Khasi () is an Austroasiatic language with just over a million speakers in north-east India, primarily the Khasi people in the state of Meghalaya. The closest relatives of Khasi are the other languages in the Khasic group of the Shillong Plateau; these include Pnar, Lyngngam and War.
Khasi is written using the Latin script. In the first half of the 19th century, attempts to write Khasi in Bengali-Assamese script were met with little success.
Etymology
The term Khasi is generally regarded as an autonym. The English form was recorded by early colonial administrators and Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century. A deeper linguistic etymology of the term has not been firmly established in the scholarly literature, and no consensus exists regarding its original meaning.
Geographic distribution and status Khasi is natively spoken by people in India (as of 2011). It is the first language of one-third of the population of Meghalaya, or , and its speakers are mostly found in the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills regions. There are also small Khasi-speaking communities in neighbouring states of India, the largest of which is in Assam: people. There is also a very small number of speakers in Bangladesh.
Khasi has been an associate official language of some districts within Meghalaya since 2005, as of 2012, was no longer considered endangered by UNESCO, and since 2026, it became a full-fledged official language of Meghalaya. There are demands to include this language to the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India.
A sizable number of books have been published in Khasi, including novels, poetry, religious works, school textbooks and non-fiction. The most famous Khasi poet is U Soso Tham (1873–1940), whose death is commemorated annually as a regional holiday in the state of Meghalaya. Khasi sees everyday use on the internet, including blogs and several online newspapers.
Dialects The Sohra dialect is taken as the standard form of Khasi, and it was the first dialect to be written in Latin and Bengali scripts by the British. Although standard Khasi is spoken by a majority in Shillong, it is significantly different from the other Shillong dialects which form a dialect continuum across the capital region.
Khasi has significant dialectal variation, and this presents a challenge with regard to classifying the Khasic languages. The following are the dialects that are spoken among the Khasi tribes: Sohra Khasi (Sohra dialogue is a local and mass Communication among the Khasi Tribes which is well known as Khasi language) Mylliem Khasi Mawlai Khasi Nongkrem Khasi War Khasi, not to be confused with the closely associated War language Bhoi Khasi Nonglung
Pnar, Maram (including Langrin) and Lyngngam have also been listed as varieties of Khasi. However, more recent studies seem to indicate that these are sister languages to Khasi, and that Khasi began as a marginal Pnar dialect.
Bhoi, from Nongpoh, and Nonglung from Umsning, in Ri Bhoi District, differ substantially from standard Khasi in their word order. They are different enough from standard Khasi to be sometimes considered separate languages, with Bhoi sometimes classified as intermediate between Khasi and Pnar, and Nonglung being part of Mnar, variously classified as a dialect of War or Pnar.
Phonology
This section discusses mainly the phonology of standard Khasi as spoken in and around the capital city, Shillong.
Khasi, mainly spoken in Meghalaya, is surrounded by unrelated languages: Assamese to the north and east, Sylheti to the south (both Indo-Aryan languages), Garo (a Tibeto-Burman language) to the west, and a plethora of other Tibeto-Burman languages including Manipuri, Mizo and Bodo.
Although over the course of time, language change has occurred, Khasi retains some distinctive features: Khasi remains a stress language, without tones, unlike many of its Tibeto-Burman neighbors. Like its Mon-Khmer relatives, Khasi has a large inventory of phonemic vowels (see below) The syllable structure of Khasi words resembles that of many Mon-Khmer languages, with many lexical items showing a CCVC shape, in which many combinations of consonants are possible in the onset (see examples below).
Consonants +Consonant phonemesLabialDentalAlveolarPost-alveolarPalatalVelarGlottal Nasal Stop Unaspirated Aspirated Affricate Unaspirated Aspirated Fricative Approximant Trill Lateral
+Examples IPA Translation IPA Translation mrad animal nar iron ñia aunt ngen wane pan ask phylla special blang goat bhoi Bhoi tdong tail thah ice dur picture dheng park krung rib khring entice jlaw howl jhieh wet syiem monarch shñiuh hair rynsan platform lieh white ïor snow wah river
Vowels
+Vowel phonemes Front Central Back Short Long Short Long Short Long Close Mid-Close Mid-Open Open
+Examples IPA Translation IPA Translation ding fire ih cooked ynda untilruhalso miet night iermat eyelashlumhill ud moan reng horn erïong whirlwind ong say Shillong Shillong sat spicy sad ceiling
Script
Before British colonization, some of the Khasi Syiems (Royals) used to keep official records and communicate with one another on paper primarily using the Bengali script. William Carey wrote the language with the Bengali script between 1813 and 1838, even sponsoring a Bible translation in Khasi with the assistance of Alexander B. Lish.
The Welsh missionary Thomas Jones arrived in Sohra on 22 June 1841 and proceeded to write down the local language in the Latin script. As a result, the modified Latin alphabet of the language has a few similarities with the Welsh alphabet. In 1842, the "First Khasi Reader" and a Rhodd Mam catechism became the first publications in the Khasi language. The first journal in Khasi was (The Messenger) published at Mawphlang in 1889 by William Williams. The first book in the Khasi language written by a native Khasi writer, Jeebon Roy, was published in 1897, and was entitled (The Religion of the Khasi).
