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Add to the Etymology section of wiki page: The Dimasas are known as ‘sons of the great river’ i.e. the word ‘di’means ‘water’, ‘ma’ means ‘big’ and ‘sa’ means ‘sons’. The language of the Dimasas is known as ‘Grau Dima’ or ‘Magrau’ (mother-tongue).

Classification

Dimasa, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, is spoken by the Dimasa people of Dima Hasao (North Cachar Hills), Cachar, Karbi Anglong and Nagaon districts of Assam, India. There are 110000 native speakers of Dimasa. The dialects of Dimasa are Hasao, Hawar, Dembra, Dijuwa, Humri,Semsa and Walgong. Dimasa belongs to the Boro sub-section of the Boro-Naga section under the Assam Burma group of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan speech family.

The Dimasa Speech Community is a section of the large tribal group which goes by the name of Bodo Kachari and whose members are along the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, parts of Arunachal, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and West Bengal in India, and the north eastern region of Bangladesh. The major concentration of the Dimasas is in the district of Dima Hasao (North Cachar Hills) of Assam where they constitute more than 40% of the total population of the district.

Geographic

This tribe migrated from the Himalayas and came to the Brahmaputra river valley via the Gangetic Plains and made it their land. The Dimasas are mainly concentrated in some parts of Nagaon, Cachar and Karbi Anglong, the entire North Cachar Hills and in and around Dimapur in Nagaland. Till 1961 the Dimasa was treated as a sub tribe of the Kachari Tribe. In 1961 Census they were grouped as a separate tribe. They are listed in a special schedule issued by the Govt. of India and thereby they are entitled to special Govt. protection and constitutional benefits. It is estimated that Dimasa branched off from the ancestral common language about one thousand years back.

Grammar and Vocab

For the following the Dimasa alphabet is transliterated into the English language for better understanding. All consonants pronounced in the English language are used. The letters ‘c’, ‘q’, and ‘x’ are not used The letters ‘k’, ‘p’, ‘s’, ‘t’ on being combined with ‘h’. They are pronounced as the following: ‘kh’, ‘ph’, ‘sh’, ‘th’.

Nouns

The plural of nouns is formed but adding “nishi” to the singular noun. With animals and birds, plural is formed by added “thus” to the singular. With humans, the plural is formed with “rao” added to the singular The Dimasa language has a feminine and masculine nouns of conversation. For example, Adding a “ju” to a noun makes it masculine and adding a “buju” to an animal also makes it masculine

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns in Dimasa are free forms which can replace or substitute nouns and noun phrases. For example in Dimasa language, the second person plural personal pronoun, “nishi” is the only honorific term which is used both for polite address and for reference to second person plural. Thus the context of the sentence would be needed to differ between the two. Dimasa pronouns have bound possessive forms. Certain categories of nouns, especially kin terms and body parts, occur with a possessive prefix. Dimasa personal pronouns are free in both singular and plural forms. Meaning that the pronouns are inclusive/exclusive distinction and they do not mark gender, unlike the nouns talked about above. Personal pronouns can have association, relation, suffixation of markers such as contrast, topic etc. They can be compounded and juxtaposed with personal pronouns themselves and numerals.