Khublei! When a greeting opens a door onto the hills

Imagine being born and receiving two names.

The first is written on official documents. The second never appears on a form: it is a melody composed for you by your mother.

If you are nearby, people use a short version. If you are far away, among trees, fields and hills, a longer sequence of sounds can travel towards you. There is no need to shout:

“Marcooooo!”

You simply sing or whistle your own little musical signature.

This tradition exists in Kongthong, a village in Meghalaya, north-eastern India, and is known as Jingrwai Iawbei.

But be careful: the people of Kongthong do not speak a mysterious “whistled language” instead of Khasi. They speak Khasi and, alongside ordinary personal names, preserve a traditional system of melodic calls.

What is Khasi?

Khasi, also called Ka Ktien Khasi, belongs to the Austroasiatic language family.

It is therefore not related to English, nor to Hindi, French, German or Italian. English, French, German and Italian all belong to the Indo-European family, although they occupy different branches within it.

Khasi belongs to a large Asian language family that also includes Vietnamese and Khmer in different branches. This does not mean that a Khasi speaker can automatically understand a Vietnamese speaker. It simply means that, if we travel far enough back in time, their languages share a remote common origin.

Within the Austroasiatic family, Khasi belongs to the Khasic, or Khasian, branch.

Is there only one Khasi, or are there several varieties?

The short answer is: there is Khasi, but there are also many regional varieties and several closely related sister languages.

The variety spoken in Sohra, also known in English as Cherrapunji, played an important role in the development of written Khasi and forms the basis of the standard language. Other varieties are associated, for example, with Mylliem, Mawlai, Nongkrem and Ri-Bhoi.

The situation becomes even more interesting with Pnar, War and Lyngngam. Some classifications and administrative records have grouped them under the general label “Khasi”, while many recent linguistic studies treat them as distinct sister languages within the Khasic branch.

This is not merely an argument about names. When two communities speak differently, linguists must ask:

• How well can they understand each other without having studied the other community’s variety?

• Which sounds and words do they share?

• Which grammatical differences do they display?

• How do the speakers themselves define their language?

A comparative study of Standard Khasi, Pnar, War and Lyngngam confirms that they form a closely connected group, but one with considerable internal diversity.

It is an excellent example of an important principle: a language does not always have boundaries as sharp as those drawn on a map.

Where is Khasi spoken, and by whom?

Khasi is spoken mainly by the Khasi people in Meghalaya, a state in north-eastern India whose Sanskrit name means “abode of the clouds”.

It is particularly widespread in the Khasi Hills and around Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya. Communities of speakers can also be found in neighbouring Assam and across the border in parts of Bangladesh.

In Meghalaya, Khasi is spoken by more than one million people. Pnar, Garo and English are also present in the state.

Does Khasi use an alphabet?

Yes. Today Khasi is written from left to right with an adapted Latin alphabet.

This immediately gives an English-speaking reader a useful point of reference: Khasi and English use many familiar letter shapes and are read in the same direction. However, familiar letters do not guarantee familiar sounds.

The history of Khasi writing includes a rather unexpected European encounter. In the nineteenth century, attempts were also made to use the Bengali-Assamese script. Later, the Welsh missionary Thomas Jones developed a Latin-based orthography for the Sohra variety.

This is why the Khasi alphabet shows a few curious points of contact with Welsh.

The modern alphabet is commonly presented as having 23 letters or units:

A, B, K, D, E, G, Ng, H, I, Ï, J, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Y

Three features stand out immediately:

1. the letters C, F, Q, V, X and Z are not normally used in native words;

2. Ï and Ñ appear;

3. Ng is treated as a unit of the alphabet, not merely as two letters that happen to stand next to each other.

An English speaker can therefore recognise much of the writing system, but should not assume that every letter or combination is pronounced as it would be in English. Sharing an alphabet does not mean sharing pronunciation.

It is rather like walking into a familiar kitchen and discovering that the same ingredients are being used to prepare a completely different recipe.

How does Khasi work?

A reassuringly familiar word order

In simple sentences, Khasi normally uses the order:

subject + verb + object

This is the same basic order used in an ordinary English sentence:

• Khasi: subject + verb + object;

• English: Marco learns Khasi.

We also find the same basic pattern in Italian and French, and in simple German main clauses. For an English-speaking learner, this can make the first Khasi sentences feel less unfamiliar.

However, the similarity does not indicate a close linguistic relationship. Languages from different families can independently develop similar structures.

