A Moalong Kichu
A) Addressing the Issue of ‘ü’:
Mongsen Ao uses a,e, i, o, u, and ü as vowels. Therefore, ‘ü’ cannot be replaced with another vowel. However, using diacritical marks to indicate tone above ‘ü’ (ǜ, ṻ, etc.) is problematic. Not only are they not supported or readily available in most fonts, impeding mass adoption, but they are also very complicated-looking symbols that might be confusing, especially in small print. This is why, in this exercise (and this could also be adopted for Mongsen if agreed upon), the ‘ü’ is replaced by the digraph ‘uu’. I do not think Mongsen uses any word with a double ‘u’, and therefore, I believe this will avoid confusion with other vowel combinations. (For the lengthening/stretching of a vowel sound/syllable, refer to point D).
B) Tonal Representation:
I believe Mongsen uses tonal contrast between two syllables.For words of three or more syllables, they are either non-tonal, or the tone contrast is between the first two syllables, with the third syllable simply following the second. There may be some very complex four-syllable words like: Pong-la-me-la (a word meaning something that can be interpreted in two ways/a double-edged sword), but it can be broken down into individual tonal contrasts between the first and second syllable, and the third and fourth syllable (pông/la and mê/la). In this exercise, I have placed the tonal diacritical mark on the first vowel of the first syllable for convenience, and the fact that Mongsen tones are contrasts between the first two syllables makes this ideal. This will be illustrated properly while discussing the individual tones through examples. I think most variants of Mongsen consistently use five tones, and they will be discussed one by one.
Eg: Átzuu (Water): The ‘a’ starts high and ‘tzuu’ follows with the same tone.
Tsúungi (Rain): The ‘tsuung’ starts high and ‘i’ tags along in the same tone.
Túumang (Body): Generally pronounced with the fifth tone, but it also works when said in this tone.
2. Tone 2 [High to low fall, indicated by the ^ (Circumflex)]: This tone is characterized by a rising first syllable followed by a low second syllable or the rest of the word.
Eg: Tsûungi (a dog-like wild animal): The ‘tsuung’ rises up and ‘i’ is a low tone.
Tûumang (Darkness): The ‘tuu’ is rising, and ‘mang’ is a low tone.
3. Tone 3 [Low to high rise, indicated by the ˇ (Caron)]: This tone is characterized by a low first syllable followed by a rising second syllable or the rest of the word.
Eg: Tǔumang (All): The ‘tuu’ is low, followed by a rising ‘mang’.
4. Tone 4 [Lowering tone, indicated by ` (Grave Accent)]: This tone has a lowering first syllable followed by the rest of the word maintaining the same tone.
Eg: Tùumang (Do not believe): The ‘tuu’ is slightly stretched into a lowering tone and ‘mang’ follows without any change in the tone.
5. Tone 5 [Low neutral tone, indicated by nothing or the ¯ (Macron)]: This tone is characterized by a low, flat tone on both syllables or the whole word. I will use the macron in this exercise, but since most of a Mongsen sentence is in this tone, if no diacritical marks are indicated, it can be read in this tone.
Eg: Ātzuu (Look): The ‘a’ starts low (flat, not lowering) and is followed by ‘tzuu’ in the same flat tone.
Tūumang (Body): Tuumang in both tone 1 and tone 5 means the same thing but is more common in tone 5 in most sentences.
Using the words we have just used as examples, we can try a couple of sentences with diacritical marks indicating tone only on the example words to avoid confusion:
Tǔumang nuu pa tūumang (or túumang also works) tûumang ko liao tuu tùumang. (All should not believe that his body is in the darkness).
Pa nuu átzuu ātzuu wa. (He went to look at the water).
C) Glottal Stop:
Mongsen Ao also uses many forced glottal stops, which alter the meaning of a word and should be indicated in writing. I have chosen the ’ (apostrophe) at the end of the word to indicate this.
Eg: Ātsuu’ (Mithun), Áh’ (One).
O ni nuu muuzuunla, ni waer o’. (Oh my love, I am going).
In the above example, the ‘O’ with no glottal stop is an expression similar to the English ‘oh’, but the ‘o’ with the glottal stop signifies the ending of a definitive statement that is used in Mongsen Ao.
D) Vowel/Syllable Lengthening:
Mongsen Ao also uses some words where the meaning is changed by lengthening the vowel or syllable. I have used the : (colon) at the end of the lengthened syllable to indicate this.
Eg,
Eg,
Note that in this giant of a tonal word (Zǎkhuunî:ba), the tonal contrast can be broken down into ‘za/khuu’ and ‘ni/ba’, just like in ponglamela.
Combining the four main features discussed, we can now try writing our examples with all the applicable features (using no diacritical marks for the 5th tone to simplify our written Mongsen):
Pa nuu átzuu atzuu wa’.
Tǔumang nuu pa tuumang tûumang ko liao’ tùu tùumang.
E) The uuv (or üv) sound:
Some variants of Mongsen Ao use the uuv sound, which is really interesting. This sound is usually replaced by ‘vi’, ‘bi’, ‘khi’, or other sounds in other variants.
Eg: Âkuuv (Tiger) may be replaced by Âkhi.
Chauuv (will do) may be replaced by ‘Chabi’ or ‘Chavi’.
A beautiful sentence may result from this sound:
Ǎkuuv nuu âkuuv áh’ kuup. [My uncle (from the other clan) shot a tiger].
I do not know all variants of Mongsen, nor am I a formally educated linguist. It is very likely that some tones or other unique features of Mongsen Ao are missing. It could also easily turn out that the premise of this exercise is entirely wrong from a linguistic point of view. However, I am doing this write-up as a conversation starter. I invite all interested individuals to suggest modifications, corrections, or add relevant discussions either as a rejoinder to this write-up through this newspaper or via my email (provided below) so that we can all end up understanding and appreciating our Mongsen dialect in more detail and with more depth.
As a concluding thought, I think many features discussed here may also be applied to Chungli/Tsuungli Ao (this dialect probably has at least two tones, but that is just from a cursory assessment). Chungli already has an accepted written system; whether it is efficient or not, trying to make any changes would be extremely difficult, if not controversial. However, Mongsen Ao has yet to have a universally accepted formal writing system, and we should take advantage of that by coming together to develop an efficient system that avoids, as much as possible, all the pitfalls that usually arise when one transcribes a tonal language using only the Roman alphabet. Thank you for your patience in going through this basic exercise with me. Looking forward to a lot of your inputs/feedback.
~ Moalong Kichu (moalongkichu@gmail.com)