Consonant Aspirations - Archive

The pronoun system of Sumi is given below. As you can see, pronouns in Sumi are marked for singular, dual and plural number. SINGULAR ni / i 'I' (these carry low tone) no 'you' (this carries low tone) pa 'he/she' (li 'she' also exists, but is not used often) DUAL ikujo 'we two' okujo 'you two' pama / küma 'they two' PLURAL ningu 'we all (more than two)' (ni- carries mid tone) nongu 'you all (more than two)' (no- carries mid tone) panongu 'they all (more than two)' In addition, you can specify the number of people in a group, e.g. niküthü (ni-küthü 'we-three') 'we three', nobidi (no-bidi 'you-four') 'you four'. It was therefore interesting to hear (and to be able to see the mistake when) a friend's 3 year old son pointed to a photo of himself and his father and said, 'nikini' , which literally means 'we-two'. He was quickly co...

I had an interesting conversation last night with Ab. 's dad last night. He mentioned something that he had said to me last year that I had forgotten. It concerned the syllable structure of English and Sumi. I thought I had misunderstood him the first time, but last night seemed to confirm my original impression. So the conversation went something like this: in English, we have the word love (we're talking about the verb here), which is monosyllabic (has one syllable). In Sumi, the word for 'love' is kimiye , which is trisyllabic (has three syllables). However, this is actually usually pronounced as disyllabic [kim.ye], with [ki.mi.ye] only appearing in careful speech. (My own belief is that Sumi has these things called 'sesquisyllables' consisting of a weak or 'minor' syllable followed by a strong or 'full' syllable, but let's not go into that.) The point was that we 'needed' to to somehow make the Sumi word for 'love' mon...

Last week I was given this little packet of food (?) that I was told had come from Burma. The Burmese writing on the packet seemed to confirm this - not so sure about the anime style pictures. Me being me, I just had to try it, despite the fact that the contents looked more like pet food pellets. I'm still trying to figure out what on earth I ate. It was an odd mix of sweet and a savoury...

At the Ahuna festival two weeks ago I met Ab. ( click here for her blog). She'd just come back to Zunheboto after spending some time abroad, including a few years in the UK. Importantly, she'd heard about the World Oral Literature Project (WOLP) and had even contacted Mark Turin regarding the documentation of Sumi stories. One of the reasons I'd come back to Zunheboto (apart from the festival) had been to find native speakers who were willing and able to do documentary work on their own language, with the aims of producing a dictionary (and possibly a grammar). Incidentally, I had considered applying to the WOLP for funding as well - mostly so I could return to conduct a few workshops, but I never imagined I'd meet anyone who would be interested in recording texts right now. So it was incredibly fortunate that I met her here in Zunheboto. We brought up the topic of doing a documentation project with H S R., the chairman of the Sumi Language Academy and the Sumi Cult...

The other day I was asked by a shopkeeper, "Khuuno ghami kea?" , which translates roughly as 'Which village are you from?' (lit. 'Whose village person (are you)?') The morpheme gha is also found in lagha which translates as 'clan' and mi is a common Tibeto-Burman noun root meaning 'person'. Since I don't clearly don't have a village (or clan) and didn't really understand the question, my friend kindly replied on my behalf that I was aluchhephomi , much to the amusement of everyone in earshot. The word can be analysed morphologically as alu 'potato', chhepho 'to break asunder' and mi 'person'. So literally, 'potato smasher'. People here jokingly refer to people who don't know which village they (or their family) are from as aluchhephomi , people from this fabled distant village where the inhabitants smash potatoes, as opposed to doing something useful with them, like say... cooking? Given...

One of the distinctive features of the Sumi language is its uvular stop series - a voiceless unaspirated uvular stop /q/ and a voiced aspirated uvular stop /qh/, which are produced by making a closure in the oral cavity (mouth) using the back of the tongue and the uvula (right at the back of the mouth). Having studied and taught phonetics, I am familiar with the mechanism of producing such stops, though mine are certainly not identical to those produced by native speakers. Importantly, these uvular stops contrast with the velar stops /k/ and /kh/, meaning that there is a difference in meaning between words like akhi 'bee' and aqhi  'moon'. I'm still having a lot of trouble asking in Sumi for the meaning of something - one of the most useful questions when you're studying a foreign language. Though there a few ways to do it, most forms go something like this: Hi ye kiu kiqi kea? I'd post an audio recording of how I say it, and how it should be said if...

