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Zo or Zokam (literally "of the hills"), is a Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo language[2] originating in northwestern Burma and spoken also in Mizoram and Manipur in northeastern India, where the name is spelled Zou.

Zo, Zomi
Zou, Zomi
'Zo Lai' in Zolai alphabet
Native to	Manipur, India
Region	Tonzang: Chin State, Chin Hills; In India: Mizoram and Manipur, Chandel, Singngat subdivision and Sungnu area; Churachandpur districts; Assam.
Ethnicity	Zou Zomi
Native speakers	180000[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Kuki-Chin-Mizo languages[2] Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo languages Zo, Zomi
Writing system	Latin, Zoulai alphabet[3]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zom
Glottolog	zouu1235
ELP	Zome

The name Zou is sometimes used as a cover term for the languages of all Mizo people (Zo people) i.e.Kukish and Chin peoples, especially the Zomi people.

The term 'Zo' has been employed in many books to denote the word 'Zo', for simple reason of phonetic usage.

The Zo themselves employ the various terms Zo, Zou, and Jo to mean their tribe.[4]

Phonology

The set of 23 Zou consonantal phonemes can be established on the basis of the following minimal pairs or overlapping words. Besides these 23 Phonemes, 1 consonant is a borrowed phoneme (i.e. /r/), which is found only in loan words, in very rare cases (e.g. /r/ in /rəŋ/ "color"). Along with these consonants, Zou has 7 vowels: i, e, a, ɔ, o, u, ə.[5]

Consonant Phonemes

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	plain	p  b	t  d	c  ɟ	k  g	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ
Affricate				tʃ
Fricative		v	s  z			h
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Lateral			l
Approximant		w		j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid			ɔ
Open		a

Orthography

Vowels

• a - [a]
• aw - [ɔ]
• e - [e/ə]
• i - [i~j]
• o - [o]
• u - [u~w][6]

Consonants

• b - [b]
• ch - [c]
• d - [d]
• g - [g]
• h - [h], [ʔ] at the end of a syllable
• j - [ɟ]
• k - [k]
• kh - [kʰ]
• l - [l]
• m - [m]
• n - [n]
• ng - [ŋ]
• p - [p]
• ph - [pʰ]
• r - [r]
• s - [s]
• t - [t]
• th - [tʰ]
• v - [ʋ]
• z - [z][7]

Types of Zo verbs

The Zo verbs can be classified into three types: Stem (1), Stem (2), Stem (3) as given below:[8]

Types of Zo Verbs

Stem 1	Stem 2	Stem 3	Stem 4
piê-give	pie?	pe-	pieh
puo-carry	puo?	po-	pua-

Tone

According to David Mortensen (2003) a syllable, in isolation, displays the Lexical Tone. Abramson (1979) states that the citation form of a monosyllabic word may be viewed as bearing the ideal manifestation of a tone. According to Matisoff (1999, p. 88), “Sinospheric TB languages tend to be more strictly monosyllabic than others.” Tone-bearing units (TBU) is the morphological unit in which only a single tone specification is found in the pronounced form (Mazaudon, 1977). TBU is the phonological unit which receives a tonal pitch command (Yip, 2002; Gussenhoven, 2004).

Zo is monosyllabic, partially agglutinating tone language. The Zo tones are treated as Suprasegmental features in this study. Like many tone languages, the Tone Bearing Unit (Goldsmith, 1990, p. 44) is the “syllable” in Zo, whose tonal rhymes consist of i) Short/lax and Long/tense vowel quality ii) Glides (diphthongs, triphthongs) which are realized as Rising (H), Mid (M) and, Falling (L) and Low tones in isolation respectively. In terms of lexical phonology, the basic tonemes or underlying tones or lexical tones or inherent tonemes either have Lax (short vowel, monophthong) or Tense vowel (diphthong, triphthong) within them as the nucleus depending upon the syntactic constructions with respect to other tonemes in phrasal phonological environments in which they occur as in morphonotonemic processes.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Zou.

Zou	English
Maw na sung ma naw in, amaw sa pi ma in leimi in i piang a, a khawh ma ma - gam lua a i lua suhsuh ih mawnate ma ei bawl in eima pumpi ei man muda maithei, Ih mawnate -eeng taang gol lua a hi man in khat veivei eima mawnate eimon maisah zolo maithei va-ia kim lai, tuate lip khap sih saang a pamai eisa, ei khua tua ngeet-nguut ngeng ngong man a ih dial dual liang luang mawna nei van nuai ei mai sah thop valong, abieh huai tapo ma Jehova ki chi Pasian khat a na om ngang tangh hi.	As we are born in sin, we cannot even love ourselves and there is no knowledge about what is forgiveness, because of the enormous sins inherited in us. Even though we are in this situation, in spite of our enormous sins the one who has mercy, sympathises us and forgives us our sins is the God called Jehovah.

