A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland

So I should probably apologise / apologize for my lack of updates the past year or so. It's been pretty crazy since I started grad school - I'd have to spend many a blog post explaining all the wonderful things I've been able to do since I started in the linguistics PhD programme here at the University of Oregon.

In the meantime, in the 'American' spirit of self-promotion, I thought I should mention that I finally finished revising my University of Melbourne MA thesis A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland and got it published with Asia-Pacific Linguistics in Canberra.

It's an open access ebook (print on demand), and you can download it right here at the ANU digital collections page here.

I have too many people to thank for this, especially my family who've supported me all through this crazy journey, as well as the Sumi community / my Sumi family. I'm so thankful for all the amazing people I've met along the way, and all the help I've received in making this possible. Noshikimithi va na!

Ahuna Festival 2012, Zunheboto (III)

The final performance at last week's Ahuna festival in Zunheboto was by the boys from North Point Colony, Zunheboto. They performed the game/dance called Imu no pi 'süjo süjo', which translates as 'My older brother said 'sujo sujo'.' The word süjo is a verb meaning 'to pull out'.

Here are some photos and videos of the game.

One guy has a 'tiger's tail' attached to his behind.

 

 Despite the fact that it's quite a famous game here, I'd never actually seen it before. I tried asking friends about the rules of the game, but no one could really tell me what they were.

A few days later, I asked H. S. Rotokha what the significance of the game was. He told me that there was once a man who had three sons. When the man was about to die, he called his sons together to tell them not to fight among each other after his death, lest their enemies take advantage of this.

Unfortunately, at this point in our conversation, dinner was ready and he had to stop the explanation.

So now, I'm still pretty clueless as to the rules of the game, or its cultural significance. Perhaps someone who comes across this blog post can explain it to me?

With that said, I hope everyone had a happy Ahuna!

My only disappointment was that I didn't get to eat any ahuna, i.e. the newly harvested rice cooked in a bamboo vessel (read here)!

Ahuna Festival 2012, Zunheboto (II)

So the turn-out at the Ahuna celebration in Zunheboto was small in comparison to the one in Dimapur, but here were some of the highlights of the cultural performances. I was a little disappointed that the organisers decided to make all 4 cultural troupes perform at the same time, so you'd have to rush from performance to performance, with no clear sense of what you were seeing if you didn't already know what the troupes were doing (and also only if you were lucky enough to be able to enter the performance area - most of the spectators from the town had to sit at a distance).

Thankfully, I was allowed into the performance area, and was already familiar with most of the performances because of the cultural documentation project.

The villagers from Chishilimi perform the rain invocation ceremony called Tala Dala (or Dala Dala). According to them, they are the only Sumi village to perform this ceremony, which involves two rows of men taking turns to hit a raised mound of earth with long sticks. The action of hitting the mound is quite similar to the action of hitting the creeper called ayichi during community fishing (called ayichi küvvü).

In addition to the men hitting the raised mound with the sticks, others stand to the side pulling strips of bamboo (I think), while others swing bits of bamboo attached to a piece of string, all of which make a sort of buzzing noise, that I believe is supposed to 'call the thunder'.

They also performend hango leh, which is a song sung while sowing.

The men from the village of Khükiye-Lukhai did aphila kuwo, which is often mistranslated as a 'war dance', since it was never performed by warriors before they went off to battle, or by victorious warriors. It was simply a dance performed during festivals.

The women from Khükiye-Lukhai performed thigha leh, a song sung while breaking up the soil with sticks, usually performed after hoeing (phushe) has been done.

Some men from Zunheboto performed winnowing of the paddy. According to H.S. Rotokha, the proper way was to have one man waving the paddy sifter up and down (along the vertical axis), while another waved his from left to right (along the horizontal axis).

And the women from Lazami village performed a thread spinning song called aye küzü, while 'spinning' thread from balls of harvested cotton.

They also demonstrated how fabric used to be dyed black and red (the most important Sumi colours). Here we have a pot of black dye.

Here's the red dye.

The GB (at least I think he was the GB - someone can correct me on this) of Lazami village showed me the plant used to make the red dye, called aghüsa in Sumi.

And here we have a close-up of the aghüsa plant.

Alright, just one more post about Ahuna!

Ahuna Festival 2012, Zunheboto (I)

I was in Zunheboto town all of last week for the Ahuna / Ahunah (post-harvest) festival, and to get some project work done. I'm still recovering from the trip back to Guwahati, but here's a quick recap of last week's events.

Monday night, we had the premiere of the film The Silent Field, or Yenguyelei Qha in Sumi. It's something that has come out of the cultural documentation project that Abokali and I have been working on the past 2 years with H.S. Rotokha and Pukhazhe Yepthomi. Most of the work on this film was done by Abokali and our wonderful video editor Vito Sumi (who had to work with most of our amateur footage), but I'll get to that in another blog post. Just to be clear, it's still a first edit that we were trying to rush for this year's Ahuna festival, but we hope people still enjoyed it.

