Orthography Development for Languages of the South Central Branch of Tibeto-Burman
Lessons from Lamkang
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21746081 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shobhana Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi Chelliah (0000-0002-2576-1848, University of North Texas), Rachel Garton (0000-0002-7650-3478, University of North Texas), Sumshot Khular (University of North Texas), Rex Khullar (University of North Texas) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Himalayan Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1544-7502 • E-ISSN: 1544-7502 |
| Publisher | California Digital Library (CDL) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5070/h922153530 |
| OpenAlex | W4391045846 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Lamkang (ISO 639-3 code: lmk) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Manipur, India with under 10,000 speakers. As a part of revitalization and documentation efforts, members of the community have begun to record oral literature, personal histories, Bible translations, and the like in written form. The spelling conventions followed by these writers are mostly consistent with those used in current translations of the Bible. However, there continues to be variation across different writers. The different variants will need to be reconciled as the Lamkang move towards a single orthographic standard. In this paper, we present findings from samples of writing collected over the course of the first author’s 12 years of work with community writers and aim to characterize variations in the orthography in linguistic terms. We then compare these variations to orthographic variations in related South Central languages. Our goal is to provide an analysis of orthographic variation focusing on phonological and morphological structure. Existing literature on literacy shows that metalinguistic awareness can impact processing the written word, suggesting that this awareness, or lack thereof, could also impact orthographic choice. These linguistic factors, along with aesthetics and identity, may be used to explain and contribute to resolving orthographic variation in languages with similar structures
Linguistics · Literacy · Orthographic projection · Orthography · Spelling · Written language · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism · Artificial Intelligence
The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800
The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization
Word
Morphemes and literacy
Lexical prefixes and Tibeto-Burman laryngeal contrasts
The role of phonemic awareness in second language reading
Apical and Laminal Articulations in Hakha Lai
Reading and Language Learning
| Highly cited | No |
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