इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Khasi & Jaintia Hills · Northeast Hill Massif
Two facts make this region's language situation unlike anywhere else in India. First, Khasi and Pnar are Austroasiatic — the same stock as Khmer, Mon and the Palaungic languages of Myanmar and Yunnan — and they are separated from their nearest relatives by roughly two thousand kilometres of Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan country. They are the only Austroasiatic languages of the Northeast, and the westernmost of the family apart from the Munda group. Second, they are written in Roman script and nothing else. The Welsh Presbyterian missionary Thomas Jones fixed Khasi to the Latin alphabet in 1841, using the Sohra dialect, and that choice made Sohra Khasi the standard and left the hills with a literacy that is legible to anyone who reads English but carries no Indic script at all. Khasi also runs subject-verb-object, against the subject-object-verb order of every neighbouring language, and it marks nouns with gendered articles — u masculine, ka feminine, i diminutive, ki plural — which is why so much written Khasi begins with a small standalone particle.
बोलियाँ
The dialect Thomas Jones committed to Roman script in 1841, and therefore the school, church and newspaper standard, though Shillong speech has drifted from it.
बोलने वाले: Over 14 lakh Khasi in Meghalaya at the 2011 Census, with about 35,000 in Assam
The language of the Jaintia uplands around Jowai and Nartiang. Mutually intelligible with Khasi only partially, with its own vocabulary and a distinct verbal system; speakers generally regard it as a separate language rather than a dialect.
Spoken on the southern escarpment below the plateau rim and continuing down into Bangladesh. The root-bridge villages are War-speaking, and War is the most divergent of the Khasic varieties on the Indian side.
The northern lowland variety, in contact with Karbi, Bodo and Assamese and carrying loans from all three.
The western varieties, spoken where the Khasi hills meet A·chik country. Lyngngam speakers sit on the linguistic seam between two unrelated language families, and their vocabulary shows it.
स्थानीय शब्दावली
| शब्द | अर्थ |
|---|---|
| Kur | The matrilineal clan, all of whose members descend from one named first ancestress. Marriage within the kur is prohibited absolutely, and the prohibition is the strongest rule in Khasi social life. |
| Ka Iawbei | The first ancestress of a clan — the founding woman from whom descent is counted, and the figure invoked in clan ritual and in the naming practice at Kongthong. |
| Ka khadduh | The youngest daughter, who inherits the ancestral property. It is a custodianship rather than a windfall — she holds the ancestral house, keeps the clan's ritual objects, performs the ceremonies, and is expected to house and care for her parents and any unmarried or returning siblings. Property acquired by an individual is separate and can be disposed of freely; it is the ancestral share that follows this rule. |
| U kni | The mother's brother — the formal male authority in the matrilineal house. He speaks for the clan in the dorbar, is consulted on marriage and property, and has ritual duties in his sister's household rather than in his wife's. A man's institutional role is therefore in the house he was born into, not the one he lives in. |
| Iing | The house, and by extension the household as a unit of descent. The iing seng or ancestral house is the one the khadduh keeps. |
| Hima and Syiem | The hima is the old Khasi state — a confederation of villages; the syiem is its elected chief, chosen from a designated clan and through the female line, and constrained by a council. Around twenty-five himas existed before the colonial period, and several still hold ceremonial authority. |
| Dorbar shnong | The village assembly, headed by a rangbah shnong. It is the working unit of Khasi governance, meets in the open, and settles land use, disputes and village works. |
| Law kyntang / law lyngdoh | Sacred grove. Law is forest; kyntang marks it as consecrated; a law lyngdoh is a grove in the charge of the priestly Lyngdoh clan. Nothing may be taken out — not timber, not fruit, in the strictest groves not even a fallen leaf. |
| Mawbynna | A memorial stone. Maw is stone; the upright menhirs are maw shynrang, understood as male, and the flat table stones laid before them are maw kynthei, understood as female and associated with the maternal line. |
| Jingkieng jri | A bridge of the jri, the rubber fig — the living root bridge. Jingkieng is bridge; the name specifies the species rather than the shape. |
| Kwai | Areca nut, taken with betel leaf and slaked lime. It is offered to every visitor before conversation begins, shared at every gathering, and placed with the dead. Declining it is possible but noticed. |
| Knup | The full-body rain shield of bamboo and plastic sheeting or leaf, shaped like a boat and worn over the back so that both hands stay free. In this rainfall an umbrella is useless and a knup is not. |
| Nei iong | Black sesame — the seed whose roasted paste gives Khasi pork gravies their colour and their aroma. |
| Niam Khasi and Niamtre | The indigenous religion of the Khasi and of the Pnar respectively, organised in the modern period through bodies such as the Seng Khasi. Around a sixth of the population follows it; most of the rest are Christian, and the two calendars run alongside each other without much friction. |
कहावतें
| कहावत | शाब्दिक अर्थ | अर्थ |
|---|---|---|
| Tip briew tip Blei | Know man, know God | The first of the three tenets of Niam Khasi — that knowledge of God is reached through right conduct towards other people, not around them. |
| Tip kur tip kha | Know your mother's kin, know your father's kin | The second tenet, and the practical instruction that holds a clan system together — you are obliged to both lines even though you belong by descent to only one. |
| Kamai ia ka hok | Earn righteousness | The third tenet. Earning is meant literally — livelihood and moral conduct are treated as the same activity, not as separate accounts to be balanced against each other. |
| Leit bam kwai | Gone to eat kwai | A euphemism for dying — to have gone to the house of God to share areca nut. The everyday hospitality object and the last one are deliberately the same. |
Khasi & Jaintia Hills की बोलियाँ, स्थानीय शब्दावली और कहावतें। (18)