Sümi language

Sümi, also Sema, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nagaland, India. It is spoken by the Sümi Naga people. It differs from every other Naga languages due to the presence of guttural sounds.

According to the 2011 Census of India, the Sümi Naga had a Scheduled Tribe population of 236,313 in Nagaland.

Geographical distribution

Sümi is spoken in central and southern Nagaland, mainly in Zünheboto District. There are also good number of speakers in parts of Niuland, Dimapur, Chümoukedima and Kiphire District(s), as well as in 7 villages of Tinsukia District, Assam (Ethnologue).

Dialects

Ethnologue lists the following dialects of Sümi.

• Dayang (Western Sümi)
• Lazami
• Jimomi
• Zumomi

Phonology

The transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Vowels

The vowels of Sümi are as follows:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Notes:

• The close front and the close central vowels have been variously described as near-close [i̞, ɨ̞] and close [i, ɨ]. The close back vowel has only been described as close [u].
  • In the word-medial position, /ɨ/ can be realized as mid [ə].
• The mid vowels /e, o/ can be realized as either close-mid [e, o] or open-mid [ɛ, ɔ].
  • Teo (2012) describes the close-mid allophone of /o/ as slightly advanced [o̟].
• /a/ has been variously described as near-open [ɐ] and open [ä].
  • After uvular stops, /a/ can be realized as open back unrounded [ɑ].

References

Bibliography

External links

• Sümi DoReCo corpus compiled by Amos Teo. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.

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