Meitei language

Meitei
Manipuri
ꯃꯩꯇꯩꯂꯣꯟ
Native toManipur, Assam and Tripura
Region India
 Bangladesh
 Myanmar
EthnicityMeitei ethnicity
Native speakers
1.8 million (2011) to 1.5 million (2011 census)
Sino-Tibetan
  • Tibeto-Burman
    • Meitei
Dialects
Meitei script,
Bengali alphabet and
Latin alphabet (to a lesser extent)
Official status
Official language in
 India
Language codes
ISO 639-2mni
ISO 639-3Either:
mni – Meetei
omp – Old Manipuri
omp Old Manipuri
Glottologmani1292
Part of a series on
Constitutionally recognised languages of India
Category
Scheduled Languages

A
Assamese
B
Bengali
Bodo
D
Dogri
G
Gujarati
H
Hindi
K
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
M
Maithili
Malayalam
Marathi
Meitei (Manipuri)
N
Nepali
O
Odia (Oriya)
P
Punjabi
S
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
T
Tamil
Telugu
U
Urdu

Related

Official languages of India
Languages with official status in India

Meitei language, officially known as Manipuri language, is the official language, the lingua franca and the most widely spoken language of the Indian state of Manipur. It developed from the Old Meitei. It is also one of the official languages of Assam. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.

On 11th May of 2022, Meitei language was supported by Google Translate among 8 newly added Indian languages out of 24 total newly added languages at the same time.

Meitei and Gujarati together are the third fastest growing languages of India, after Hindi and Kashmiri.

Meitei is the only non tribal Indian language in the Sino–Tibetan language family. It is the only Sino-Tibetan language of India, whose literary tradition is well established before the starting of the colonial times.

The use of writing systems in Tibeto-Burman languages appears to be very restricted. Meitei (or Manipuri) is one of four Tibeto-Burman languages with an old written tradition (the other three being Tibetan, Burmese, and Newar).

Software

System / PlatformCategoryScript SupportAccess PlatformsCore Features / Notes Ref.
Google Translate Global commercial Meitei Mayek Web browser, Android/iOS Apps, Cloud Translation API for general consumer use.
Microsoft Translator Global commercial Meitei Mayek & Romanised Bing Translator, MS Office Integration, Azure Cognitive API translates documents directly within Word, Excel, and Outlook workflows.
Bhashini (Anuvadak) Indian national initiative Meitei Mayek Web portal, Bhashini Mobile App, Government Open APIs built by the Government of India; features high-quality voice-to-voice translation with male/female speech engines.
Sarvam AI Indian enterprise AI Meitei Mayek & Romanised Unified Indic Language Developer API low-latency neural translation pipeline designed for developers building Indian-context LLM applications.
ModernMT Enterprise localization Meitei script Paid Enterprise Web Portal, Developer API uses adaptive neural networks that dynamically learn from user corrections; features automatic translation quality estimation.
Meitei Mayek Platform (MeiteiMayek.com) Specialized / Cultural Meitei Mayek Web tools, offline-first developer utilities dedicated platform for script preservation, cultural translation, and native script conversion tools.
NITS-CNLP Systems (NIT Silchar) Academic research Primarily Meitei Mayek script (English pairs) Academic open-source repositories (WMT benchmarks) high-performing research-grade models optimized for benchmarking English-to-Manipuri translation pairs.
NiuTrans & TexTra Open-Source Framework Machine-readable Meitei text Self-hosted server architectures, custom API pipelines for developer teams needing to deploy, train, and host their own private translation servers.

