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<h1>Losing our languages</h1>
<h2>India is one of the countries with the world’s largest number
of living languages. But under the onslaught of dominant languages, many
local tongues and dialects are dying a slow death. Will the attempts to
revive them take wing? </h2>
<a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/longreads/" class="gmail-cta-link gmail-india-cb-section gmail-mr-15">india</a>
<span class="gmail-text-dt">Updated: May 04, 2018 23:50 IST</span>
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<a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/kumkum-dasgupta"><span>KumKum Dasgupta</span></a> <br> Hindustan Times</div>
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<img src="https://www.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_960x540/HT/p2/2018/05/04/Pictures/_8ea08ccc-4fc0-11e8-8287-628684009267.jpg" alt="The Khojki script and Gondi lipi are being developed by Karambir Singh Rohilla, a New Delhi-based typeface designer who specialises in Indic and English language fonts. Banwang Losu, a school teacher in the Longding district of Arunachal Pradesh, is working on the Wancho script." title="landuages">
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The Khojki script and Gondi lipi are being developed by
Karambir Singh Rohilla, a New Delhi-based typeface designer who
specialises in Indic and English language fonts. Banwang Losu, a school
teacher in the Longding district of Arunachal Pradesh, is working on the
Wancho script.(Illustration: Animesh Debnath)</div>
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</div><div class="gmail-story-details"><p>Hansda
Sowvendra Shekhar’s ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’ is a fascinating book.
Other than being a searing account of the marginalisation of tribals in
Jharkhand, there is another reason to be effusive about it: Just below
the title on the aquamarine-coloured cover, which has a sketch of a hand
on a dhol, are four words in Santhali’s Ol-Chiki script: ‘Aale Hor Bale
Eneja’ (‘We Santhals Will Not Dance’). “My mother tongue, Santhali, was
my first medium of communication with my family. After having learnt at
least three other languages, it is still my first medium of
communication with my family. I cannot describe how important it is for
me,” says Shekhar. “I put them [the Santhali words] on the cover because
I felt they should’ve been there. It was for me”.</p><p>While Shekhar’s
love and support for his language are touching, Santhali is lucky to
have another strong supporter: the Indian State. It is one of the 22
scheduled languages of the country. These lucky ones get State support
for their development and dissemination, the Union Public Services
Examination can be taken in them, and some even find a place on our
currency notes.</p><h1><b>Tower Of Babel</b></h1><p>India, however, is
home to more than 22 languages. It is, as the former University of
Baroda English professor and the man behind the People’s Linguistic
Survey of India, Ganesh Devy, says, a “dense forest of voices”, a noisy
Tower of Babel, with hundreds of languages and dialects. While languages
are typically prestigious, official, written; dialects are spoken and
unofficial. Russian Jewish linguist Max Weinreich summed up their
relationship pithily: a language is a dialect with an army and navy.</p><p>Unfortunately,
India’s diversity of languages (dialects included) is facing an
existential crisis. In the last few decades, experts say, the country
has lost a few hundred languages because of lack of government
patronage, absence of credible data on them, dwindling numbers of
speakers, poor primary education in local languages, migration of
tribals from villages, and the lack of a cohesive national language
policy.</p><div class="gmail-language2_wrap"><div class="gmail-language2_head">Tech Extends A Helping Hand</div><div class="gmail-language2_text">Technology
companies are showing great interest in endangered languages. This is
because they are realising that content on the Internet is
overwhelmingly English and that is stopping them from acquiring new non-
English speaking users. So Google has an endangered languages project, a
platform for interested people to share research and collaborate on
endangered languages.<br>Microsoft too sees language technology as a
vehicle to provide Internet access to speakers of endangered languages.
"We can make the documentation less laborious by providing tools such as
an interface on mobile phones to record and annotate the language, or
input mechanisms such as language keyboards," says Kalika Bali,
researcher, Microsoft Research India. They can also help to make web
content available in these languages directly or through speech
interfaces. </div></div><p>The loss of languages is a global phenomenon.
