Hakha Chin
Hakha Chin, or Laiholh, is a Kuki-Chin language spoken by nearly 300,000 people, mostly in Myanmar. In Mizoram, the language is recognized as Pawi. The total figure includes 2,000 Zokhua and 60,100 Hakha speakers. The speakers are largely concentrated in Chin State in western Myanmar and Mizoram in eastern India, with a small number of speakers in south-eastern Bangladesh.
Distribution
The Hakha Chin speakers are largely in Chin State, Burma and Mizoram in Northeast India, with a small number of speakers in south-eastern Bangladesh. Nowadays, more than eighty thousands Hakha Chin speakers are living in the Western countries, such as Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and the United States, as well as Australia and New Zealand.Mutual intelligibility
Hakha Chin serves as a lingua franca in most parts of Chin State and is a native language in Hakha, Thantlang, and parts of Matupi. Derived from the same Lai dialect and sharing 85% of their phonology, Falam Chin speakers can easily communicate with Hakha speakers. As the capital of Chin State, Hakha provides government employment and business opportunities to people living elsewhere in Chin State. These people live here temporarily or permanently, and their families eventually learn how to speak Lai holh.The Chin people use Latin script as their writing system.
Phonology
Syllable structure
Words in the Hakha Chin language are predominantly monosyllabic with some sesqui syllables featuring a "reduced syllable". Full syllables are either open or closed with a rising, falling, or low tone.Consonants
The Hakha Chin language differentiates between voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated obstruents. Additionally, two sets of sonorants are realised.Consonants allowed in syllable codas are.
Consonants occurring in syllable-final position may also occur as glottalized.
The unattested parent language, Proto-Chin, featured a voiced velar plosive. The phoneme itself was lost in all of its daughter languages, due to a spirantisation to ɣ, which a labialisation followed afterwards. Only certain loanwords, not native words, have the voiced velar plosive.
In the Hakha alphabet, transcribes the glottal fricative in initial position, but a glottal stop in coda position. Voiceless approximants are distinguished in writing from their voiced counterparts with a prefixed.
Vowels
The Hakha language features five vowels which may be long or short. Allophones occur for closed syllables.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
In final position, /e/ can be heard as .
The Hakha language also features diphthongs.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | ia iu | ui ua | |
| Mid | ei eu | ɔi | |
| Open | ai au |
Grammar
Hakha-Chin is a subject-object-verb language, and negation follows the verb.Literacy and literature
Literacy rates are lower for older generations and higher in younger generations. The Hakha-Chin language uses the Latin script, unlike most languages of India and Bangladesh which use Devanagari or other Southeast Asian alphabets. Between 1978 and 1999, the Bible was translated into the language.A written script for Hakha was created in 1891 by DJC Mcnabb. Additional scripts were created in 1894 by AGZ Newland, in 1900 by Rev. Arthur E. Carson and Rev. Dr. Harry H. Tilbe, and in 1908 by Rev. Dr. Herbert Cope.