Languages of North East India

The north eastern part of India comprises the seven sisters of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

There are about 220 languages spoken in these states, belonging mainly to three language families – Indi-European, Sino-Tibetean and Austric.

Indo-European is represented by Asamiya, Sino-Tibetean is represented by the Tibeto-Burman languages of Boro, Karbi, Garo, Mising, Rabha, Dimasa, Kachari, Tiwa, Deuri, etc and Tai represented by a few dialects of Tai-Ahom, Tai-Phake, Tai-Khamyang, Tai-Turung, Tai-Aiton and Tai-Khamti.

The north eastern part of India is totally out of the retroflexes block because not a single language, irrespective of family, has contrasts between dental and retroflex sounds, a unique feature of the language here is totally absence of any retroflex sound. Instead the languages here have a whole series of dental or alveolar sounds which include oral and nasal stops, fricatives, laterals, approximants, flaps and trills. This absence of retroflex sounds and the presence of alveolar or dental sounds are features typical of the north eastern Indian language.