“When languages are not transmitted to children, they become endangered
and are likely to become extinct,” warns Mandana Seyfeddinipur,
director, World Languages Institute, School of Languages, Cultures, and
Linguistics, SOAS, University of London. “While throughout human
history, speakers have shifted to other languages, the speed of this
development has dramatically increased over the past century. It is
estimated that the loss of language diversity is happening on the scale
of the fifth mass extinction.” </p><p>Explaining why languages must be
saved, she adds: “Each of these vanishing languages expresses a unique
knowledge, history, and worldview of the speakers’ community. Each is a
distinct evolved variation of the human capacity for language”. Many of
these languages of the world have never been described or recorded, so
the richness of human linguistic diversity is disappearing without a
trace. Linguists estimate that there are around 7,000 languages spoken
worldwide and at least half of those will be lost by the end of this
century.</p><h1><b>Dying A Slow Death</b></h1><p>In India, many
languages are dead or in the throes of extinction, thanks to their
political marginalisation that started when state boundaries were drawn
based on linguistic lines. Languages that had scripts were counted and
the ones without a script (and therefore, without printed literature)
lost out in the race. Schools and colleges were established only in the
‘official’ languages. The ones without scripts found no place in the
education system.</p><div class="gmail-language3_wrap"><div class="gmail-language3_head">Scheduled languages</div><div class="gmail-language3_text">The
Constitution does not give any language the status of national
language. It designates the official language as Standard Hindi, as well
as English. The 22 scheduled languages are: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo,
Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam,
Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi,
Tamil, Telugu, Urdu. </div><div class="gmail-language3_head">Documenting lost languages</div><div class="gmail-language3_text">Linguists
go to the chosen community and start with a pilot to check logistics,
spend time with the community to build confidence; draw up word lists,
questionnaires about their social practices. This is followed with video
recordings, validation and figuring out the dialect. If the endangered
language does not have a script, then the dominant language script is
used. </div><div class="gmail-language3_head">State schemes</div><div class="gmail-language3_text">The
Centre in 2014 initiated a scheme called "Protection and Preservation
of Endangered Languages of India". Under this scheme, the Central
Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru, works on the protection,
preservation, and documentation of all the mother tongues/languages
spoken by less than 10,000 people.</div></div><p>The maximum impact of
such political and social marginalisation has been on languages spoken
by poor communities such as tribals. Take, for example, Gondi. The
language is spoken by nearly 12 million Gond adivasis, who live in
Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Madhya
Pradesh. And yet, there is no one standardised Gondi language that
unifies them all. Different versions and dialects exist, specific to the
geographical areas that they live in, with influences of the regional
languages seeping in.</p><p>Administrative oversight followed political
sidelining. The 1961 Census recorded 1,652 languages. But since the 1971
Census, languages spoken by less than 10,000 people have been lumped as
“others”. The language data of the 2011 Census, the most recent, has
not even been made public. However, in a recent Press Trust of India
report, a Census directorate official admitted that “40 languages and
dialects are in danger of disappearing because they are spoken by less
than 10,000 people”.</p><p>Such political and administrative omission
has given rise to a caste system of sorts among languages. In an article
in the Economic and Political Weekly, Hany Babu MT, associate
professor, Department of English, University of Delhi, blames the
Constitution for failing to “pay more than lip service to the linguistic
plurality and multilingual ethos of the peoples of India”. He adds that
the Constitution – even though it does not give any language the status
of national language – has created a chaturvarna (four-tier order) of
languages, with Sanskrit, Hindi, the scheduled, and the non-scheduled
languages occupying various rungs of the ladder. English, of course, is
outside the “chaturvarna system”, but carries a special position, thanks
to its “emancipatory potential”.</p><h1><b>Saving The Endangered</b></h1><p>While
the State is yet to release the full report on India’s language
diversity (some claim this is because such a report will have political
ramifications), there are several State-led, institutional and private
efforts, albeit fragmented, to document endangered languages. For
example, Devy has documented 780 living languages and claims that 400 of
them are at risk of dying.</p><p>But there could be more than what
Devy’s team documented. Recently, a linguistics professor at the
University of Hyderabad, Panchanan Mohanty, discovered two languages
spoken in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh: Walmiki and Malhar. </p><div id="gmail-zdt_display_placeholder_364294"><div id="gmail-zdt_364294_1" style="margin:0px auto;width:500px"><img src="https://ss3.zedo.com/jsc/images/zplayer/inarticle-Close-Btn.png" style="top: 0px; left: 500px; width: 24px;" width="24" height="24"></div></div><div id="gmail-zdt_3644892_1_wrapper" style="height:0px;padding-top:0px;width:825px;padding-bottom:0px" class="gmail-zg-placement gmail-zg-placement-transition"></div><div class="gmail-language1_wrap"><div class="gmail-language1_head">Language Warriors To The Rescue</div><div class="gmail-language1_cont"><div class="gmail-language1_img"><img src="https://www.hindustantimes.com/static/ht2018/5/0505language1.jpg" width="100%"></div><div class="gmail-language1_name"><b>Shubhranshu Choudhary,</b> founder, CGNet Swara</div><div class="gmail-language1_text">Gondi
