Till
very recently this language was not put into writing. Since 1951 there has been some activities in
this field. Before 1951 the only book
written in Konyak (actually a translation into this language) was the
Bible. In 1951 an adult primer was
published. But the next to appear was
only in 1963. From the day the Nagaland
state was found in 1963, encouragement was given to literary activities in the
form of establishing the Directorate of Education, by the State Government to
give the needed impetus and direction to literary activities and also it took
responsibility to produce basic text books in various languages of the
state. For this purpose it appointed a
language officer for each language.
Spoken in the state and they were given the responsibility to write text
books to be used in all the schools of the state, and also various other
teaching materials reprinted for teaching purpose.
Besides
this department, not much work has been done by others. Also, for the Konyaks, the literary rate is
too low. Except for a few important
villages in the lower Konyak region, elsewhere literary activities are unheard
of. Therefore education is still in the
beginning stages in this region.
The
credit of putting this language into writing goes to the Baptist missionaries,
as elsewhere, in this region. They
adopted Roman script for writing this language.
As Konyak has a few contrastive sounds which are not found in English
(Roman), the roman script was not adequate.
Though the modifications required were of great order, only addition of
one letter was effected. So the present
writing system as adipted for Konyak language has the following letters – a, b,
c, d, e, g, h, I, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, s, t, u, w, and y. The added letter is ü.
Inadequacies
of this system and some suggestions to make it more effective are stated below:
1. In the present writing system, tone, which is
a significant feature is left unmarked.
It creates problems in reorganizing the tones in words in isolation and
for non-native speakers. So the tone has
to be marked. It is preferable to mark
the tones as linearly as possible. It
facilitates speed of writing. While the
level tone (Konyak has three tones, level, raising and falling) can be left
unmarked, rising tone may be marked by doubling the vowel on which the toneme
occurs (eg. ni as nii) (as identical vowel sequences are not possible); and the
falling tone may be marked by a micron, ‘-‘ placing it above the vowel which
takes this toneme (eg. è as ē).
2.Looking at the above alphabet list and the
phonemic system of this language, it becomes clear that in the present
orthography there are four letters b, d, g and j which are not required, as
they are allophones of voiceless stops – p, t, k, and c respectively.
So
b, d and j of the above four letters may be dropped while the fourth may be
retained, as it is required to write velar nasal ŋ (ng).
3.In the present writing system to transcribe
the phonemes /ɨ/, and /ə/, only one letter ü is used. But it is not used consistently. While /ɨ/ is written inconsistently as ü, I
or by e. Eg. : püli/pili/peli ‘four’; lim/lem ‘three’; nik/nük/nek ‘food’; cüng/ching
‘village’. To avoid confusion it is
better to use ü consistently for /ɨ/.
Also
/ə/ is transcribed at present by e or ü.
Eg. : pey/püy ‘come’; pen/pün
‘ten’; mepu/müpu ‘from’, and
etc. Here /ə/ may be consistently
transcbed as ë. Eg. : pën ‘ten’, mëpu
‘from’, etc.
4. Konyak does not make distinction between
alveolar s and palatal s. Actually Konyak
has only prepalatal fricative. So it is
sufficient to use only s and there is no need for sh.
5.In the case of palatal affricate /c/ , it is
inconsistently transcribed either by c or by j.Frequently j is used before e, a and o, ɨ and also intervocally. But this is not consistently adhered to.
Also
palatal affricate /c/ is frequently written as ch which is also not required,
eg. :
Ca/cha/ja ‘one’
Cüng/ching ‘village’
Jumshe ‘soon’,
etc.
Here
it is better to restrict to c alone instead of using either ch or j; which is not required.
6. Glottal stop is not used strictly. This may be restored. It may be transcribed as h. Though there is a glottal fricative, except
in medical position, they do not contrast.
/ka?ta/ - kata/kahta ‘man’
/ŋo?/ - ngo/ngoh ‘is’
Also
the contrasting pairs are very few. So
in this case it is better to use h itself, (for glottal stop and glottal
fricative).
7. Diphthongs are inconsistently used. Some times diphthongs are simplified, eg. :
[təw] ‘I’ ……………. Tò/tào/tüo
‘mahaw’ ‘cow’ ……………. Maho/mahao
Here also consistently they may be used.
For the unambiguous representation the following
letters are required –
Phonme Grapheme
i
i
e
e
ɨ ü
ə ë
a a
o o
u u
p p
ph ph
t t
c c
k k
kh kh
? h
m m
n n
ñ ny
ŋ ng
s s
h h
l l
w w
y y
Tones
are marked for ‘rising’ by doubling of the vowel ; falling by using a macron
‘—‘ on the vowel ; and level tone is left unmarked.
The
following table gives the phonemes with their allophones of the Konyak language
and their corresponding graphic representations in the current writing system
of Konyak.
Phoneme Allophone Grapheme
i
[i]
I
e
[e]
e
ɨ
[ɨ]
u, i,
ə
[ə]
u, e,
a
[a]
a
[a:]
o
[o]
o
[o:]
u
[u]
u
[u:]
p
[p]
p,b
[b]
ph
[ph]
ph
t
[t]
t
[t]
c
[c]
ch,
[j]
j
k
[k]
k
[g]
g
kh
[kh]
kh
?
[?]
h
m
[m]
m
n
[n]
n
ñ
[ñ]
ny
ŋ
[ŋ]
ng
s
[s]
sh
h
[h]
h ; Ø
l
[l]
l
w
[w]
u
y
[y]
I
Devanagari
equivalents are given below for the benefit of those interested to write this
language in Devanagari script.
Phoneme
Roman script Devanagari
script
i i
e e
ɨ
ü
ə ‘ë’
a a
o o
u u
p p
ph ph
t t
c c
k k
kh kh
? h
m m
n n
ñ ny
ŋ ng
s s
h h
l l
w w
y y