Code-Switching and the Misings
2.3.2 General Features of the Mising Language
Jitmol Doley (2004) has identified seven general features of the Mising language.
1. Orthographically the language is phonemic in nature in that alphabets represent the sounds rather than the meaning of the words.
2. Most words have one syllable or two syllables, but prefixes and suffixes can be added to alter pronunciation and meaning.
3. The word order of a sentence is subject-object-verb.
4. Absence of independent affirmative and negative words, they are determined by suffixing “yé” and “ma” respectively to the verbal roots.
5. Three basic tenses corresponding to past, present, and future.
6. Each verb consists of two syllables, first indicates meaning and the second shows the tense, e.g., (g + dung = gidung; “g ” signifies the act of going, and
“dung” continuity).
7. Absence of aspirated sounds.
While making a closer investigation into the language, the following features are identified as representative qualities of the Mising language :
1. According to Tabu Taid (1995, xii), the Mising language has seven vowels and seventeen consonants adopted by the Mising Agom Kebang (Mising Language Society) on the basis of the sound system of the language. Among the seven vowels, five are usually represented by the customary vowels of the Roman script while the sixth and seventh vowels “ é ” and “ í ” are for mid-central and
high-central emissions respectively. These signs were changed from “c” and
“v” during the seventeenth biennial session of the Mising Agom Kebang (Mising Language Society) held in 2005 at Bormukoli, Jorhat. The two-letter combinations “ng” and “ny” representing the velar and the palatal-nasal sounds respectively, typical of the Mising tongue, are also included in the alphabet.
Although these alphabets are composed of two letters each, they are treated as single alphabets.
Vowels : Short o, a, i, u, e, é, í; (changed from c and v to é and í in 2005).
Long o:, a:, i:, u:, e:, é:, í: [the colon (:) signifies a long sound]
Consonants: k, g, ng, s, j, ny, t, d, n, p, b, m, r, l, y, w, h.
Each vowel has two varieties of sound, that is, short and long. The long-sound vowels are represented by a colon (:) put after the letters. Both the long and short sounds have independent phonetic status and are prominently used in the language. “Even two words with same spelling make the meaning vastly different with short and long pronouncement of a vowel” (Pegu, Peter, 2003).
For example, the word “pato” used with short-sound vowel means “to cut”
while the same word with a long-sound vowel “pa:to” means “have got”.
Tabu Taid (2004, xiii) states that the “Mising alphabet makes use of the Roman types, but follows the Panimian model in separating the vowels from the consonants”. Although aspirated sounds are absent in the Mising tongue, /h/ is included in the alphabet for occasional use in loan words containing the /h/
sound or aspirated sound. “However, it is realized in morpho-phonemic situations involving a glide from /u/ to other vowels” (ibid).
2. The existence of diphthongs and polyophthongs is another vital component of the Mising language. A closer investigation will require for enumerating these combinations. Peter Pegu (2003) says in this regard, “Prominence in terms of rising and falling of tune and the nature of inherent sonority of the vowel sounds of which they are composed of needs scientific experimentation before
any remark is passed in this point”. However, these combinations are observed to be present in common words, such as, “koum” (three households), “aum”
(three), “aidag” (good), “aima” (bad) “a n” (gold), etc. In some cases, the diphthongs themselves make meaningful words, such as, “ a” (bamboo), “ o”
(nephew), “éi” (hello), etc. Peter Pegu (2003) also observes the presence of three-vowel and four-vowel combinations which he calls triphthongs and quadriphthongs respectively. For example, triphthongs : “oué” (mother), “oia”
(darling), “a é ” (own) etc. and quadriphthongs : “oiao” (youngest), “kouau”
(small boy), etc.
2. The number of consonant sounds in the Mising language is sixteen although the seventeenth consonant “h” is included mainly for loan words. Peter Pegu has identified the following consonant sounds based on their acoustic quality produced by muscular actions of the lips and tongue and their alphabetic representatives :
Plosive : three types of plosive sounds are heard in the Mising speech.
These sounds attached to different muscular regions are : bilabial
“p” and “t”, dental “t” and “d”, and velar “k” and “g”.
Nasal : two nasal sounds are found : bilabial “m” and alveolar “n”.
Lateral : there are two lateral orientations of sounds, alveolar “l” and palatal “j”.
Fricative : the fricative chords of the language are denoted by “s” and “r” for alveolar and post-alveolar sounds respectively.
Culminate: two culminate sounds are identified : bilabial “w” and palatal “y”.
Digraph : “n”, “g” and “y” are sometimes used for diagraphs. The language has two nasal diagraphs very often used to represent a single sound like “ng” in “ngom” (me) and “ny” in “donyi” (sun). For all practical purposes, “ng” and “ny” are considered as single letters or phonemes.
(Pegu, Peter 2003)
4. The Mising language, like the Indo-Aryan languages, has helping verbs or verb- turned adverbs. They take position before verbs, such as, “b apin dola dung”
(He is eating rice). Here “dung” (is there) is the main verb and “dola” (eat) helps to indicate the auxiliary action of the subject qualifying the verb. The helping verbs are normally formed adding “la” or “na” to the main verb, such as, “asi t :la” (drinking water), “agom lula”, (talking), “ajéng anna” (nagging) etc.
5. The combination of consonants in the formation of words is mostly bilateral and the consonants are preceded and succeeded by vowels as in “appun” (flower).
Generally, Msing words do not begin or end with two or more consonants as is the case with English in words like “staff” or “sport”. In Mising, the union of consonants occurs in the middle of the word and the last syllables culminating in two or more consonants are always followed by a vowel, as for example, the word “tadpo” (melodious), “kampo” (white), “kangkanné” (the beautiful).
6. Unlike the English language where a number of words end with “ng” like
“going”, in case of the Mising language, many words begin with the diagraphs
“ng” and “ny”. For example, “ngo” (me), “nya:nyi” (aunt), “ngomug” (a fish variety) etc. Also a good number of words begin with the letter “y” which is least in other languages.
7. The post-positional suffixes play an important role for declension of nouns. For example, the suffix “é” is affixed to indicate nominative case as in the sentence
“Taniy-é agom-ém ludo” (Man makes speech). Here “é” indicates nominative case, and “ém” accusative case. Similarly, in “Édé kitabdé ngok-ké” (This book is mine), “ké” indicates possessive case, in “Édém kai-mé bito” (Give it to elder brother), “mé” is the dative case, and in “ajon-a sop g to” (Friend, come here), “a” is the vocative case, and in “Ba:bu kolok murkong koto” (Ask money from father), “kolok” is the ablative case.
8. As a result of the age-old socio-cultural contact with the Assamese-speaking societies, a number of Assamese words have entered the Mising vocabulary.
Some of them have been conveniently misingised according to the Mising tongue. For example, some Assamese words ending with “a” have been misingised by adding “ng” to them, such as, “bengena” (brinjal) has become
“bengenang”, and “dingora” (drum-shaped implement for catching fish) has been misingised as “dingorang”. Due to the absence of aspirates in the Mising language, words like “hisab” (calculation) and “ghatoi” (one who mans the river harbour) have become “isab” and “gatoi” in Mising.