Ahom language - WikiHQ

Ahom or Tai Ahom (Ahom: 𑜁𑜪𑜨 𑜄𑜩 𑜒𑜑𑜪𑜨 or 𑜁𑜨𑜉𑜫 𑜄𑜩 𑜒𑜑𑜪𑜨; ) is a Southwestern Tai language spoken as a second languageby some Ahom people. It is currently undergoing a revival and mainly used in religious and educational purposes. Ahom language was the state language of Ahom kingdom. It was relatively free of both Mon-Khmer and Indo-Aryan influences and has a written tradition dating back to the 13th century.

The Ahom people established the Ahom kingdom and ruled parts of the Brahmaputra river valley in the present day Indian state of Assam between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The language was the court language of the kingdom, until it began to be replaced by the Assamese language in the 17th century. Since the early 18th century, there have been no native speakers of the language, though extensive manuscripts in the language still exist today. The tonal system of the language is entirely lost. The language was only partially known by a small group of traditional priests of the Ahom religion, and it was being used only for ceremonial or ritualistic purposes.

There have been efforts to revive the language in recent times. A reconstructed version is taught in various schools in Assam by AHSEC and universities like Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University.

Classification

Tai Ahom is classified in a Northwestern subgrouping of Southwestern Tai owing to close affinities with Shan, Khamti and, more distantly, Thai. The immediate parent language from which Ahom is descended has been reconstructed as Proto-Tai, a language from 2000 years ago,

Tonality
Each syllable is tonal, and begins with a consonant or consonant cluster. A vowel or diphthong follows. A final consonant may be added, but is not necessary.

When speaking and writing Ahom, much is dependent upon context and the audience interpretation. Multiple parts of the sentence can be left out; verb and adjectives will remain, but other parts of speech, especially pronouns, can be dropped. Verbs do not have tenses, and nouns do not have plurals. Time periods can be identified by adverbs, strings of verbs, or auxiliaries placed before the verb. and settled in the Brahmaputra River valley, in Northeast India. After increasing their power in Upper Assam, the Ahom people extended their power to the south of the river Brahmaputra and east of the river Dikho, which corresponds to the modern day districts of Dibrugarh and Sibsagar, Assam, where the Ahom still reside today.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the small Ahom community expanded their rule dramatically toward the west and they successfully saw off challenges from the Mughal Empire and other invaders. Eventually the Ahom peasants too adopted the Assamese language over the Ahom language for secular purposes, while Ahom was restricted to religious use by Ahom priests. It retains cultural significance and is used for religious chants and to read literature. which obscures the meaning of words as tones are important to distinguish the meaning of words in tonal languages.

Translation efforts

thumb|right|250px|An Ahom manuscript preserved in the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Pan Bazaar, Guwahati.

Fabricated samples of the Ahom script delayed translation of legitimate Ahom texts. Several publications were created based on the fabricated samples, leading to incorrect grammatical analysis and dictionary resources that acted as a barrier to future researchers. A later translation of Ahom Buranji, a major Ahom script was provided by Golap Chandra Barua, the same man responsible for fabricating samples of translated Ahom script. It was discovered years later, by Professor Prasert na Nagara, that the translation was unreliable. Despite these difficulties, along with the lack of native speakers and specific text, studies in Ahom have prevailed, and certain available scripts have been translated and transliterated, using known words, characters and context.

