Endangered language challenge #4: Kusunda language
Kusunda (Kusanda, mihaq) is a language spoken by the Kusunda people in Nepal. It was originally thought to have died in 1985. But 2004, 3 speakers were discovered and most of the documentation we have today results from intense work with them. They belong to the ethnic group of Kusunda or Ban Raja, which is translated as “The Kings of the Forest”. It is an exonym, given by outsiders and not themselves, and it points to the fact that many Kusundas live in the forest. They have no problems with the term “Kusunda” (while in some regions of India it is used as an insult) but they refer to themselves as “mihaq” the peoples. Nowadays, there are only 160 ethnic Kusundas left. Of the 3 remaining speakers, none is monolingual, all of them also use Nepali. They all married outside their ethnic group and no child is raised in this language anymore, making Kusunda a moribund language. While most speakers vary widely in their fluency, Gyani Maiyi Sen is the most famous speaker and the most fluent if not only native one, she often gets referred to as the last speaker. (She is depicted in this video.)
The interesting thing about Kusunda is, while earlier researchers thought of it as a Tibeto-Burman variety, it is now evident that it is a language isolate, thus, not related to any other known language. It is probably the last remnant of languages that were spoken before the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Iranian languages came to that region and it is not related to the Munda or Dravidian languages. The groundwork was laid by David Watters 2005 when he published the workings from the intense working with the three remaining speakers in a Kusunda grammar, which offers grammatical, typological and vocabulary insights.
Kusunda Phonology
Kusunda hat some interesting features: - It has six vowels that oppose each other in vowel harmonies, making them phonologically only three phonemes. Normally, only /i, ə, u/ or only /e, a, o/ can be together in one word. Theoretically, one set could be replaced by the other set without changing the meaning. - Kusunda is phonologically very distinct to its surroundings: It has uvular and pharyngealized consonants that don’t appear in neighbouring languages, and while retroflex consonants are prevalent in that region they don’t occur in Kusunda. - While English contrasts sounds by the place of articulation and the articulator, in Kusunda, mostly only the active articulator is of importance. So, it wouldn’t matter where the tip of the tongue (apical consonants) produces a sound, but only that it is done by it. Throughout the words, one would find apical consonants that are dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal without changing the meaning. Even voicing, like the difference between /p/ and /b/, seems to play a minor role, as does aspiration, and many sounds can be stops here and fricatives there.
Kusunda Grammar
Very strikingly and highly unique among the world’s languages is the way Kusunda distinguishes between marked and unmarked structures. Irrealis would be a marked feature in comparison to the unmarked realis, same goes for negativity versus affirmation and other features. Normally, languages would make use of affixes or other means to denote these structures. Kusunda however, deploys a harmonic autosegmental process (often called mutation) that applies to the whole word. An apical consonant would then shift to a laminal consonant, a velar consonant to a uvular one and the first set of vowels would change to the second one, in order to mark the irrealis in contrast to the realis of the negativity in contrast to the affirmative modus. Here is an example: If you say “I go” you would apply the realis because it is present time. The form would be /ts-əg-ən/, but if you want to say “I will go” you have to use the irrealis and thus change the consonants’ articulator: /tʃ-aɢʕ-an/ - as you see, the velar /g/ of the root becomes uvular /ɢʕ/ (among the other changes) and is thus marking the irrealis by mutation.
Verbs are roughly divided into two groups. Class I gets personal prefixes and numeral suffixes: First persons are indicated by /t-/ or /ts-/, second persons by /n-/ and the third persons by /g-/ or others. The singular is indicated by the suffix /-Vn/ (V stands for a vowel) and the plural by the suffix /-da-/ that comes directly after the root and is followed by /-n/. So, you can distinguish “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “You eat” (n-əm-ən), or “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “We eat” (t-əm-da-n). The prefixes also resemble the first consonants of the personal pronouns a lot, which are /tsi/ and /tok/ for the 1. P. Sg. & Pl., /nu/ and /nok/ for the 2. P. Sg. & Pl. and /gina/ for the 3. P. which has no distinction between plural or singular. The verbs from Class I are few in number and highly irregular.
Most verbs are in Class II, which differ in a lot of features from Class I verbs. If the verb is transitive, the conjugated forms of “I made, we made, you made, etc.” come after the verb root. So, if you want to put the verb “to buy” /dza/ in the first person singular you add /a-t-n̩/ which simply means “I made” > dza-a-t-n̩ (I made buying). If the verb is intransitive, you simply add the personal pronoun after the root and add a /-n/. From “to enter” /sip/ you would simply come to “I enter” by adding /tsi/ and /-n/ > /sip-tsi-n/.
That is just a peek into the grammar, there are a lot of very interesting and unique features that Kusunda has to offer and it is definitely worth a further look into the grammar David Watters wrote.
Kusunda Phrases
The Australian National University in Canberra has some very good resources on Kusunda on their website. If you want to hear the sound files to the following phrases or other sentences or even texts, visit this website.
Sodzaq! - Greetings! (hello or goodbye) Tsi gidzi Gyani Maiya - My name is Gyani Maiya Tsi tugun - I've come (I'm here) Nəti? - Who (is it)? Nu wee? - Are you well? Nətn nitn? - What did you say? Hampena nugun? - Where have you come from? Ni whi hampe? - Where is your house? Tsi whi Kulmor - My house is in Kulmore Garaw əni - It's hot Idang ugun - I'm hungry Pəwhəiran əni - I'm tired Aw təgəi! - Let's go! Hana nyhaan? - Where are you going? Kafera muitsidaq - We'll meet again
Gyani Maiya’s words about the language loss: Ta gepən mi: əndzi - This language is going to be lost. Nətima gepən ədu - There is none to talk with. Mjaqa tsi toqdu ta qau nətn ba - I am alone and if I died, then there is nothing. Ləmbə ədi ta nəti ləmbə əgəndzi - Though I am ready to teach, is there anyone to learn? Toqdu bela ənin jiodze gepən əgu ta ləmbə əgu ta we: da - It would be better if they learnt since I am very old now.
Kusunda sources
See for further linguistic material the link to Glottolog and check the links under the Wikipedia article or the Links page of the ANU Kusunda Linguistics article.
Ethnologue: Kusunda language Glottolog: Kusunda language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusunda_language Kusunda grammar, David Watters (2006) Kusunda Linguistics, information, texts, audio (Australian National University)