LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:12 December 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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Number System in Simte

H. Kapginlian, Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

Simte is one of the Kuki-Chin languages spoken mostly in Churachandpur and Pherzawl districts of Manipur. The Simte language falls under the Northern Kuki-Chin sub-groups of the Tibeto-Burman language family. It is one of the endangered languages among the minor tribes of Manipur. As with the other Kuki-Chin languages, this language exhibits a pronoun dropping, and possesses the SOV order as its sentential construction. This paper attempts to discuss the three divisions of numbers in Simte, namely, singular, dual and plural. Besides this, it explores how dual morpheme ‘-te’ and plural morpheme ‘-gel’ are suffixed to the noun or noun phrase. One significant number system found in this language is that plurality is also expressed by reduplication of nouns, interrogative pronouns and adjectives. The number system of the said language has been illustrated with suitable examples in the paper.

Keywords: Simte, number, dual, plural, reduplication

1. Introduction

Simte is one of the Kuki-Chin languages spoken mostly in Churachandpur and Pherzawl districts of Manipur. According to Ching (2012), most of the Simtes are confined to the Churachandpur district, which is located in the Southern Part of Manipur. To be precise, the Simte speaking community can be found in Thanlon sub-divison, Singngat sub-division and Churachandpur Town. Hangluah (2019) states the term “Sim” means “South”, and ‘Te” means the “People”, and thus, “Simte” literally means “The people of the South”. They live mainly in Manipur, Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Myanmar.

Grierson (1904) asserts Simte is one of the indigenous tribe groups under the central Chin sub-group of the Kuki-chin group of the Tibeto Burman family. This language is also classified under the Northern Kuki-Chin groups along with its genetic language family such as Paite, Zou, Vaiphei, Gangte and Thadou. (Thurgood and Polla, 2003; Lewis, Simon and fennings, 2013). According to 2001 Census Reports, the total Simte population of Manipur is around 11,651. And 2011 census report shows the population of Simte falls down to 6728. (Census Report, 2011).

Chelliah (2015) agrees with Haokip (2011: 60) argument stating that Manipur hosts more than 29 languages, and bilingualism and code-switching especially within the Kuki-Chin languages resulting in convergence of languages with fewer speakers are being subsumed by structurally and similar languages. Haokip is also of the opinion that Gangte speakers are shifting to Thadou and Simte moving towards Paite. In the light of this scenario, it is pertinent to preserve the idiosyncracy of Simte language. The ubiquitous beauty of Simte language should be addressed to the academic world. By doing so, preservation and documentation of endangered language is enriched and achieved by linguists specialized in endangered languages.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

H. Kapginlian
Ph.D. Scholar
North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong
lianhangluah2017@gmail.com
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