Documentation of Uipo

Language	Uipo
Depositor	Freya Schumann, Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling
Affiliation	University of Potsdam, University of Innsbruck
Location	India
Collection ID	0770
Grant ID	IGS1004
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/b42607b3-d16e-4a90-a230-7199e23b5255

 

Summary of the collection

The deposit is the result of collaborative effort between a community team led by Mosyel Syelsaanthyel Khaling and the PI Freya Schumann. Initiated in 2022, the collection comprises over 40 hours of recordings focusing on natural conversational data. Alongside recordings of everyday activities such as cooking and handicraft making, it also features discussions about community history and the narration of folktales. Several hours have been transcribed in Uipo orthography and some using an IPA-based transcription system.

 

Group represented

The group represented in this deposit are the Uipo people. Uipo (also known under the exonym Khoibu) is an endangered Transhimalayan/Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Manipur’s Chandel district and Ukhrul district, Northeast India. The Uipo community is made up of about 1800 speakers. The villages of Khangshim and Thoyee have the largest concentrated Uipo population. Other speakers live in bigger cities as well as in villages in the surrounding hills. Khangshim was founded in 1972 as the result of population shifts, with people leaving traditional hill villages abandoned and moving to the densely populated and multicultural valley area which is dominated by the majority Meitei community. Thoyee started being populated by Uipo people somewhat earlier, in the 1960s, and has a mixed Uipo and Tangkhul population.

Politically, the Uipo community only relatively recently separated from the Maring tribe. Before the separation, the Uipo language was marginalised as a result of them being classified within the neighbouring larger Maring community and language and a lack of internal support for their independent status. In 2015 the Hill Area Committee of the Manipur Legislative Assembly recommended the official recognition of the Uipo people as a separate Scheduled Tribe. In terms of its affiliation, the Uipo tribe is grouped as ethnically belonging to the Naga tribes.

 

Language information

Uipo is a Trans-Himalayan/Tibeto-Burman language, but its classification within the family is unclear. Uipo and Maring (the closest related language) are often grouped with Tangkhulic languages, however, it has been argued (Mortensen 2003) that they do not fit in well with other languages in the Tangkhul group and instead form a bridge between Tangkhul and South-Central (“Kuki-Chin”). Culturally, Uipo shows parallels with the neighbouring communities, belonging to the Naga ethnopolitical group, which includes speakers of languages from different branches of Tibeto-Burman languages.

Uipo is spoken at home and in the community but is under threat from the majority language Meitei. Meitei and English are the languages of broadcasts and schooling. Meitei is also the lingua franca used to communicate with members of other communities.

 

Special characteristics

The collection is the result of a collaborative effort between the PI, Freya Schumann, and a team of community members.

The community team is led by community linguist Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling. Other team members are Terandaar Khaling, Mosyelran Khaling, Darthangmoi Khaling, M.R., and Syelnairan Ronglo.

 

Collection contents

The collection in its current state consists of over 40 hours of video recordings. The collection focuses on natural conversation but also includes story telling and a small number of elicitation sessions. Recording topics include the following

• Making handcrafts
• Cooking
• Folktales
• Community history

For over 6 hours time-aligned transcriptions in ELAN are available. Around 2 hours are available as glossed text, either as FLEx or as Toolbox files. Special attention was paid to including participants of different genders and age groups.

 

Collection history

Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling has been collecting video recordings of his native language for many years and some of his recordings are included in the collection as legacy recordings. The majority of the recordings was taken during two fieldtrips, one preceding the ELDP-funding in Spring 2024 and one slightly longer fieldtrip supported by ELDP from November 2024 to January 2025.

The materials were transcribed either by the community team or collaboratively by Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling and Freya Schumann. Mr. Khaling’s guidance in glossing the texts has been invaluable.

The latest update to the archive took place in October 2025.

 

References

Mortensen, David (2003). Comparative Tangkhul.
Bijenkumar Singh, Laishram (2014). A Descriptive Grammar Of Khoibu. PhD thesis.
Sæbø, Lilja (2020). A Description of Uipo Phonology. Masters thesis.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Users of any part of the collection should acknowledge Freya Schumann as the principal investigator. Where applicable, Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling and Terandaar Khaling are to be acknowledged as data collectors. Lastly, for transcriptions, users may refer to the details on the relevant annotation files to give due acknowledgement to the transcriber.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Khaling, Mosyel Syelsaangthyel, and Freya Schumann. 2023. Documentation of Uipo. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/5f731cac-5bc3-485d-90ad-37f82772279d. Accessed on [insert date here].