Angami (also: Gnamei, Ngami, Tsoghami, Tsugumi, Monr, Tsanglo, Tenyidie) is a Naga language spoken in the Naga Hills in the northeastern part of India, in Kohima district, Nagaland. In 2011, there is an estimate of 153,000 first language (L1) Angami speakers.[1] Under the UNESCO's Language Vitality and Endangerment framework, Angami is at the level of "vulnerable", meaning that it is still spoken by most children, but "may be restricted to certain domains".[2]
Other dialects also contrast /tʃʰtʃdʒ/. [f] only occurs as an allophone of /p/. The velar fricative is in free variation with [h]. The post-alveolar approximants are truly retroflex (sub-apical) [ɻ̊ɻ] before mid and low vowels, but laminal[ɹ̠̊ɹ̠] before high vowels (/iu/).[3]
Angami voiceless nasals are unusual in that, unlike the voiceless nasals of Burmese, they have a positive rather than negative voice onset time—that is, they are aspirated rather than partially voiced. The same is true of the laterals. In both cases, the aspiration has the formants characteristic of Angami h, which is somewhat velar in pronunciation. The other voiceless approximants may not be aspirated, as the h-like formants occur during the entire hold of the consonant.[3]
The labial and labialized consonants have labiodental affricate allophones before /ə/ (but not in /Cɻə/ consonant clusters). In addition, about half the time, the rhotic becomes syllabic (arhotic vowel) in this environment:
A wealth of Angami grammars, lexicons are available in Tenyidie and in English. However, these collections often
conflict in their analysis of the phonemic or syntactic nature of the language. This is due to the difference at the time
of the documentation, and the choice of informants from varying dialect. Especially in the earlier language
documentations (1870s–1960s), mostly by Christian missionary; their informants' meta-data were not specified and
any dialect of Angami were assumed to be the "standard" of Angami within the Nagaland region. The Angami-English Phrasebook [5] and Angami-English-Hindi dictionary [6] available online.
The complete Tenyidie bible was published in 1970. However, only the translated chapter of Genesis [7] from the bible was posted on the internet under The Rosetta Project. Also, Christian devotional materials such as The Bible...Basically® in Tenyidie [8] are also available online.
Another source of text is largely from the ethnic folktales (e.g. Angami Naga folklore by Sekhose, 1970) and
especially from song lyrics written in Tenyidie. Other than Christian songs written by the Angami church community
(e.g. Shieshülie songbook by Baptist Revival Church[9]), the rising rock music culture started to stir in the Nagaland as the music events and societies like the Hornbill National Rock Contest [10]
The next largest source of Tenyidie is the educational materials used in the Kohima schools and university.
Although much of these texts are in printed forms, a query on the web does retrieve some Indian exams papers [11][12] that contain test questions on Tenyidie.
^ abcdMeyase, Savio (2023). Historical Sound Changes within the Tenyidie (Angami) Language. 56th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 10-12 October 2023. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.
^Giridha, P.P and Handoo, L. (1987). Angami-English-Hindi dictionary. "A n u k r i t i . N e T". Archived from the original on 12 November 2011. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
Blankenship, Barbara; Peter Ladefoged; Peri Bhaskararao; Nichumeno Chase (June 1993). "Phonetic Structures of Khonoma Angami". Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages. 84. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics: 127–141.
^Blankenship states that [f] is an allophone of /p/. However, in the text only [pf] is found. It is not clear if these are in free variation, or if one is perhaps an allophone of /pʰ/.
