Khasi () is an Austroasiatic language with just over a million speakers in north-east India, primarily the Khasi people in the state of Meghalaya. It has associate official status in some districts of this state. The closest relatives of Khasi are the other languages in the Khasic group of the Shillong Plateau; these include Pnar, Lyngngam and War.
Khasi is written using the Latin script. In the first half of the 19th century, attempts to write Khasi in Bengali-Assamese script met with little success.
Etymology
Geographic distribution and status
Khasi is natively spoken by people in India (as of 2011). It is the first language of one-third of the population of Meghalaya, or , and its speakers are mostly found in the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills regions. There are also small Khasi-speaking communities in neighbouring states of India, the largest of which is in Assam: people. There is also a very small number of speakers in Bangladesh.
Khasi has been an associate official language of some districts within Meghalaya since 2005, and as of 2012, was no longer considered endangered by UNESCO. There are demands to include this language to the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India.
A sizeable number of books have been published in Khasi, including novels, poetry, religious works, school textbooks and non-fiction. The most famous Khasi poet is U Soso Tham (1873–1940), whose death is commemorated annually as a regional holiday in the state of Meghalaya. Khasi has a good presence on the internet, including blogs and several online newspapers.
Dialects
Khasi has significant dialectal variation, and this presents a challenge with regard to classifying the Khasic languages.
Some dialects of Khasi include: Sohra Khasi Mylliem Khasi Mawlai Khasi Nongkrem Khasi War Khasi, not to be confused with the closely associated War language Bhoi Khasi Nonglung
In addition, Pnar, Maram (including Langrin) and Lyngngam have been listed as types of Khasi, although more recent studies seem to indicate that these are sister languages to Khasi, and that Khasi actually began as a marginal Pnar dialect.
Bhoi, from Nongpoh, and Nonglung from Umsning, in Ri Bhoi District, differ substantially from Standard Khasi in their word order. They are distinct enough from Standard Khasi to be sometimes considered separate languages, with Bhoi sometimes classified as intermediate between Khasi and Pnar, and Nonglung being part of Mnar, variously classified as a type of War or of Pnar. On the other hand, Sohra and War Khasi are lexically very similar.
The Sohra dialect is taken as Standard Khasi, as it was the first dialect to be written in Latin and Bengali scripts by the British. While Standard Khasi is spoken by majority in Shillong, it is in turn significantly different from the other Shillong dialects (eight at most) which form a dialect continuum across the capital region.
Phonology
This section discusses mainly the phonology of Standard Khasi as spoken in and around the capital city, Shillong.
Khasi, mainly spoken in Meghalaya, is surrounded by unrelated languages: Assamese to the north and east, Bengali to the south (both Indo-Aryan languages), Garo (a Tibeto-Burman language) to the west, and a plethora of other Tibeto-Burman languages including Manipuri, Mizo and Bodo.
Although over the course of time, language change has occurred, Khasi retains some distinctive features: Khasi remains a stress language, without tones, unlike many of its Tibeto-Burman neighbors. Like its Mon-Khmer relatives, Khasi has a large inventory of phonemic vowels (see below) The syllable structure of Khasi words resembles that of many Mon-Khmer languages, with many lexical items showing a CCVC shape, in which many combinations of consonants are possible in the onset (see examples below).
Consonants
Vowels
Script
Before British colonization, some of the Khasi Syiems (Royals) used to keep official records and communicate with one another on paper primarily using the Bengali script. William Carey wrote the language with the Bengali script between 1813 and 1838. A large number of Khasi books were written in the Bengali script, including the famous book Ka Niyom Jong Ki Khasi or The Religion of the Khasis, which is an important work on the Khasi religion.
The Welsh missionary, Thomas Jones, arrived in Sohra on June 22, 1841, and proceeded to write down the local language in the Latin script. As a result, the modified Latin alphabet of the language has a few similarities with the Welsh alphabet. The first journal in Khasi was U Nongkit Khubor (The Messenger) published at Mawphlang in 1889 by William Williams.