouns that are definite usually have the accusative and those that are indefinite often do not.
Rabel (1961) says "the use of /ya/ is optional in the case of one object. In the case of two objects one of them must have /ya/ preceding.... If one of the objects is expressed by a pronoun, it must be preceded by /ya/."
Passive
Khasi has a passive, but it involves removing the agent of the sentence without putting the patient in subject position. (A type called the 'non-ascensional passive'). Compare the following active-passive pair (Roberts 1891) where the patient continues to have accusative case and remains in the object position:| Ki | dang | tháw | ia | ka | íng | da | ki | ding.. |
| plur | contin | build | accusative | fem | house | from | plur | wood |
| 'They are building the house of wood.' | ||||||||
| Dang | tháw | ia | ka | íng. | ||||
| contin | build | accusative | fem | house | ||||
| 'The house is being built.' | ||||||||
This type of passive is used, even when the passive agent is present in a prepositional phrase:
| La | lah | pyniap | ia | ka | massi | da | U Míet. | |
| past | perfective | kill | accusative | fem | cow | by | U Miet | |
| 'The cow was killed by U Miet.' | ||||||||
Questions
Yes-no questions seem to be distinguished from statements only by intonation:| Phii | kit | kho? | Til? | ||||
| you | take | basket | Til | ||||
| 'Will you take a basket, Til? | |||||||
Wh-questions don't involve moving the wh-element:
| ?uu | lej | ša?ey. | |||||
| masc | go | where | |||||
| Where is he going?' | |||||||
Embedded clauses
Subordinate clauses follow the main verb that selects them (Roberts 1891:169):| Nga | tip | ba | phi | la | leh | ia | kata. |
| I | know | that | you | past | do | accusative | that |
| 'I know that you have done that' | |||||||
Relative clauses follow the nouns that they modify and agree in gender:
| Ka | samla | ka-ba | wan | mynhynnin | ka | la | iáp. |
| fem | girl | fem-relative | come | yesterday | fem | past | die |
| 'The girl who came yesterday has died.' | |||||||
Sample text in Khasi
| Khasi | English |
|---|---|
| 1. Ha kaba mynnyngkong U Blei u la thaw ia ka bneng bad ia ka khyndew. Bad ka pyrthei ka la long bakhlem dur bad kaba suda, bad ka jingdum ka la long halor ka khmat ka jingjylliew, bad U Mynsiem U Blei u da khih halor ki urn. | In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. |
Some Khasi words and phrases
| Khasi language | English |
| Khublei (khu-blei) | 'THANK YOU' in khasi. |
| Phi long kumno? | How are you? In short it is also used as “Kumno?” |
| Nga khlaiñ | I am fine. |
| Kumne | Short form response to ‘Kumno?’ meaning ‘like this’. |
| Um | Water |
| Ja | (cooked) rice |
| Dohkha (doh-kha) | fish (meat) |
| Dohsyiar (doh-syiar) | chicken (meat) |
| Dohsniang (doh-sni-ang) | pork |
| Dohmasi (doh-ma-si) | beef |
| Dohblang (doh-bl-ang) | mutton |
| Jyntah (jyn-tah) | dish (meat/vegetable) |
| Jhur (jh-ur) | vegetable |
| Dai | lentils |
| Mluh (ml-uh) | salt |
| Duna (du-na) | less |
| Sohmynken (soh-myn-ken) | chilli |
| Ai biang seh | Please give again (serve again). |
| La biang | enough |
| Ai um seh | Please give water. |
| Ai ja seh | Please give food (rice). |
| Ai jyntah seh | Please give (side dish) vegetable / meat. |
| Ai aiu? | Give what? |
| Ai kwai seh | Please give ‘kwai’. |
| Aiu? | What? |
| Mynno? | When? (past) |
| Lano? | When? (future) |
| Hangno? / Shano? | Where? |
| Kumno? | How? |
| Khublei shibun. | Thank you very much. |
| Thiah suk. | Sleep well. (The equivalent of "Good Night".) |
| Kumno ngan leit sha Ward’s Lake? | How do I go to Ward’s Lake? |
| Katno ka dor une / kane? | What is the price of this? (une is masculine gender, kane is feminine gender and ine is neutral gender) |
| Leit suk. | Go in peace. |
| Reply is “Shong suk.” | Literal meaning is “Stay happy.” |
Numbers
| 1 | wei |
| 2 | ar |
| 3 | lai |
| 4 | saw |
| 5 | san |
| 6 | hynriew |
| 7 | hynñiew |
| 8 | phra |
| 9 | khyndai |
| 10 | shipew |
| 20 | arphew |
| 30 | laiphew |
| 40 | sawphew |
| 50 | sanphew |
| 60 | hynriewphew |
| 70 | hynñiewphew |
| 80 | phraphew |
| 90 | khyndaiphew |
| 100 | shispah |
| 200 | arspah |
| 300 | laispah |
| 400 | sawspah |
| 500 | sanspah |
| 600 | hynriewspah |
| 700 | hynñiewspah |
| 800 | phraspah |
| 900 | khyndaispah |
| 1000 | shihajar |