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1.Cherrapunjee
- the Rain Capital of the World | 2.Rainfall
Distribution at Cherrapunjee | 3.Heavy
Rainfall at Cherrapunjee | 4.The
terrain in and around Cherrapunjee | 5.The
People | 6.The
Language The Language
The Khasi
language did not have any script.
(See ‘Legends of the Place’ to know how the Khasis lost their scripts.) The early missionaries from Serampore in the present Indian
state of West Bengal attempted to write down the Khasi language using
the Bengali script. But there
were few takers among the Khasis.
Rev. Thomas Jones, the first Welsh missionary amidst the Khasis
and who is now honoured as the Father of Khasi Alphabets, used the Roman
script to write down the Khasi spoken language.
Neither the then British government establishment ruling the place
was in favour of this attempt nor the superiors of the young missionary
at the Welsh Mission Society at Liverpool.
However, the writing of Khasi language using the Roman script was
well received by the Khasis and is now well established.
Since the first missionaries had established their first mission
at Cherrapunjee the dialect of Sohra (Cherrapunjee) became the literary
Khasi throughout Khasi land. The
people of Cherrapunjee are known for their flowing oratory.
Some of them have the gift of the gab with honey dripping off their
words. Different villages
even around Cherrapunjee have completely different dialects that others
from nearby villages even cannot understand and use the standard Khasi
to communicate in between themselves.
For example, the people of Nongriat where the Double Decker Root
Bridge is there speak a different dialect, which a person knowing only
standard Khasi cannot understand.
Thus there are different dialects for Tyrna village and Shella
village.
The Khasi language belongs to Mon-Khmer group of languages.
It is reported to have a tenuous link with the Munda language of
Central India, but is more closely related to the languages of South East
Asia in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Kampuchea.
The Khasi language discriminates inanimate things as masculine
and feminine genders. The
prefix ‘u’ (pronounced ‘oou’) to a noun or pronoun identifies masculine
gender and ‘ka’ the feminine gender of the person, animal, bird or article.
For example ‘Ka sngi’ refers to the Sun (feminine) and u bnai refers
to the moon (masculine). Read
the ‘Legends of the Place’ for an interesting story about the Sun and
the Moon.
Some insights gained from Prof. Gerard Diffloth of French origin
and his Cambodian wife who were our guests when they were researching
on the links of Khasi and War-Khasi languages to Mon-Khmer languages are
given below:
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