Tiwa language (India)


Tiwa is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Tiwa people in Assam and Meghalaya in North East India. Tiwa language is similar to Boro, Dimasa, Kokborok and Garo language of India.

Tiwa dialects

Tiwa is spoken in northwestern Karbi Anglong district and further north in parts of Morigaon District / Nagaon district in the plains of Assam. There is a cluster of Tiwa villages in the northeastern Ri-Bhoi District of Meghalaya. For want of precise knowledge, it is difficult to speak of strictly delimited Tiwa dialects. On the one hand, Tiwa, probably with the exception of the variety of Tiwa spoken near Sonapur in Assam, is a single language, any of its dialects being mutually intelligible with any other. On the other hand, some lexical items, like the few given below for five different varieties of Tiwa, show enough variety to arouse one's curiosity. For example:
Marjông Amsái Magró Amkhâ Rongkhói
khôja chonggól/khôja paríkhûji paríkhôdali chonggól paríchonglá parí

Marjông Amsái Magró Amkhâ Rongkhói
changkhâm paríchengkhrâ paríchobogâchengkhânang paríchangkhâm parí

Marjông Amsái Magró Amkhâ Rongkhói
chãmáichangmáichambéchamáichamái

Marjông Amsái Magró Amkhâ Rongkhói
ngá peréremthólkremthólprethéllerógai/kremthó

Marjông Amsái Magró Amkhâ Rongkhói
kogé rothôkkogrêk págrekkonggé lathápkonglékkonglék

The words for fish are less divergent and may offer a way of dividing the dialects into some groups. The Marjông dialect forms the basis of this language topic. However, wherever possible the dialectal synonyms of Amsái, Margó and Amkhâ have also been given, The Marj and Ams varieties are perfectly mutually intelligible, although the two groups easily recognize the differences in the other group.
Tiwa dialectal variations appear to be clustered around groups of villages that are held together by Tiwa religio-cultural rituals and celebrations that are traditionally held in a particular village and are centered around a priest who resides there. Such alliances of villages also had their own geographic area of jurisdiction and lands for cultivation. The priest and the regular conduct of rituals and ceremonies gave such groups of villages socio-cultural cohesion. The earlier traditional system, which must have had stricter village coalitions, has suffered marginal disintegration in recent times.
In West Karbi Anglong district, the villages of Marjông, Amsái, Rongkhói, Amnî Baró and Amnî Sá still have their priests. The priest of the Amrî section now resides in Boksong. A Tiwa group is known as Amkhâ, which had its center at Suphing, got dispersed and does not have a priest at present.
In the Ri-Bhoi District of Meghalaya, the villages of Amjông, Lumphúi, and Phat Magró have their functioning priests even now. There is a section of Tiwa's in and around Mayông, but there is no Mayông priest at the present time. It is believed that as only a person from the Maslông clan could become a priest when there was no one to inherit the priestly mantle at the death of the last Mayông priest, their priestly lineage came to an end, The Maslóng clan itself seems to have disappeared. The priest of the Sâgra section appears to have lost his ritual area of influence. The same is true of a section of Tiwa's known as Ligrâ that does not have a functioning priest now.

Language and geographical distribution

Tiwa is spoken in the following districts.
  • Assam
  • *East Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts
  • *Nagaon district
  • *Morigaon district
  • *Kamrup district
  • *Dhemaji district
  • Meghalaya
  • *Khasi Hills district

    Script

Like most languages of the hill tribes of Northeast, India, Tiwa people do not have their own script. They use the Roman script and occasionally use Assamese script.