The name Zunheboto , the name of both the town and district where most Sumis live in Nagaland, is derived from the nouns  zünhebo  ('ü' represents a high central unrounded vowel, and 'nh' a breathy alveolar nasal), which refers to a kind of flowering plant found in the area, and  to , which refers to a 'hill' or 'ridge'. Like most settlements in Nagaland, Zunheboto is located on top of a long ridge (people here tell me it's not a big town, just a 'long' one). Historically, these provided more security in the event of enemy raids, when tribal warfare was still practised for the purpose of taking land or taking heads, or both. Zunheboto is pretty high in terms of elevation, and around this time of year it tends to get pretty cold (and windy) compared to other places in Nagaland. I'm told also that on a clear day, Mount Everest is visible from some parts of Zunheboto. I remain slightly skeptical because so far people have pointed i...

On the second day of the Ahuna Festival cum Road Show (or 'Road Show cum Ahuna'), it was back to the festival ground in the morning. This was actually the officially set date for the festival every year and there seemed to be more guests of honour than the previous day. I vividly recall hearing sirens coming from behind, signalling the arrival of the guest of honour, the Nagaland Minister for School Education Nyeiwang Konyak, who, as his name suggests, is Konyak, not Sumi. Just when the day looked set for more school performances of war dances and speeches about how the young people need to contribute more to the state, the local sport council, which my friend Zh. is an active member of, put up a performance showing how some of the older sporting / warring traditions would be passed down to younger members of the community. Older warriors teaching the younger ones how to perform a war dance, which is meant to frighten the enemy. (In truth it was very cute to watch the littl...

As we sitting at one the stalls at the Ahuna festival drinking milk tea and snacking on beef liver and intestines (they do them so well here), I.'s cousin A. asked me if I'd ever tried 'hornets' or 'hornets larvae', I quickly said no. Within seconds, he'd gone up to a lady selling food wrapped in large leaves (the leaves are called aküghü in Sumi) and bought two. When he came back he told me, 'They were out of hornets, this is just fish.' I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Did I just dodge a bullet, or was he pulling my leg? Not that I would mind trying hornets, I just thought an entire package of them would be a little too much. In any case, he said I didn't have to eat whatever was in the package there and then. So I said I'd wait (till I was somewhere more private). When I got back to the Heritage tourist lodge (there was a break between the morning and evening programmes), I placed the package on the bed since I had no table...

In the evening on the first day, it was back to the festival ground for a rather spectacular sunset and the second part of the programme - more songs and dances performed by schools, along with a singing competition and battle of the bands. Again, I was slightly mortified (though not as much as during the Miss Sumi pageant) to see those same little girls from the Montessori school dancing to Shakira's 'Waka Waka'. Most importantly, my friend Zh. (whose home I'm staying at this time) and his wife H.'s students were putting up a fashion show featuring Sumi outfits across time. This meant that I had a reason to hang out backstage and getting right to the front of the stage to help Zh. take photos - though I don't think my fashion photography skills are quite up to scratch. Some of the students trying to keep warm backstage A Flintstones take on ancient Sumi wear The headhunter look - I'm currently sleeping in the bedroom where this head prop is ...

On the first day of the 'official' Ahuna festival celebration I arrived at the festival / football ground in the late morning and quickly ran into my new friend I. who I'd met on the sumo ride from Kohima. He said that even though he was Sumi, this was his first time in Zunheboto and his first time attending the Ahuna celebrations here too. He works as a designer / advisor for the State Government, selecting and working with traditional designs. His work is based in Kohima, although he gets sent to other offices in the state. I. with his cousin Ab. Behind them, the sign for 'Special Handloom Expo 2010' behind was some of I.'s work, using traditional Sumi designs (red lines on black are very popular on Sumi shawls). We wandered around the grounds and watched a few performances, mostly done by students from local schools. There were a few traditional war dances, a mass dance (like the ones I used to have to do in school in Singapore) and a showcase of Sümi ...

Only this morning did I realise that my computer was still following Nepal time, which is 15 minutes ahead of India (Delhi) time. Incidentally, I'd be synchronising the time on my phones to my computer time, since it's often the case that when I switch on my phones, I don't have reception and can't synchronise with the local network. (Yes, I've got two phones in case the battery on one dies and there's no power around.) That means for the past week and a bit, I've been living 15 minutes ahead of everyone, which would explain why I've felt like I've been waiting around for everyone! On a more serious note, Nagaland, despite being further east than Nepal and Bangladesh, still follows Delhi time, which is 15 minutes behind Nepal and half an hour behind Bangladesh. That means, if I went due west (well west by southwest) from here, I'd be in a timezone that was half an hour ahead of where I currently am! Also, if I went due east for just a few h...