From L to R: Me, H. S. Rotokha, Abokali Sumi, Pukhazhe Yepthomi.

Before I get into the cultural activities in my next post, I thought I'd just talk about the entrance to the festival ground.

The photos below [WARNING: some nudity] are of what I think was a modern take on an old tradition: the genna post. The word genna appears to come from the Angami kenna, which according to Hutton, in his book The Angami Nagas, translates as 'prohibition' (1921: 190), though the meaning of the term is quite broad and would deserve a blog post of its own. [Note that the Sumi equivalent is chine, presumably related to the Angami word, but with the initial velar stop palatalisating before the front vowel /i/.]

The post was erected at the entrance to the local ground, with the words sasüvi, meaning 'welcome' in Sumi.

On the right side, we see the chief guests for all the various events this Ahuna festival. Since every single event needs its own chief guest, a very important part of modern Naga culture.

And on the other side, we have pictures of the moon, sun, pieces of meat (steak actually), tiger, a pair of and a mithun head. Yes, disembodied breasts. I had to do a double take on that, especially given the highly conservative nature of Baptist Zunheboto.

I have no idea who commissioned the post, but it does bear the elements of a traditional Sumi genna post. Of such posts, Hutton (in 1921) wrote:

Genna posts, whether the front centre post of the house or the forked posts set up outside it, are carved both in high relief and with incisions, the latter taking the form of horizontal lines, crosses, circles, or arcs, and used to fill in space not devoted to the serious carving, which generally consists of mithan heads more or less conventionalised, and highly conventional representations of the article of ceremonial dress known as "enemies' teeth " (aghühu). ... The only living thing other than mithan which seems to be represented in Sema art is the bird, which is carved out of a piece of wood and fixed to a crossbar between the "snail-horns" of the house. ... The sun and moon are also represented, usually as plain circles or concave discs, also breasts, singly, not in pairs, significant of success in love, and wooden dao slings. - The Sema Nagas (1921: 48)

I'm not sure if anyone was offended by them (I suspect some people might have been ), but as you can see, there was some cultural precedent for them, even badly photoshopped ones. Of course, it doesn't completely match Hutton's description, but I'm sure there were others types of genna posts that he didn't get to document.


For most of the festival I was actually busy at the Sumi Cultural Association stall (since the members were busy with the main festival events.) We were selling DVDs of the film, as well as calendars for 2013.

The calendars (tsalaphi) are unique in that they are completely in Sumi, with short explanations about the Sumi names for the various months. They are also accompanied by photos depicting the traditional agricultural activities / events typically associated with each particular month.

Here's our little (unofficial) calendar mascot. The girls helping us run the stall picked him up on the first day.

If you're interested in purchasing a calendar and live in Zunheboto, you can contact the Sumi Cultural Association in Zunheboto town. Alternatively, we will be trying to make them available in Dimapur, and also at the Hornbill Festival in Kohima. More information to come.

The Silent Field (Yenguyelei Qha)

As part of the festivities for the annual post-harvest festival Ahunah (or Ahuna) in Zunheboto, the Sumi Cultural Association will be premiering the documentary The Silent Field (Yenguyelei Qha) today at 4.30pm at the Zunheboto Town Hall.

Shot over two years in villages across the district of Zunheboto, this film presents a selection of recorded material that covers over 25 groups performing different cultural activities associated with the traditional Sumi agricultural cycle. The film is part of a larger project aimed at documenting traditional rituals and songs that are no longer being transmitted to the next generation. Its title reflects the current anxiety associated with the loss of culture and identity among the Sumis.

A collaboration between old and young, foreign and local, this project hopes to create awareness and interest in traditional Sumi customs, and to help preserve the Sumi language and its various verbal art forms.

The makers of the film acknowledge and are grateful for the support of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Sumi Cultural Association.

1st Sumi MT Literacy Development Workshop (Oct 2012)

For this special 200th post, I thought I'd cover something that I had the joy and honour of organising and running in Zunheboto last week. It was the very first Sumi Mother Tongue Literacy Development Workshop. The workshop ran from 23 Oct 2012 till 26 Oct 2012, and was conducted by the North East Literacy Network, represented by Palash Nath and Luke Horo, with the support of SIL International and also our wonderful benefactors in Melbourne, Inotoli Zhimomi and Nick Lenaghan.

Our very humble hand-written notice on the white board

It was hosted by the Sumi Literature Board and held at the Sütsah Academy in Zunheboto.

