Zou language


Zou or Zokam, or Zo, Zomi, Yo, Yaw, or Jo, is a Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo language originating in northwestern Burma and spoken also in Mizoram and Manipur in northeastern India, where the name is spelled Zo.
The name Zou is sometimes used as a cover term for the languages of all Mizo people i.e.Kukish and Chin peoples, especially the Zo people.
The term 'Zo' has been employed in many books to denote the word 'Zou', for simple reason of phonetic usage.
The Zou themselves employ the various terms Zo, Zou, and Zomi to mean their tribe.

Phonology of Zou Language

The set of 22 Zou consonantal phonemes can be established on the basis of the following minimal pairs or overlapping words. Besides these 22 Phonemes, 1 consonant is a borrowed phoneme, which is found only in loan words, in very rare cases. Along with these consonants, Zou has 7 vowels: i, e, a, ɔ, o, u, ə.
PlosivesBilabiallabiodentalalveolarpalatalvelarglottal
Unaspiratedp bt dc ɟk gʔ
Aspiratedphthkh
Fricativesvsh
Affricatetʃ
Nasalsmnŋ
l approximantʋl
Approximantswj

Types of Zo verbs

The Zo verbs can be classified into three types: Stem, Stem, Stem as given below:
Stem 1Stem 2Stem 3Stem 4
piê-givepie?pe-pieh
puo-carrypuo?po-pua-

Tone

According to David Mortensen a syllable, in isolation, displays the Lexical Tone. Abramson states that the citation form of a monosyllabic word may be viewed as bearing the ideal manifestation of a tone. According to Matisoff , “Sinospheric TB languages tend to be more strictly monosyllabic than others.” Tone-bearing units is the morphological unit in which only a single tone specification is found in the pronounced form . TBU is the phonological unit which receives a tonal pitch command.
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 Short/lax and Long/tense vowel quality ii) Glides which are realized as Rising, Mid and, Falling 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 or Tense vowel 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.
ZouEnglish
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 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. Eventhough 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

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.

Linguistic relations

As can be seen from the name Zo and Mizoram, Zo among the Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo languagess is closely related to the Central languages such as the Duhlian or Mizo language, 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.

Geographical extent

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

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. Ethnologue reports that Zou is spoken in the following townships of Myanmar.
In Bangladesh it is used by the Bawm people.