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]

Phonology

Consonants

This table represents the consonantal structure of the Khonoma dialect.^[3]

Other dialects also contrast /tʃʰ tʃ dʒ/. [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) [ɻ̊ ɻ] before mid and low vowels, but laminal [ɹ̠̊ ɹ̠] before high vowels (/i u/).^[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]

Vowels

The following are the vowels of the Khonoma dialect.^[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 (a rhotic vowel) in this environment:

Angami syllables may be of the form V, CV, or CɻV. Attested clusters are /pʰɻ/, /pɻ/, /kʰɻ/, /kɻ/.^[3]

Phonological reconstruction

Meyase (2023) recognizes southern, northern, and western dialects of Angami, including the following.^[4]

• Southern: Jokha, Kiwe
• Northern: Kewhi
• Western: Khwüno

Preliminary Proto-Tenyi lexical reconstructions by Meyase (2023), with supporting data from four Tenyidie dialects, are as follows.^[4]

Northern sound change innovations include:^[4]

• *kw > pf, f
• *o > uo, io

Southern sound change innovations include:^[4]

• *pe- > me-

Grammar and lexicon

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.

Text collection

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.