Native to India Native speakers 6,000 (1994 – no date) Glottolog lyng1241 | Region Meghalaya, Assam ISO 639-3 lyg | |
Language family Austroasiatic
Khasian
Lyngam | ||
Lyngam is an Austroasiatic language of Northeast India. Once listed as a dialect of Khasi, Lyngam has in recent literature been classified as a distinct language which shares a common heritage with both garo and Standard Khasi, Their style of cooking and dressed are similar to garo.
Contents
Consonant inventory
The following table lists the consonants attested in Lyngam.
The main difference with the Khasi language is that Lyngngam does not possess the voiced aspirated series. Furthermore, Lyngngam does not have the phoneme /ç/. Words which have /ç/ in Khasi typically have /c/ or /s/ in Lyngngam, as in the following pairs of cognates:
Vowel inventory
The following table lists the vowel inventory of the language. The only vowels showing a length distinction are /i/ and /a/, in contradistinction to Khasi, where length is distinctive for all vowels.
Words with diphthongs in Khasi have monophthongs in Lyngam, as in the following pairs of cognates: