Sumi

Sumi (ISO 639-3: nsm, Glottocode: sumi1235) belongs to the Angami-Pochuri branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family.

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 244,001 speakers of the language (registered under the name "Sema").

Distribution in India

Sumi is primarily spoken in the northeastern state of Nagaland, concentrated heavily in the Zünheboto district. Significant speaker communities also reside in the Dimapur, Kohima, Mokokchung, and Wokha districts, with additional small populations in neighboring areas of Assam.

Major Grammatical Features

• Phonology: Sumi is a tonal language typically described as possessing three register tones (high, mid, and low) which distinguish lexical meaning. Its consonant inventory features a contrast between voiced and voiceless sonorants (including voiceless nasals /m̥/, /n̥/, /ŋ̊/ and the voiceless lateral /l̥/).
• Morphology: The language is predominantly agglutinating and suffixing. Nouns take possessive prefixes, which are especially obligatory for inalienable nouns like kinship terms and body parts. Sumi exhibits an agentive/ergative marking system where the subject of transitive verbs is marked with an agentive clitic, while intransitive subjects and direct objects often remain unmarked.
• Syntax: The basic constituent word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). It is a postpositional language. Within the noun phrase, possessors and genitives precede the head noun, while adjectives, numerals, and demonstratives typically follow it.

Further Reading

• For more information and community-contributed linguistic descriptions, see the Sumi language Wikipedia search entry.