This workshop was meant to be a first step towards teaching Sumi as a subject in the private schools in Zunheboto (which mostly use English as the medium of instruction), with the further possibility of teaching content subjects in Sumi, along with a gradual transition to English. The philosophy here is that children learn better through a language they are familiar with. Importantly, they also learn to read and write more quickly in a language that they already know.

The first aim of this workshop was to introduce to the participants the importance and rationale behind the use of the mother tongue / home language in an educational setting. With a well-implemented program, research around the world has shown that children have the opportunity to to do better in school, and even learn other languages such as English better than children who are plunged into an all English-medium school from class 1, especially when they don't receive much exposure to English outside the classroom.

The second aim was to look at ways to develop a syllabus throughout the whole year. Here, the concept of a 'cultural calendar' was introduced, to get teachers to think about what the children are experiencing in the real world during every part of the calendar year, and using that to build the syllabus. Again, the focus is on moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This can then lead to 'reintroducing' children to more traditional practices that are no longer being transmitted from the older generation, and can serve as a kind of cultural revitalisation.

Participants on the 2nd day of the workshop. 2nd and 3rd from the left: Scato Swu and Hokishe Yeptho (Sumi Literature Board)

The final aim was then to bring the participants through the process of producing basic materials to teach children to read in Sumi. One issue that consistently pops up in these workshops, as noted by Palash and Luke, is that the first time people write such stories, they are usually suitable for adults. The stories are often too long, the language too difficult, and the stories don't lend themselves to being 'pictured' (having a picture accompany every line of text).

About half of the workshop was spent on producing materials that children would be able to enjoy. Other materials included: primers, riddle books, rhymes, posters depicting scenes familiar to them. Younger ones may not necessarily be able to read the words in the story books, but the pictures should be able to help them (and older non-literate speakers of the language) follow the story.

Here we have some teachers (along with the talented Mr Toino) writing and illustrating their own childrens' books.

Within just 4 days, the teachers managed to produce 10 books! Of course, they still need to be checked for spelling, grammar and punctuation, and also tested with children to see if the language used is appropriate, whether the pictures are able to tell the story etc. They will also eventually need to be graded by target age of the reader. 

The teachers told us that the books they were working on at home generated a lot of interest and excitement amongst their families and neighbours. This is the kind of excitement we hope to continue to generate, as people see their language written down in formats they are not used to.

At the end of last day, the workshop facilitators were presented with these lovely traditional Sumi shawls / aqhumu. Technically, I think this particular shawl used to be worn only by men who had killed a mithun / avi / Indian bison. But I suppose nowadays it could be a symbol of any kind of accomplishment.

From L to R: Luke Horo; myself; Jekügha Assümi (principal, Step by Step School); H S Rotokha; Nihoshe Jimomi (Sumi Literature Board); Palash Nath.

A VERY big thank you to the hosts, especially to H S Rotokha who came every single day for the duration of the workshop. And to the teachers: Sharon K Jimo, Aghatoli Jimo, Aviholi Kiba, Atoyi Awomi and Amento Achumi. Also special thanks to Toino, for helping us with the illustrations and kindly acting as our driver.

If you're Sumi and would like to help out with this project, please get in touch by leaving a comment below, or by contacting the Sütsah Academy. This is a long-term project that requires a lot of community support. We need people to come up with more stories - you may also want to ask your parents / grandparents for more traditional stories to draw inspiration from. We need people to do illustrations. We need people to help train others to create new materials, with the possibility for some people to be sent to Guwahati and elsewhere in India to receive further training from international and local experts.

Most importantly, we need people to advocate for the use of Sumi in schools, at least in the Zunheboto district where Sumi is the predominant language used in households. We are certainly aware of the need for English (and possibly Hindi) to get a job in India, but what we are trying to make people understand is that by introducing English through the mother tongue, children can actually go further (than simply parroting what is being taught in class and regurgitating it during exam time).

Zunheboto Roads

Back in Dimapur now after another trip to Zunheboto, this time to help run a workshop on Sumi Mother Tongue Literacy, which I'll be blogging about as soon as I recover from the journey.

It's really sad that the roads to Zunheboto are all so terrible (see my previous post here), especially the Kohima-Chozuba-Zunheboto Road which has been abandoned now because they started expanding it, stopped work, then the rains came and you know...

Then once you get to Zunheboto town, the roads don't get any better. The roads aren't always resurfaced every year, and even when they are, they aren't done properly.


So during the monsoon, the main road through Project Colony becomes a mini-river whenever it rains.


Then when winter comes round and it stops raining, all you get is dust.


My friends came up to Zunheboto for the first time last week, and they were impressed by the natural beauty of the area, especially the neighbouring Tizu valley. I believe the phrase 'just like paradise' was used.

But they really weren't impressed by the road conditions! I know people from Zunheboto read my blog occasionally, so come on Zunheboto, you can do so much better!

