Nuitah Zophei Swadesh List

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary 100-item Swadesh word list for Nuitah Zophei. Zophei or Zyphe (ISO 639-3 ZYP) belongs to the Maraic branch of Kuki-Chin within the Tibeto-Burman language family (Eberhard et. al, 2020). Nuitah (also known as Leitak) is a village in the southern part of the Zophei-speaking area in Thantlang Township, Chin State, Myanmar. The word list comes from the intuitions of our co-author Kimberly Biakthapar Sakhong, a 21-year-old native speaker born in Nuitah village of Zophei parents (both from Nuitah), who lived for some of her childhood in Hakha and Malaysia before moving to the US. She currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. She also speaks Hakha Lai, Senthang, and English.