Revitalization efforts

In 1954, at a meeting of Ahom people at Patsaku, Sibsagar District, the Tai Historical and Cultural Society of Assam was founded. Since the late 1960s, Ahom culture and traditions have witnessed a revival. In 1981 the Eastern Tai Literary Organization has been founded in Dhemaji, which produced language text books and publications in the Ahom script. Schools in Dibrugarh and Sibsagar districts started offering Tai language classes, teaching a mix of Tai Ahom, Phakey, Khamti and Central Thai. The scholar Terwiel notes that the view of the Ahom language being a dead language is hotly contested by Ahom priests and spokesmen of the revival movement. According to them, the language did not die out because Ahom priests still use the language for religious purposes. Some even claim that the priestly class speaks Ahom as their mother tongue. Upon further investigation, it was determined that the priests could decipher the Ahom script and read the words aloud. However, because they did not know any tones, they did not have any idea of the meaning of the words except for the simplest expressions. The demand for translation into Tai Ahom led to the creation of the first adequate modern dictionary by Nomal Chandra Gogoi in 1987, titled The Assamese-English-Tai Dictionary. This dictionary allowed a reader to find the translation of 9,000 Assamese words into English and Tai. This dictionary filled in missing gaps of the Ahom vocabulary with Aiton and Khamti words and if those were not available, Lanna and Thai words were used. The result was a hodgepodge of multiple Tai languages, that was only linked to the Ahom language by the Ahom script in which the dictionary entries were written. The scholar Terwiel recommended in 1992 to base neo-Ahom on the grammar and tones of the very closely related Aiton language, which is still spoken in Assam. Summarizing, the revivalists use a language consisting of a mixture of Tai words from multiple Tai languages, overlaid on an Assamese grammatical base.

In 1999, the scholar Morey reported that Ahom priests have resorted to compounding words to differentiate between words that are homophones in the revived language, since Ahom lost its tone system. For example in old Ahom, the word su for tiger and su for shirt would have sounded differently by pronouncing them with a different tone. In revived Ahom, they are now differentiated by compounding them with another word: tu for animal and pha for cloth respectively. Subsequently, tu su and pha su can be differentiated.

An effort has been made to revive the language by following the phonology of existing sister languages, especially Tai-Aiton and Tai-Phake.

The Institute of Tai Studies and Research (ITSAR), is a Tai Ahom language teaching institute in Moran, Sivasagar, Assam, India, established in 2001 and affiliated to Dibrugarh University. It offers a one-year Tai Ahom language diploma course and a three-month certificate course in spoken Tai Ahom. Other initiatives have been taken, such as workshops and language classes. In 2019, the 'Tai Ahom Yuva Chatra Sanmilan, Assam' (TAYCSA), demanded that the Tai Ahom language be included in the school curriculum of the state of Assam. They also demanded the creation of a two-year diploma course in Mahdavdeva University.

An online dictionary containing nearly 5,000 entries (see External links) has been created by analyzing old manuscripts, especially the Bar Amra. A descriptive grammar of Ahom, based on the grammar found in old manuscripts, is being worked on. A sketch has been released, titled “A Sketch of Tai Ahom” by Stephen Morey.

Phonology

Consonants

The Tai Ahom consonants have been reconstructed as the following, by analyzing old texts:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" |

! Bilabial

! Alveolar

! Palatal

! Velar

! Glottal

! rowspan="3" |Plosive

!voiced

! tenuis

| || || || ||

! aspirated

| || || || ||

! colspan="2"| Nasal

||| || || ||

! colspan="2"| Fricative

| || || || ||

! colspan="2"| Approximant

| || || || ||

! colspan="2"| Trill

| || || || ||

The semi-vowel /w/ is missing from the system, however it is an allophone of /b/ that occurs only in the word final position. Consonants found in the word final position are: /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, j, b [w]/.

Vowels

Vowels can occur in syllable medial and final positions only. The following vowel inventory has been reconstructed:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="1" rowspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" | Front

! colspan=2 | Central

! rowspan="2" | Back

|- class="small"

! short

! long

! Close

! Open-mid

! Open

Tones

The language had a tone system, but because the Ahom script did not spell out any tones, the tones are now unknown.

Nouns

Classifiers are used when forming plurals, counting entities and when specifically referring to one single entity. Some classifiers are: 'kun' (used for persons), 'tu' (used for animals) and 'an' (general). For example 'khai song tu' means two buffalo, where 'khai' means buffalo, 'song' means two and 'tu' is the classifier for animals.

Interrogatives

The following interrogatives are found:

{| class="wikitable"

! Phonemic !! Meaning

| sang || What

| naɯ/daɯ || What

| rɯ || Why

| ki || How many

| phaɯ || Who

| thaɯ || Where

Vocabulary

Numerals

Ahom has the following basic numerals:

!Thai

!Lao

!Northern Thai

!Shan

!Tai Lü

!Standard Zhuang

!Ahom: