Tedim language

The Tedim language is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken mostly in the southern Indo-Burmese border. It is the native language of the Tedim tribe of the Zomi people, and a form of standardized dialect merging from the Sukte and Kamhau dialects. It is a subject-object verb language, and negation follows the verb. It is mutually intelligible with the Paite language.

Zomi was the primary language spoken by Pau Cin Hau, a religious leader who lived from 1859 to 1948. He also devised a logographic and later simplified alphabetic script for writing materials in Zomi.

The phonology of Zomi can be described as (C)V(V)(C)T order, where C represents a consonant, V represents a vowel, T represents a tone, and parentheses enclose optional constituents of a syllable.

• Approximants [j, w] can be heard as allophones of vowels /i̯, u̯/ within diphthongs.
• /x/ can also be heard as an aspirated velar stop [kʰ] in free variation.

• Sounds /ɛ, ɔ/ may have short allophones of more close [e, o].