Zou language

The set of 23 Zou consonantal phonemes can be established on the basis of the following minimal pairs or overlapping words. Besides these 23 Phonemes, 1 consonant is a borrowed phoneme (i.e. /r/), which is found only in loan words, in very rare cases (e.g. /r/ in /rəŋ/ "color"). Along with these consonants, Zou has 7 vowels: i, e, a, ɔ, o, u, ə.^[4]

Zou is often written in a Latin script developed by Christian missionary J.H. Cope (see below). In 1952, M. Siahzathang of Churachandpur created an alternative script known as Zolai or Zoulai, an alphabetic system with some alphasyllabic characteristics. The user community for the script is growing—Zou cultural, political, and literary organizations began to adopt the script beginning in the 1970s, and more recently, the Manipur State Government has shown support for both Siahzathang and the script.^[5][6]

Zou among the Northeastern Kuki-Chin languages is closely related to the Central languages such as the Duhlian (Lusei/Lushai) or Mizo language (endonym in Duhlian or Lushai is Mizo ṭawng), the lingua franca language of Mizoram.^{[citation needed]}

Zou as spoken in India is similar to the Paite language of the Paite, though Zou lacks the word-final glottal stops present in Paite.^[10][11]

At its largest extent, the geographic area covered by the language group is a territory of approximately 60,000 square miles (160,000 km2) in size, in Burma, India and Bangladesh.^[12] However political boundaries and political debates have distorted the extent of the area in some sources.^[13]