The Khamti language is a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Myanmar and India by the Khamti people. It is closely related to, and sometimes considered a dialect of, Shan.
Khamti has been variously rendered Hkamti, Khampti, Kam Ti, Kamti, Tai Kam Ti, Tai-Khamti, Khamti Shan, Khampti Shan, Khandi Shan, Hkampti Shan, and Khampti Sam (Burmese: ခန္တီးရှမ်းလူမျိုး).[3] The name Khamti means 'place of gold'.[citation needed]
Three dialects of Khamti are known: North Burma Khamti, Assam Khamti, and Sinkaling Khamti. All speakers of Khamti are bilingual, largely in Assamese and Burmese.[3]
The language seems to have originated around Mogoung in Upper Burma.[4] Mung Kang was captured, a large group of Khamtis moved to the north and east of Lakhimpur. In the year 1850, 300–400 Khamtis settled in Assam.[5]
Common nouns can pluralized by adding /nai1 khau/ behind the noun. Common nouns are class categorized by using classifiers such as the generic /an3/, /ko1/ for people and /to1/ for animals.[9]
People's names and place names are classified as proper nouns. Khamti prefixes people's names, depending on the social class or status of that person. These prefixes are gender specific. The prefix for Miss is /na:ng4/ and the prefix for Mr is /tsa:i3/. A prefix for Mr used to respectfully address a male of higher status is /tsau2/or/tsau2 nuai/.[9]
Khamti uses a triparte pronoun system, consisting of singular, dual and plural forms. The dual form and the first person plural form are further divided between inclusive and exclusive forms. The following set of pronouns are the pronouns found in the Khamti language:[9]
The Tai Khamtis have their own writing system called 'Lik-Tai', which they share with the Tai Phake people and Tai Aiton people.[2] It closely resembles the Northern Shan script of Myanmar, which is a variant of the Mon–Burmese script, with some of the letters taking divergent shapes.[6] Their script is evidently derived from the Lik Tho Ngok script since hundreds of years ago. There are 35 letters including 17 consonants and 14 vowels. The script is traditionally taught in monasteries on subjects like Tripitaka, Jataka tales, code of conduct, doctrines and philosophy, history, law codes, astrology, and palmistry etc. The first printed book was published in 1960. In 1992 it was edited by the Tai Literature Committee, Chongkham. In 2003 it was again modified with tone marking by scholars of Northern Myanmar and Arunachal Pradesh.[citation needed]
^ abWeidert, Alfons (1977). Tai-Khamti phonology and vocabulary. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
^Wilaiwan Kanittanan. 1986. Kamti Tai: From an SVO to an SOV language. In Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (ed.), South Asian Languages: Structure, Convergence and Diglossia, 174-178. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
