Mara Language Profile

Mara belongs to the Kuki-Chin branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family.

According to the 2011 Census of India, Mara (often recorded under Lakher or Mara categories) has approximately 42,000 speakers in India, with additional speaker populations in neighboring Myanmar bringing total estimate projections higher.

Distribution in India

The language is primarily spoken in the state of Mizoram in Northeast India, predominantly within the Mara Autonomous District Council (Siaha district).

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Monosyllabic and sesquisyllabic root structure with a contrastive tone system, contrastive aspiration in stops, and glottal final consonants.
• Morphology: Highly agglutinative structure featuring verbal stem alternation (Stem I and Stem II variations characteristic of Kuki-Chin languages), bound pronominal agreement prefixes, and nominalizing affixes.
• Syntax: Canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) basic word order with split-ergative or ergative-absolutive alignment in case marking and agreement structures.

Further reading

• Search or view details on the Mara language Wikipedia page.
• Consult Glottolog metadata and dialect documentation under Glottocode mara1382 (ISO 639-3: mrh).