Language/Manipuri

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Facts about Manipuri[edit | edit source]

Language code (ISO 639-3): mni
Other names for "Manipuri": Manipuri, Meetei, Meitei Manipuri, Meithei, Kathe, Kathi, Meiteilon, Meiteiron, Meithe, Menipuri, Mitei, Mithe, Ponna
The Manipuri language is spoken in: India (state of Manipur and others)
Spoken by: 1.5 million speakers

Manipuri or Meetei/Meitei is spoken in the state of Manipur in India.

Smaller speaking communities exist in the Indian states of Assam, Mizoram and Tripura, as well as in Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma). There are approximately 1.5 million speakers of Manipuri, which is used as the lingua franca among the 29 different ethnic groups in Manipur. In 1992, it became the first Tibeto-Burman (TB) language to be recognized as an official or "programmed" language of India.

Manipuri has its own script, locally known as Meitei Mayek. The state of Manipur and surrounding areas is where the Tibeto-Burmese family spread and diversified from, making the genetic attribution of the languages of the region very difficult. During the 19th and 20th centuries, different linguists speculated that Manipuri belonged to one of the many subdivisions of Tuberculosis. At the start of the 21st century, the consensus view placed Manipuri in its own subdivision of the so-called Kamarupan group - a geographical rather than genetic designation but which should suffice until more definitive information becomes available.

Nevertheless, Manipuri clearly has the genetic characteristics of the Tibeto-Burmese group. These include three positional occurrences of velar nasals, widespread stem homophony, semantic whitening of verbs, duplication or elaboration, final particles, predominance of aspect over tension, lack of verb-last-word order marking gender, and the morphology of agglutinative verbs, with extended suffixation and more limited prefixation.