Khasi alphabet Khasi in Latin script has a system distinct from that of English. Khasi uses a 23-letter alphabet by removing the letters c, f, q, v, x and z from the basic Latin alphabet and adding the diacritic letters ï and ñ, and the digraph ng, which is treated as a letter in its own right. The diagraph ng is also present in Welsh alphabet. +Khasi AlphabetCapital letters A B K D E G Ng H I Ï J L M N Ñ O P R S T U W YSmall lettersabkdegnghiïjlmnñoprstuwyEnglish Pronunciationahbeekaydeeayegengesheeyeejayellemmenneñohpeaaaressteeoodouble yuwhyAssameseআবকদএগঙহইযজলমনঞঅপৰসতউ ৱয়Bengaliআবকদএগঅংহইয়িজলমনঞওপরসতউঊঈ
Pronunciation Vowel length is not usually marked in the orthography, although it can be marked optionally by an acute accent (sim "bird" vs. rí "country"). The peculiar placement of k is due to it replacing c. c and ch were originally used in place of k and kh. When c was removed from the alphabet, k was put in its place. The inclusion of g is only due to its presence in the letter ng. It is not used independently in any word of native origin. h represents both the fricative sound as well as the glottal stop(ʔ) word-finally. y is not pronounced as in year, but is used for writing the close central unrounded vowel ([]) and the glottal stop between vowels. The sound in year is written with ï.
Digraphs Besides ng, which is considered a single letter in the alphabet, Khasi has 8 other digraphs: Aspirated consonants are represented by digraphs kh, ph and th. Breathy voiced consonants are represented by digraphs bh, dh and jh. The /ʃ/ in Khasi is written sh. The digraph ie represents the /e/ sound, as opposed to e, which represents the sound /ɛ/. This digraphs are not treated as single letters but rather as combinations of letters.
Lost Khasi Script
A local legend tells of how the Khasi people received their script from God, and that subsequently the Khasi people lost their script in a great flood. In 2017, it was reported that there is evidence of an undeciphered script, currently stored at the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samity Library in Guwahati, Assam, that is considered to be Khasi in origin.
Grammar
Khasi is an Austroasiatic language and has its distinct features of a large number of consonant conjuncts, with prefixing and infixing.
Pronouns singular plural 1st person ŋa ŋi 2nd person pʰi 3rd person u/ka ki Diminutive i Reflexive la ~ lade
Nouns and noun phrases
Word order The order of elements in a Khasi noun phrase is (Case marker)-(Demonstrative)-(Numeral)-(Classifier)-(Article)-Noun-(Adjective)-(Prepositional phrase)-(Relative clause), as can be seen from the following examples:
Gender Khasi has a pervasive gender system. There are four genders in this language:
+Gender markers in Khasi Marker Gendermasculinefemininediminutiveplural
Humans and domestic animals have their natural gender:
"mother" "father" "hen" "rooster"
Rabel (1961) writes: "the structure of a noun gives no indication of its gender, nor does its meaning, but Khasi natives are of the impression that nice, small creatures and things are feminine while big, ugly creatures and things are masculine....This impression is not borne out by the facts. There are countless examples of desirable and lovely creatures with masculine gender as well as of unpleasant or ugly creatures with feminine gender"
Though there are several counterexamples, Rabel says that there is some semantic regularity in the assignment of gender for the following semantic classes:
FeminineMasculinetimes, seasonsclothesreptiles, insects, flora, treesphysical features of natureheavenly bodiesmanufactured articlesedible raw materialtools for polishingtools for hammering, diggingtrees of soft fibretrees of hard fibre
The matrilineal aspect of the society can also be observed in the general gender assignment, where so, all central and primary resources associated with day-to-day activities are signified as Feminine; whereas Masculine signifies the secondary, the dependent or the insignificant.
FeminineMasculineSun (Ka Sngi)Moon (U Bnai)Wood (Ka Dieng)Tree (U Dieng)Honey (Ka Ngap)Bee (U Ngap)House (Ka Ïing)Column (U Rishot)Cooked rice (Ka Ja)Uncooked rice (U Khaw)
Note: However do note that there are no such universal rules for gender assignment of nouns in Khasi. There are a lot of exceptions and one such is ('flower'), which is stereotypically considered feminine but is accompanied with masculine gender signifier "u" i.e. . This gender assignment to nouns is highly depended on what the native speakers assign the noun which they all naturally agree upon but which can vary sometimes like according to the mood or tone.
Classifiers Khasi has a classifier system, apparently used only with numerals. Between the numeral and noun, the classifier is used for non-humans, and the classifier ngut is used for humans, e.g.
Adjectives There is some controversy about whether Khasi has a class of adjectives. Roberts cites examples like the following:
In nearly all instances of attributive adjectives, the apparent adjective has the prefix /ba-/, which seems to be a relativiser. There are, however, a few adjectives without the /ba-/ prefix:
When the adjective is the main predicate, it may appear without any verb 'be':
In this environment, the adjective is preceded by an agreement marker, like a verb. Thus it may be that Khasi does not have a separate part of speech for adjectives, but that they are a subtype of verb.
Prepositions and prepositional phrases Khasi appears to have a well-developed group of prepositions, among them "with, and" "with (instrumental)" "from" "in, at" "in, at" "of"
The following are examples of prepositional phrases:
Verbs and verb phrases
Agreement Verbs agree with 3rd person subjects in gender, but there is no agreement for non-3rd persons (Roberts 1891):