Given that I came to Zunheboto for the festival, I suppose I should first explain what the Ahuna festival is about (and drop the use of italics as well). My friend Zh., whose house I'm staying at, kindly gifted me a copy of his book on the Ahuna Festival - the Sumi Ahuna , which was published in 2009 and outlines the principal beliefs and practices around the Ahuna festival, and more generally, the traditional Sumi agricultural year. The word ahuna can refer to a few things in Sumi. It can refer to: the festival itself; the Sumi equivalent of the month of November; and the newly harvested rice specially cooked in bamboo for the festival. Without going too much into etymology, the word can be analysed as a compound of ahu , which most people say refers to the bamboo vessel in which the rice is cooked and na , the noun root for 'cooked rice' in Sumi (Assumi 2009:12-13). The Ahuna festival is traditionally a post-harvest festival to give thanks for the current year's h...

After 4 days of waking up early to spend 5-6 hours on the road and in the sky, I finally arrived in Zunheboto, Nagaland around 1.30pm on the 13th of November with a small dent in my head - life is tough when you can fall asleep in any moving vehicle, including a crowded sumo travelling on a winding and bumpy road. (A sumo is a term commonly used across the NE for a 4WD used to ferry people from town to town.) Despite my best efforts, I could not remain awake long enough to prevent my skull from knocking against the window. This is in stark contrast to my first time travelling down this road last February when I was absolutely terrified of everything, from the local police to the local militant factions. After being treated to some tea and and ahuna , the name given to rice cooked in bamboo during the Sumi month of Ahuna , when the post-harvest festival Ahuna is celebrated - my principal reason for coming to Zunheboto at this time of year - I was asked if I wanted to attend the Miss...

After singing praises of Delhi's new domestic terminal, I caught my Jet Airways (actually Jet Konnect) flight to Guwahati, made my way to my hotel and as I was about to check in, I noticed a small gash in the cloth bit at the top of my bag. Strange, I thought, but then again it might have just torn a little bit in transit. I decided to open it up to see if anything had fallen out, but suddenly found my old combination didn't work anymore. I tried not to get frantic as I was right in the middle of checking into my room. Also, the bag still felt as heavy as when I left it, and there wasn't anything inside that I would be too upset over losing. Still, it's one of the worst things to to discover, especially when you're travelling alone, you've just arrived in a new city (albeit one you've been to before), your mobile phone has stopped working (the sim I bought in Delhi doesn't work in the North-East), and it's already late in the afternoon and you...

People in NE India often refer to the rest of India as the 'mainland'. It didn't take long for the feeling that I was is in different country to sink in, especially when I landed at Guwahati Airport to find that my recently purchased Airtel sim card from Delhi no longer worked. Clearly, reports that sim cards from elsewhere in India worked in Assam had been greatly exaggerated. Of course, the last time I was here, I bought two sim cards - one from Kerala and one from Shillong in Meghalaya. Both didn't work in Assam. On the other hand, the one from Shillong worked fine here in Nagaland and so I assumed it was just an Assam thing. Wrong again. The Airtel sim card I got from Delhi is no good throughout the NE, Nagaland included, which meant I had to buy a new sim card (which only works in the NE). The lady at the Airtel office close to my hotel informed me I needed a copy of my passport, identity card, proof of residence (she assumed I was an Indian citizen) and 4 pass...

The BBC report on yesterday's attacks in Assam states they were conducted by a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) who are trying to derail peace talks between the moderate NDFB faction and the Indian government. The article opens by saying that: Police told the BBC that a group of heavily armed guerrillas waylaid the bus and opened fire indiscriminately. However, in an article in the Nagaland Post , it was reported that: They [the guerillas] lined up the passengers and took away the Hindi-speaking people to the forest and shot them. “The NDFB fired at the bus, forcing the driver to stop, after which the militants lined up all the passengers on the road and took away at least 10 of them at gunpoint,” a senior police official said.. The report then reiterates that: "All the dead were Hindi-speaking people hailing from Bihar and were Arunachal Pradesh government employees," Assam police chief Shankar Baruah told IANS. The Nagaland Post...

