| Summary: | This splendid grammar describes the variety of Ao Naga spoken in Mangmetong
("Upright Corpse‟), a village of about 2000 people in Mokokchung District of
Nagaland. The Ao are the dominant tribe of Nagaland, with a population of over
170,000, divided into two major dialect groups. Chungli, spoken by about 50% of
the Ao, has greater prestige, and is always used in church services; Mongsen, to
which the Mangmetong subdialect belongs, is spoken by 40%, while 10% speak
other dialects.1 As with many other Tibeto-Burman (TB) groups like Nungish or
Tangkhulic, Ao shows great dialectal variation from village to village, so that the
safest way to identify a dialect is by a loconym, or village name. Ao is not really
endangered at present, although it is facing increasing competition from
Nagamese, the Indo-Aryan based pidgin widely used for inter-group
communication in Nagaland.
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