References

  1. ↑ Moseley, C., ed. (2010). Atlas of the world's languages in danger (3rd ed). Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
  2. ↑ Meetei at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Old Manipuri at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  3. 1 2 "Manipuri language in 8th Schedule by Jeet Akoijam".
  4. 1 2 "Languages added in the 8th schedule of Indian Constitution". 11 April 2020.
  5. ↑ Khongbantabam Naobi Devi, Ph,D. "Origin and Development of the Meetei Language" (PDF). Department of English, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, Tamilnadu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 April 2018. Retrieved 19 July 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ "Omp | ISO 639-3".
  7. ↑ "Multitree | the LINGUIST List".
  8. ↑ "OLAC resources in and about the Old Manipuri language". Archived from the original on 2021-07-29. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  9. ↑ "Assam recognises Manipuri as associate official language in four districts". Hindustan Times. 2024-02-24. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  10. ↑ PTI (2024-02-24). "Assam Cabinet gives nod to recognise Manipuri as associate official language in four districts". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  11. ↑ "Assam Cabinet gives nod to recognise Manipuri as associate official language in four districts". The Indian Express. 2024-02-24. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  12. ↑ "Languages Included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution | Department of Official Language | Ministry of Home Affairs | GoI".
  13. ↑ "Google Translate gets support for 24 additional languages". GSMArena.com. Retrieved 2022-05-12.
  14. ↑ "Google I/O 2022: Google Translate adds support for 24 new languages including 8 Indian languages". Moneycontrol. Retrieved 2022-05-12.
  15. ↑ R, Aishwaryaa (6 June 2019). "What census data reveals about use of Indian languages". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
  16. ↑ Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. 2005-11-24. p. 8991. ISBN 978-0-08-054784-8. ... All the languages of Sino-Tibetan (except Meithei) and Austro-Asiatic are tribal. Languages whose literary traditions started before the colonial period are 11 in Indo-Aryan, one in Dardic (Kashmiri), four in Dravidian, and one in Tibeto-Burman (Meithei). Indian languages use 10 script systems other than a revived old script (for Meithei) and a newly invented script (Ol chiki for Santali); ...
  17. ↑ Contributions to Nepalese Studies. Nepal: Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University (in collaboration with University of Michigan), 1993. p. 171. "The use of writing systems in T-B seems to be very restricted. Newari is one of four T-B languages with an old written tradition (the other three being Tibetan, Burmese and Manipuri) and the only member of the Himalayan group with such a tradition. ..."
  18. ↑ "Google Translate adds 24 languages and dialects, including Manipuri". www.thesangaiexpress.com. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  19. ↑ "Google updates Assamese, Meiteilon, Mizo to Google Translate". 2022-05-12. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  20. ↑ "Google I/O 2022: Android multi-device support, new Google Translate languages and more". The Indian Express. 2022-05-12. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  21. ↑ "Google Translate learns 24 new languages". Google. 2022-05-11. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  22. ↑ Source, Microsoft (2024-01-25). "Microsoft Translator adds two new languages – Chhattisgarhi and Manipuri". Microsoft Stories India. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  23. ↑ "Microsoft adds two new Indian languages to Translator service". The Times of India. 2024-01-25. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  24. ↑ "Microsoft adds two more Indian languages to Microsoft Translator". Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  25. ↑ "Microsoft Translator now features Manipuri". www.thesangaiexpress.com. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  26. ↑ Upadhyay, Vishal (2024-01-25). "Microsoft Translator adds Chhattisgarhi and Manipuri languages: All you need to know". India TV News. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  27. ↑ "Bhashini-AI4Bharat Textual Language Detection v1.0 | Landing". aikosh.indiaai.gov.in. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  28. ↑ "DIGITAL INDIA BHASHINI DIVISION-DIC" (PDF). Government of India.
  29. 1 2 3 "Meitei". Machine Translate. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  30. ↑ "sarvamtranslate | Landing". aikosh.indiaai.gov.in. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  31. ↑ "Translation | Sarvam API Docs". docs.sarvam.ai. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  32. ↑ "ModernMT". Machine Translate. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  33. ↑ "Meitei Mayek". www.meiteimayek.com. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  34. ↑ "WMT24 System Description for the MultiIndic22MT Shared Task on Manipuri Language" (PDF). Centre for Natural Language Processing (CNLP) & Dept. of CSE, NIT Silchar, India.
  35. ↑ "Quantifying the Impact of Data Scale and Quality on Neural Machine Translation for Low-Resource Language Pair". www.semanticscholar.org. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
  36. ↑ "Integration of Reduplicated Multiword Expressions and Named Entities in a Phrase Based Statistical Machine Translation System". www.semanticscholar.org. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
General references