Chang Language

The Chang tribe is one of those Naga tribes which occupy the hinterland, as it were, of Naga Hills district, stretching back to the high range, which divides Assam from Burma. As a tribe the Changes are of unknown origin. About eleven generations ago, according to their own recking, the present village of Tuensang, the fountain head of the tribe, was founded by elements coming from the south, from the Central Naga tribe kknown as Yimtsungr, in combination with Konyaks of the eastern Naga group from the defunct village of changsung, situated to the north-east of what is now Tuensang. The language of the Chang Nagas less hybrid than the blood, as the Konyak element seems to have predominated in speech in proportion as it has succumbed in culture. The Konyak element has prevailed in Chang speech is to be inferred from the absent of R, which is regularly used by the Yimtsung but which the Konyak group cannot pronounce at all. The rough outline of the grammar and the limited vocabulary that follow here were the results of the writer’s efforts to acquire the Chang language at Mokokchung between 1915 and 1917, and the author is fully conscious of their shortcomings, but hopes that this publication is justified by the fact that up to the present no other attempts have been made to learn the tongue or to give any account of it.