There are four major dialects of Zou in Myanmar and India: Haidawi, Khuongnung, Thangkhal, and Khodai.

Numbers

Zomi numbers are counted as follows:[9]

Zou	English	Hindi
Bem	Zero	Sunna
Khat	One	Ek
Nih	Two	Do
Thum	Three	Tin
Li	Four	Char
Nga	Five	Panch
Guk	Six	Chhe
Sagih	Seven	Sat
Giat	Eight	Ath
Kua	Nine	Naw
Sawm	Ten	Das
Sawmlehkhat	Eleven	Gyarah
Sawmlehkua	Nineteen	Unnis
Sawmnih	Twenty	Bis
Sawmthum	Thirty	Tis
Sawmkua	Ninety	Nabbe
Za	Hundred	Ek Saw
Zanga	Five hundred
Tul(khat)	One thousand	Hazar
Tulsawm	Ten thousand	Das Hazar
Tulza	Hundred thousand/One lakh	Lakh
Then	Million	Das Lakh
Thensawm	Ten million	Ek Crore
Thenza	Hundred million	Das Crore
Awn	Billion	Ek Arab
Awn sawm	Ten billion	Das Arab
Awn za	Hundred billion	Ek Kharab

Writing systems

Zou is often written in a Latin script developed by Christian missionary J.H. Cope. In 1952, M. Siahzathang of Churachandpur created an alternative script known as Zolai or Zoulai, an alphabetic system with some alphasyllabic characteristics. The user community for the script is growing- Zou cultural, political, and literary organizations began to adopt the script beginning in the 1970s, and more recently, the Manipur State Government has shown support for both Siahzathang and the script.[10][11]

Linguistic relations

As can be seen from the name Zo ("of the hills") and Mizoram ("people of the hill country"), Zo among the Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo languagess is closely related to the Central languages such as the Duhlian (Lusei/Lushai) or Mizo language (endonym in Duhlian or Lushai is Mizo ṭawng), the lingua franca language of Mizoram.

Zou as spoken in India is similar to the Paite language of the Paite, though Zou lacks the word-final glottal stops present in Paite.[12][13]

Geographical extent

At its largest extent, the geographic area covered by the language group is a territory of approximately 60,000 square miles (160,000 km2) in size, in Burma, India and Bangladesh.[14] However political boundaries and political debates have distorted the extent of the area in some sources.[15]

In Burma

It is used in Chin State, Tiddim, and the Chin Hills. Use of Burmese has increased in the Zo speaking Chin State since the 1950s.[16] Ethnologue reports that Zou is spoken in the following townships of Myanmar.

• Chin State: Tonzang, Hakha, and Tedim townships
• Sagaing Division: Kalay, Khampat, and Tamu townships

In India

• Manipur
  • Chandel district: Singngat subdivision and the Sungnu Sachih / Kana area
  • Churachandpur district
• Mizoram
• Assam[17]

In Bangladesh

In Bangladesh it is used by the Bawm people(Mizo people).[18][19]

References

Further reading

• DeLancey, Scott (1987). "Part VIII: Sino-Tibetan languages". In Comrie, Bernard (ed.). The World's Major Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 797–810. ISBN 978-0-19-520521-3.
• Thang, Khoi Lam (2001). A phonological reconstruction of Proto-Chin. Payap University Masters thesis. Chiang Mai: Payap University.
• Button, Christopher Thomas James (2009). A Reconstruction of Proto Northern Chin in Old Burmese and Old Chinese Perspective. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Ph.D. dissertation. London: University of London.
• Button, Christopher Thomas James (2011). Proto Northern Chin. (STEDT monograph number 10). Berkeley, California: Department of Linguistics, University of California Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-944613-49-8.

External links

• https://www.academia.edu/735120/Zo_Tonology
• https://www.omniglot.com/writing/zou.htm

На других языках

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[de] Zou (Sprache)

Zou (auch Zo, Jou, Kuki Chin, Zau, Zome, Zomi und Zoukamz) ist eine vom Volk der Zou gesprochene Mizo-Kuki-Chin-Sprache im Gebiet des Chin-Staats in Myanmar und des indischen Bundesstaats Manipur.

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- [en] Zou language

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