U, ka, i and ki: small but important words

Khasi has a system of markers that accompany nouns and reappear elsewhere in the sentence:

• u: masculine;

• ka: feminine;

• i: diminutive;

• ki: plural.

This is quite different from modern English, where nouns usually do not have grammatical gender and the article the does not change according to gender or number. An English speaker therefore needs to learn many Khasi nouns together with their marker.

For example:

• ka kmie means “the mother”;

• u kpa means “the father”.

Gender does not apply only to people, and it cannot always be guessed from a word’s meaning. In this respect, Khasi may feel more familiar to speakers of languages such as French, Italian or German than to speakers of English.

Time can appear before the verb

Khasi uses particles to express temporal information. For example, la can mark the past and yn the future.

English also places small grammatical words around the verb, as in will learn or did learn, but it additionally uses changes such as learn/learned and many irregular forms such as go/went. Khasi organises these signals according to its own system.

For a learner, the central idea can still be reassuring: instead of changing the verb through a long set of endings, a small grammatical signal can carry important information about time.

Khasi and English: relatives or simply classmates?

Feature	Khasi	English	French/Italian	German
Language family	Austroasiatic	Indo-European, Germanic	Indo-European, Romance	Indo-European, Germanic
Modern writing	Adapted Latin alphabet	Latin alphabet	Latin alphabet	Latin alphabet
Most common basic order	SVO	SVO	SVO, with some flexibility	SVO in main clauses; more complex order elsewhere
Grammatical gender	Markers u, ka, i, ki	Largely absent from nouns	Masculine/feminine	Masculine/feminine/neuter
Verbal time	Also expressed through particles	Auxiliaries and inflection	Extensive conjugation	Inflection and auxiliaries

For an English-speaking learner, Khasi offers two useful footholds: a familiar writing direction and a familiar basic word order. Its noun markers and grammatical particles, however, reveal a logic of its own.

First useful expressions

You do not need to know all the grammar before taking your first step.

Khasi	English meaning
Khublei	Thank you; also used as a greeting in several contexts
Kumno phi long?	How are you?
Nga khlaiñ	I am well
Sngewbha	Please
Um	Water
Aiu?	What?

The first word to remember could be Khublei.

You could try it when entering a shop, repeat it when leaving and then, just to be safe, say it another three times. The shopkeeper would certainly understand that you are trying to be polite.

Kongthong: when a name is not written but heard

Let us return to Kongthong, in the East Khasi Hills, about 60 kilometres from Shillong.

Here, the tradition of Jingrwai Iawbei associates each person with a particular melody composed by their mother. The expression is more precisely explained as a song in honour of the Iawbei, the original female ancestor of the clan. The practice therefore reflects the matrilineal structure of Khasi society, in which clan membership and descent pass through the maternal line.

The melody does not replace a person’s official name. Everyone also has an ordinary name used on documents and outside the community.

The musical call may have:

• a short form, convenient in everyday life and at close range;

• a longer form, able to travel across fields, forests and hillsides.

The geography helps us understand its practical value. Among the hills, a melodic sound may be easier to recognise than a shouted word. Each call belongs to one person alone and, according to the tradition described by residents, is not reused after that person dies.

It is a name that is not inherited, recycled or confused with that of a classmate.

Imagine the scene:

Marco’s mother calls him from the window with a melody.

Marco looks up and thinks:

“Beautiful! But how am I supposed to write it in my notebook?”

And that is precisely the point: not every form of identity has to fit into a box or be reduced to letters.

A language to protect, not a museum curiosity

It is easy to approach Khasi only through the story of the “whistling village”. It would be a shame to stop there.

Khasi has literature, newspapers, education, music, oral traditions and a long history of contact with other languages. Like many languages with relatively few speakers compared with the world’s largest international languages, it also faces challenges involving transmission to younger generations, higher education and a digital presence.

A language lives when people use it to joke, work, study, tell stories and imagine the future. Photographing it is not enough: we must listen to the people who speak it.

The Cassano Academy challenge

This week, try to remember three things:

1. Khublei — “thank you”, but also a doorway into a conversation;

2. Ka Ktien Khasi — the Khasi language;

3. Jingrwai Iawbei — the melodic name connected with the female ancestor of the clan.

Then invent a four- or five-second melody to call someone you care about.

One warning: ask for their permission first. Not everyone wants to be summoned to dinner by a flute solo.

 

FAQ