Mizo, also called Lushai, is the main language of Mizoram in north-east India and is spoken by communities across the borders in Myanmar and Bangladesh. It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, it is tonal, and — unusually for the region — it is written in the Latin alphabet, which removes the largest barrier a newcomer usually faces.
The greeting
| Mizo | English |
|---|---|
| Chibai | hello, greetings |
| I dam em? | how are you? (are you well?) |
| Ka dam e | I am well |
| Ka lawm e | thank you |
| Aw | yes |
| Aih | no |
Chibai is the word most people search for and it is worth understanding what it covers. It is not time-bound, it is not formal or informal, and it does not need a follow-up. Saying it while making eye contact and offering a hand is a complete greeting on its own.
The alphabet has 25 letters and one that will look unfamiliar. Mizo uses aw as a single vowel unit and includes the letter combination ṭ with a dot beneath, a retroflex t distinct from plain t. It is a real contrast, not a decoration, and it is the one piece of the orthography that catches out readers who assume Latin letters mean English values.
Getting through a transaction
| Mizo | English |
|---|---|
| Engzat nge? | how much? |
| A man a to lutuk | it is too expensive |
| Ka duh | I want it |
| Ka duh lo | I don't want it |
| Khawi nge? | where is it? |
| Ka hre lo | I don't know / I don't understand |
The pattern in the last three rows is worth noticing: lo after a verb negates it. Ka duh is I want, ka duh lo is I do not want, ka hre is I know and ka hre lo is I do not. One particle handles negation across the board, which makes early sentence-building much cheaper than in a language with irregular negatives.
Counting
| Number | Mizo | Number | Mizo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | pakhat | 6 | paruk |
| 2 | pahnih | 7 | pasarih |
| 3 | pathum | 8 | pariat |
| 4 | pali | 9 | pakua |
| 5 | panga | 10 | sawm |
The pa- prefix runs through one to nine and then stops, which makes the first nine easy to hold together as a set and ten a separate item to remember.
Why the dictionary matters more here
Mizo has far less material online than the languages a learner usually meets. There is no large corpus of subtitled video, few graded readers, and machine translation handles it poorly — the training data simply is not there. That shifts the weight onto vocabulary lookup in a way it does not for Spanish or Japanese, and it is the main practical reason an offline dictionary earns its place: the alternative is often nothing rather than a slower alternative.
Look up Mizo words offline
The free English-Mizo Dictionary gives meanings and everyday vocabulary without a connection.
Open the dictionary appFrequently asked questions
What does Chibai mean?
It is the standard Mizo greeting, used for hello at any time of day and in any register. It works on arrival and in passing, to one person or to a room, and it is very often accompanied by a handshake. There is no separate morning or evening greeting that displaces it.
Is Mizo written in the Latin alphabet?
Yes. Welsh missionaries devised the orthography in 1894 using Latin letters, and it has stayed. That makes Mizo unusually approachable to read compared with other languages of the region — there is no new script to learn before you can start.
Is Mizo tonal?
Yes, and the standard orthography does not mark tone. Words that look identical on the page can differ in meaning by pitch, which is the main thing that makes reading easier than listening. Context resolves most of it for a learner.