Art. XXI.—Southern Chin Vocabulary (Minbu District)

Extract

The accompanying words and phrases of Southern Chin, as spoken at the foot of the Arakan Yoma Mountains in the Minbu district, were taken down a few years since by Major B. A. N. Parrott, I.S.C., who later on presented to me the book in which they were, written, along with others on Oriental subjects. They are interesting as representing the most Northern dialect of this language, which reaches its most Southern point in the Sandoway district. (I pass by the dialect spoken in Bassein and the South of Henzada as being much corrupted by the extended intercourse which has there taken place between the Chins and the Burmans.) In publishing now this Vocabulary of Minbu Chin it has seemed advisable to compare it word by word with that of the Sandoway district, not merely in order to show more clearly the dialectic variations which exist, but also as an assistance towards the elucidation of the still obscure philological laws which obtain in this family of languages. In a speech which has suffered so extraordinarily from phonetic corruption and decay as this latter, all evidence which will in any way tend to join together the scattered links of verbal stems and endings must be considered as scientifically useful.