Adi language

Adi is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan branch. It is mostly spoken by the Adi people in Arunachal Pradesh, India. It is also referred to by names such as Abor, Abor-Miri, or Lhoba.

Classification

It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Tani languages. Adi is typically grouped with other Eastern Tani languages, such as Mising. Its exact classification, is still being researched by language scholars.

Researchers have discovered that the majority of the Tani languages share the same vocabulary and grammar, but the various dialects of Adi may differ greatly in the way they are spoken and the vocabulary employed.

Dialects

Adi is not one language, but a group of similar dialects. The major varieties are:

• Padam
• Minyong
• Shimong
• Pasi
• Bori
• Karkot

Local communities can also identify subvarieties. The speakers generally can understand one another, but they have variations of sounds, vocabulary, and some sentence patterns. These dialect differences reflect partly how the Adi people are distributed in various areas of Arunachal Pradesh.

Orthography and script

Historically, Adi did not have an original script. Writing in Adi first emerged in the early twentieth century when Christian missionaries began writing down the language. In 1906, missionaries J. H. Lorrain and F. W. Savidge prepared an Abor‐Miri dictionary with the help of native speakers, a work upon which written Adi was first based.

In later decades, standardization of the script has been driven by bodies such as the Adi Agom Kebang, the highest literary authority for the language. This body has encouraged the use of a variant Roman script of 28 letters and two further letters (É and Í) to represent sounds not present in English orthography.

The script also employs diacritical marks to represent vowel length, one of the most significant phonological properties of the language.

Literature and language development

Reading and Language Development as missionary activities began in the early 1900s, Adi literature has continued to develop over the years. Initial works, such as the dictionary discussed previously, were primarily religious conversion and education. Gradually, local authors and teachers have contributed to producing a range of literature, including textbooks, folkloric collections, and other works to preserve the language.

Adi is a third language taught in most schools in Arunachal Pradesh where Adi communities are prevalent, and current projects continue to produce more literary and educational materials in the language.

Phonology and grammar

The Adi sound system shares many similarities with other Tibeto-Burman languages. It contains a large number of consonants and vowels but a broad contrast of vowel length. Adi contains approximately 2088 unique words.

Adi has some typical grammatical features of the Tani languages. It has a straightforward word order of subject–object–verb (SOV) and agglutinative morphology with multiple suffixes to indicate the grammatical relations. Adi, like most Tibeto‐Burman languages, is evidential and has complex systems for marking tense, aspect, and mood.

The Milang and Adi languages are grammatically very close and have the same grammatical features.

Usage

Adi is a informal language that people use in the Adi community. Like many of the local languages in the region, though, it is threatened by larger languages, including Hindi and Assamese. In spite of such threats, efforts in the community to revive and maintain Adi have kept it popular, especially in rural communities.

According to the 2009 Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger by UNESCO, some Tani languages are endangered, meaning that there is still a need for ongoing support and documentation of the language.