Tiwa alphabet

Tiwa in Latin script has a different system, distinct from that of English. Tiwa uses a 24-letter alphabet by removing the letters F, Q, V, X and Z from the basic Latin alphabet and adding the diacritic letters ′, ^ and ~ namely thópti, thópkho and kungái which is treated as a letter in its own right. Tiwa alphabet have 5-letter vowels and 16-letter consonant.
Capital letters ABCHDEGHIJKLMNOPRSTUWY′^~
Small letters abchdeghijklmnoprstuwy′^~
English pronunciationahbeecheedeeaygayesheejaykayellemmennowpeeaaressteewoodouble yuwhythopteethopkowkoowai
Assamese pronunciationআবিচিডিএগেএইচ্ইজেকেএল্এমএন্অপিআৰ্এচ্টিউডাৱলিউৱাইথপ্তিথপ্ককুঙাই

Tiwa AEIOU
Assamese pronunciationআ এ ই অ উ

Tiwa BCHDGHJKLMNPRSTWY
Assamese pronunciation বি চিডিগেএইচ্জেকেএল্এমএন্পিআৰ্এচ্টিডাৱলিউৱাই

The spelling system

The Tiwa orthographic tradition is to a large extent straightforward; the letters represent the sounds they are generally associated with. However, exceptions in the language's sound system itself calls for some adjustments to be made in some areas. We consider below a few such areas. Check the Tiwa Mor chart below.
Tiwa does not use sounds that require the use of the letters f, q, v, x, z. It does not have b, d, j, and g in the word-initial and word-final positions ; ch- occurs only in the beginning of words. There is no contrast between c and ch in Tiwa; the sound represented by ch is an unaspirated sound in Tiwa. Keeping to the local orthographic practice, ch has been used in this topic.
In the word-initial position b, d, j, and g occur in a few words, most of them of recent origin. In some instances, one of these can be seen as being protected by a preceding word with which it co-occurs in a fixed manner, as in kher bon 'thatch and other types of grass', which we take as two words as they have their own tones, The same can be said of the adverbial bén in hûldi bén 'very yellowish', and a few other words beginning with b, d, j, and g.
Tiwa does not have word-medial p, t, c, k. They may occur as clusters in each other's company as in shíkta 'animal-trap', apcháp 'haphazardly', the recently coined thópti 'acute accent', and others. When a vocalic suffix is added to a root that has p, t, k as its final consonant, that final p, t, k gets voiced to b, d, and g respectively, as in ráp- 'help' > rápa 'to help' or rápo 'will help'. A similar situation arises when ti- 'two' is prefixed to a noun or a numeral classifier that has an initial p, t, c or k, as in tin 'day' > titin 'two days'. However, in all such instances p, t, and k have been used consistently.
There are a handful of exceptions where the unproductive nature of the suffix, as in thrúba thrúbi 'unnoticed; quietly', has forced us to keep the new voiced medial. A similar point can be said about chebé chabá 'in a damp and wet manner', which is recognizable as related to chép chép 'Wet and muddy', where the established tone shift to the right makes a case for the medial voiced -b- even stronger.
The word thuke 'till' is of a different type; the final -e is an adverbial suffix. Here medial k really sounds k and not g. As a matter of fact, it is pronounced as ' or '. The morpheme boundary is not disturbed by suffixation. There are other similar instances that involve consonants other than a plosive, like mile 'all, everything', chile 'as having a shiny film or sheen' and chole 'as whole grains'.
There are some recently borrowed words where the medial p, t, k are really voiceless consonants, like:
  • kalapân – Spades
  • thin pati – A type of card game
  • ita – Brick
  • riti – File
  • ritî tustûr – Customs and traditions
  • eka – Ace
  • duki – Card mark 2
  • rekót – Record
In all such instances, the syllabification is such that these medial consonants are syllable initials. The above words would be syllabified as , , , , , and . There are many such examples, and we may make a guess that they are on the increase.
Tiwa's tendency to avoid b-, d-, j-, g- in the initial position and -p-, -t-, -ch-, -k- in the middle of a simple word places a burden on the speakers when naturalizing borrowed words. If the free variations pon ~ bon 'strike, tobôl ~ dobôl ~ dabûl 'double' and methêng ~ medêng ~ mitîng 'meeting' are any indication, we can make a safe bet that voiced initial plosives and voiceless medial plosives will get more and more established in the language.