Hiyo Cafe, Dimapur

(I was meant to post this months ago, but only just remembered to do it after my weekend in Dimapur.)

One of my favourite places to hang out at when I'm in Dimapur is Hiyo Cafe. I like it because it's pretty quiet (being separated from the main road by a building), it's close to the hotel I usually stay at, and it's run by Sumis.


In case you can't see, the name Hiyo (hi: yɔ - someone's even written it in IPA) is a "versatile Sumi word that is usually associated with the Satakha Region of the Zunheboto District in Nagaland, India." According to the explanation, it can be used an adjective, an exclamation or a pronoun. As an adjective, it expresses "satisfaction or fulfillment", but it does seem to have a wider range of meanings which aren't listed here (more linguistic investigation needed!).

The cafe has a nice interior with comfortable couches and tables, far nicer than most places you'd find in Dimapur. They serve mostly drinks here: coffee, tea, juices and cocktails too. My friends enjoy the cocktails here while I enjoy the coffee. They also have snacks like french fries and chicken fry.

It's a nice place if you're catching up with friends, or if you need a place to sit and work on a laptop.

Also, you might catch a glimpse of Alobo Naga & the Band whenever they're in town.

Hiyo Cafe is located at 1, Basement, Aiko Building, Opp Town Hall, Dimapur Nagaland.
(If you're coming on the road from the Railway Station heading towards Supermarket, it's on the left side. Look out for Furtado's Music Store, the cafe's right behind it.)

On the importance of tones

Even though I've looked at Sumi tone for years (and I can speak another tone language, Mandarin), I still feel like I'm tone-deaf when I listen to the language. Fortunately, I've been getting a lot of help with Sumi tones thanks to my friend Cana, who apart from being a gifted artist, is also a gifted musician.

Sumi has 3 contrastive tones: low, mid and high, all of which are fairly level (except when there's intonation involved). This means that there is a change in pitch height results in a new word, e.g.

apuh [à.pù] ‘father’
apu [a.pu] ‘water scoop’
appu [à.pú] ‘son’

So apuh with low tone means 'father' and appu with high tone means 'son'. The change in spelling is a fairly recent one, which hasn't been universally adopted. But the main thing is, when you say the words out, the consonants and vowels are all the same, the only difference is pitch.

I find the high tone easiest to perceive, but I often get the low and mid tones mixed up. I was actually pretty amazed (I suppose I shouldn't have been, but I still was) when Cana told me that the low and mid tones are closer together in pitch than the high. That was something I'd demonstrated in an acoustic instrumental study of the language a few years ago.

The other problem I have is, when I speak Sumi, I have a tendency to put a slightly higher pitch on the last syllable of a word that I try to stress. As an example, the word ana [ànà] with low tones on both syllables means 'rice'.

But every time I answer the question "Ana chu va chu mphi?" 'Have you eaten yet?' (lit. "Have you eaten rice yet or not?"), I end up saying "Ana chu va." 'I've eaten' (lit. 'I've eaten rice'), pronouncing ana as what speakers perceive as [àná], with high tone on the second syllable. I know it should be low tone, but somehow part of me just wants to stress the whole word, and I end up using a higher pitch to do so.

At least ana [àná] with high tone doesn't mean anything in Sumi, but speakers can still tell it's wrong.

In a similar vein, when I was staying with friends in Kohima a few weeks ago, I was trying to learn a few phrases in Kohima Angami / Tenyidie. In contrast to Sumi, Tenyidie has 5 tones, all of which are fairly level as far as I can tell, and I still can't tell the difference between most of the tones. Anyway, it didn't stop me from learning a few key phrases.

One evening, when asked if I was hungry, I replied with A merü mo. I thought I was saying "I'm not hungry." The verb merü means 'to be hungry' when there's low tone on the final syllable.

Without realising it again, I'd said merü with a high tone on the second syllable.

My friends all burst into laughter immediately. It turns out I'd said "I haven't vomitted."

Picnic in the rain

Last week I was invited to a family picnic at Khükiye Lukhai. I was looking forward to it. I didn't know whether it would be next to a stream, but I was told fish was on the menu. It turned out to be right next to my friend's uncle's akhabo 'fish pond' right next to their fields.





The only downer was that after weeks of sunshine, it rained the entire day. The remnants of Cyclone Thane which hit Tamil Nadu had made their way up to the Northeast.



Thankfully there was the field hut / house - a little resting shed next to the field where people can rest.


And prepare food if necessary.


Given that there were more than 10 of us, they also set up a tarpaulin shelter next to the house.


And my friends and their cousins all ate from a big banana leaf.

As promised, there was fish caught that morning from the akhabo.


Which my friends wrapped in banana leaves and grilled with a little bit of organic lemon.

Not the best weather for a picnic, but the food and company definitely made up for it!