Mizo phonology

## Vowels

### Monophthongs

The Mizo language has eight tones and intonations for each of the vowels *a*, *aw*, *e*, *i* and *u*, four of which are reduced tones and the other four long tones. The vowel *o* has only three tones, all of them of the reduced type; it has almost exactly the same sound as the diphthong /oʊ/ found in American English. However, the vowels can be represented as follows:

### Triphthongs

Mizo has the following triphthongs:

* **iai**, as in *iai*, *p**iai***
* **iau** as in *r**iau*** ruau, *t**iau*** tuau etc.
* **uai**, as in **uai**, *z**uai***, *t**uai***, *v**uai***
* **uau**, as in riau *r**uau***, tiau *t**uau***, *s**uau** s**uau***

## Consonants

Mizo has the following consonants, with the first symbol being its orthographical form and the second one its representation in the IPA:

1. The glottal and glottalised consonants appear only in final position.

## Tone

As Mizo is a tonal language, differences in pitch and pitch contour can change the meanings of words. Tone systems have developed independently in many daughter languages, largely by simplifications in the set of possible syllable-final and syllable-initial consonants. Typically, a distinction between voiceless and voiced initial consonants is replaced by a distinction between high and low tone, and falling and rising tones developed from syllable-final *h* and glottal stop, which themselves often reflect earlier consonants.

The eight tones and intonations that the vowel *a* (and the vowels *aw*, *e*, *i*, *u*, and this constitutes all the tones in the Mizo language) can have are shown by the letter sequence **p**-**a**-**n**-**g**, as follows:

* long high tone: **páng** as in ***páng** là* (which has the same intonation as **sáng** in the sentence *Thingküng **sáng** tak kan huanah a ding*).
* long low tone: **pàng** as in *Tui a kawt **pàng** pâng mai* (which has the same intonation as **vàng** in the word ***vàng**laini*).
* peaking tone: **pâng** as in *Tui a kawt pàng **pâng** mai* (which has the same intonation as **thlûk** in *I hla phuah **thlûk** chu a va mawi ve*).
* dipping tone: **päng** as in *Tuibur a hmuam **päng** mai* (which has the same intonation as **säm** in *Kan huan ka **säm** vêl mai mai*).
* short rising tone: **pǎng** as in *nau**pǎng*** (which has the same intonation as **thǎng** in *Kan huanah **thǎng** ka kam*).
* short falling tone: **pȧng** as in *I va inkhuih **pȧng** ve?* (which has the same intonation as **pȧn** in *I lam ka rawn **pȧn*** )
* short mid tone: **pang** as in *A dik lo nghâl **pang*** (which has the same tone as **man** in *Sazu ka **man*** )
* short low tone: **pạng** as in *I **pạng** a sá a nih kha* (which has the same tone as **chạl** in *I **chạl**ah thosí a* fù).

Note that the exact orthography of tones with diacritics is still not standardised (notably for differentiating the four short tones with confusive or conflicting choices of diacritics) except for the differentiation of long versus short tones using the circumflex. As well, the need of at least 7 diacritics may cause complications to design easy keyboard layouts, even if they use dead keys, and even if not all basic Latin letters are needed for Mizo itself, so publications may represent the short tones using digrams (e.g. by appending some apostrophe or glottal letter) to reduce the number of diacritics needed to only 4 (those used now for the long tones) on only two dead keys.

### Sample sentences

The following table illustrates the pronunciations of various consonants, vowels and diphthongs found in the Mizo language:

*References and further reading for this section*.
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Weidert, Alfons, *Component Analysis of Lushai Phonology*, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV – Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, volume 2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1975.
2. ↑ Zoppen Club, *Mizo ṭawng thumal thar*
3. ↑ Govind, D., Priyankoo Sarmah, S.R. Mahadeva Prasanna, *Role of pitch slope and duration in synthesized Mizo tones.*
4. ↑ Khoi Lam Thang, *A phonological reconstruction of Proto-chin.*
5. ↑ Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, *Workshop on Tone and Intonation: Theory, Typology and Computation*.