About a week ago in Nepal, I realised that I couldn't view Lauren's blog , except via an RSS reader. The reason was that Blogger had been blocked by the Nepalese government, or at least some sites with 'blogspot' in their URLs had come up on their new list of banned 'p0rn' sites, leading to a blanket ban on all our blogs with that domain name. Weird and Funny World , a Nepal-based blog I've been following provided some coverage of this. Earlier there was also a suggestion that cybercafes in Nepal check their clients' ID in a bid to control 'cyber crime'. India already does this sort of the control, though probably not on the same scale as China. At the cybercafes I've been to here, I'd had to present my passport (which some places photocopy) just so I can get online for 30 minutes. I am reminded of this level of control, because just to access the free wi-fi here at Delhi's new Indira Gandhi Airport domestic terminal, I had to lo...

My arrival at the new Delhi International Airport started out well enough. The new terminal is much better than the current Kolkata Airport which I flew in and out of last year. The only thing that bugged me was that it took forever to get from the gate to the immigration counter, and yet we still had to wait about 20 minutes for our baggage - I calculated about 45 minutes from the time of the plane's arrival. I had arranged an airport pick-up with my hotel (Rak International Hotel) - an exorbitant 600 Rs, considering it only takes about 250-300 Rs to get from the airport to the Paharganj, but I didn't really want the hassle of haggling with a taxi driver and having to pay additional tips and what not. Thankfully, my pick-up was there when I arrived, given that the plane was about an hour late in leaving Kathmandu. The driver seemed friendly enough and we chatted a little in my broken Hindi / Nepali (he understood ali ali ) and English. The first sign something was wrong w...

After 6 wonderful weeks here in Nepal, thanks to Lauren and Sara, and especially to our Nepali friends L. and S., it's time to say goodbye. My Nepali isn't fantastic, but a few more months of classes and it should become passable. At least I'm quite proficient when talking about my family. I think learning Nepali will prove to more useful than I thought, especially given the large number of Nepalis in NE India (though I might eventually have to learn Assamese and Nagamese). Tomorrow though, I'm going to have to try and squeeze in a little Hindi for my one night in Delhi - I'm still not sure about my accommodation because the hotel hasn't got back to me to confirm my booking. If they don't show up, I'll just get a pre-paid taxi and head to Paharganj myself. I'm looking forward to getting back to Nagaland on Thursday. There's a Sumi Ahuna harvest festival on the weekend called which I would like to attend (apparently it's become the '...

I mentioned that the Everest View Hotel is difficult to find without a guide, and especially without (m)any clear signs to it from Namche. Even people who rely on Google Earth are being misled! I'm sure there's no mistake with my marker (in yellow) and GPS map, as this was the second time I had tracked my journey to the Everest View Hotel, and via a different route to boot. Someone at Google Earth needs to be informed about this... ***** If you're looking for directions to the Everest View Hotel from Namche Bazaar (this doesn't exactly follow the path I took, but with a little luck it should get you there): First, head towards the town exit for the road that leads towards Tengboche, Gokyo etc. You should see a large mani stone on the right and a small fence with a gate on the left. Behind the gate are some pretty steep steps. Follow the steps till you reach a plateau area where you'll see the Syangboche airstrip on the left and a small ridge in front of you....

Backtracking a little to Khumbu (the Everest region), there's one place in particular that requires special mention: the Everest View Hotel. It's the highest hotel in the world and not only does the place provide a wonderful view of Ama Dablam and Lhotse (oh, and Everest), but it's notoriously difficult to find without a guide, as Lauren can attest. The view from the hotel - Ama Dablam on the far left, Lhotse in the middle and Everest just to the left. Everest, with Lhotse to the right Of course the view isn't always great, especially on cloudy days. Also by afternoon, you often get clouds coming in from the South (at least at this time of year) It's not so nice, but at least you can still see Ama Dablam here: But when the weather is good, even the reflection in the glass is magnificent. Sara had a little argument with a lady at the guest lodge in Khumjung who was complaining that the hotel was an 'abortion', what with its white concrete st...

Yesterday was Bhai Tika day, the last day of Tihar,when each bhai 'younger brother' receives tika from their sister(s). I was given the honour of being S.'s adopted little brother, so I got to receive tika, among other things. Quite a bit of preparation is required to give this tika, which is not like the red dots that the mad saddhus (holy men / crazy ascetics) dish out to tourists on the streets. The set-up requires a carpet (for the brother to sit on), along with a whole lot of other stuff in front of it. To the best of my knowledge, starting at the back on the left, there's white powder on the floor making a half-face, a guava, a pomelo, a butter candle, a small jar of water, a bowl of curd, a small plant (not sure if it's barley) stuck in a bit of cow dung, a bell, and a pot with some water and marigolds (with stalks). In front of these from the left are a plate of grain, a large plate of marigold petals, more white powder making another face (and a su...