Chungli Ao language

During the American Baptist Mission to Naga Hills, Dr E.W. Clark first came in contact with the Molungkimong village that paved the way for a common Ao language. Chungli Ao is spoken in Molungkimong and Molungyimsen and other villages throughout Ao territory by roughly 50% of the Ao-speaking population. The speech of Molungkimong is the prestige dialect due to Baptist missionaries' influence. Most Ao can speak Chungli even if they are from Mongsen-speaking regions. Chungli is taught in schools. Various trans-Dikhu neighbouring dialects of Chungli Ao are spoken east of the Dikhu River in Yacham, Tengsa, and Longla. These are poorly documented; Yacham and Tengsa may be separate languages (van Driem 2001).

Chungli Ao is a tonal language. There are three distinct tonal levels: low, mid and high. There is evidence to prove that low and mid as well as low and high are contrastive. Chungli also has two contour tones, which are high-low and low-mid, though they are quite rare.

1) Chungli Ao is an agglutinative language where the verbs lack person and number marking. For example:

PREFIX – STEM -LEXICAL SUFFIX – DERIV. SUFFIX – INFLEC. SUFFIX

me- NEG             -maʔ ‘completely’   -tsɨʔ BEN             -tsɨ IRR
te- PROH            -et ‘persistently’  -tep RECIP            -əɹ PRES 
                     etc.                etc.                  etc. 

This applies for both finite and non-finite forms of the verb.

2) The following table shows the case marking present in Chungli Ao.[3]