is spoken by 12 million Gond adivasis and yet, there is no one
standardised Gondi language that unifies them all. Different versions
and dialects exist, specific to the geographical areas they live in,
with influences of the regional languages seeping in. Choudhary is
working on a dictionary project that is standardising Gondi language,
and prompting the State to include it in the schedule language list.<br>"The
lack of standardised Gondi has led to a chasm between the State and the
Gondi-speaking tribals of Chhattisgarh. This was exploited by Maoists
who not only speak their language but also lived with them," says
Choudhary. "If everyone has a standardised dictionary, then journalists,
administrators or teachers can emerge from within the community. They
don’t need to drop out of schools and take up the gun. They could work
with All India Radio to start a news service in Gondi," adds Choudhary.<br>"It’s a slow process, but if we believe that Maoism is the biggest internal security threat, then we need to look into this."</div></div><div class="gmail-language1_cont"><div class="gmail-language1_img"><img src="https://www.hindustantimes.com/static/ht2018/5/0505language2.jpg" width="100%"></div><div class="gmail-language1_name"><b>Banwang Losu and Rahul Ranadive</b></div><div class="gmail-language1_text">It’s
been 15 years since Banwang Losu, a school teacher (on the left, in the
picture above), began work on collecting sounds to develop a font for
the Wancho language, which is spoken by the Wancho tribe of Arunachal
Pradesh. The font is now almost ready with just a few technical steps
that need to be covered. Losu has worked single-handedly on the
development of the script with support from some community elders and
college friends, spending hours learning from books and the web. While
all are unanimous in appreciating the efforts made by Losu, it is now
imperative to take it formally to the Wancho-speaking community.<br>"The
need of the hour is a well-thought-out Wancho Language Primer. This
will facilitate learning of the font at school and within communities
via volunteering by teachers and others from the Wancho Literary Mission
(registered Society)," says Rahul Ranadive (on the right, in the
picture on the left), a photographer and filmmaker, who is developing a
strategy and coordinating inputs to take the project forward. There are
an estimated 50,000 Wanchos in the state.</div></div><div class="gmail-language1_cont"><div class="gmail-language1_img"><img src="https://www.hindustantimes.com/static/ht2018/5/0505language3.jpg" width="100%"></div><div class="gmail-language1_name"><b>Dr Shailendra Mohan,</b> Deccan College, Pune</div><div class="gmail-language1_text">Nihali
is an isolated language and is spoken by about 2,000 speakers in
Jalgaon-Jamod Tehsil, Buldhana district, Maharashtra. Dr Mohan,
professor, and head of department of Linguistics, is working on a
detailed descriptive grammar, a trilingual dictionary (Nihali-
Hindi-English) and 20 hours of archival audio and video recordings of
speech samples in different genres, including stories, myths and
legends, and historical accounts that may serve as the basis for
educational materials. "The main problem of documenting such languages
is that the speakers are illiterate and it’s difficult to find community
members who can answer our questions," says Dr Mohan.</div></div></div><p>The
first step of saving an endangered language is documenting it, a
Herculean task. “It is a lengthy process and needs huge resources
because it’s not just about documenting the language but also
socio-cultural practices and ethnic practices of the community,” says Dr
DG Rao, director, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru.
“More importantly, researchers need a lot of time.” While there are
many researchers documenting India’s dying languages, there has been no
standardisation of the process. To streamline it, CIIL has come up with a
manual for language documentation, parameters for a timeline and is
also training people working on projects on how to go about it. </p><p>“A
language can only survive if it is used …. It’s the younger generation,
which has to drive this process as they are the ones that will carry
the knowledge and transmit it,” says Seyfeddinipur. Other than in homes,
these languages need to be taught in schools. </p><p>Thereby hangs a tale in India.</p><p>In
2014, Karnataka started the policy of mother tongue as medium of
instruction at the primary level. But parents of students went to the
Supreme Court against the order. The apex court held that the imposition
of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary classes in
government-recognised, aided or unaided private schools was
unconstitutional, and it should be left to children and parents to
decide on which language of instruction they prefer.</p><h1><b>Need Of The Hour</b></h1><p>The
role of the mother tongue in schools, which can help languages to
survive, is a fuzzy area in India because there is no language policy in
place. “A comprehensive language policy could be a statement of intent,
and can be implemented as a procedure or protocol. Currently, India has
no guidelines for ensuring the survival of these languages,” says Dr
Purushothama Bilimale, professor of Kannada, Centre of Indian Languages,
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University.</p><p>Take, for example, Koraga. There are not more than
45-50 people (all in their 60s) in the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi
districts of Karnataka who speak this language. “Their children have not
learnt this language and have moved to Tulu, the powerful local
language and to Kannada, the official language of Karnataka. In the next
decade or so, there will be no Koraga-speaking people left. This is how
a language dies,” says Bilimale.</p><p>Another example is Ruga in the
Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The community is supposed to speak Ruga but
speaks Garo, the dominant language of the area. Today, there are only
three speakers left.</p><aside><span class="gmail-read-more">
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<a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/new-education-policy-will-give-hindi-its-due-importance-says-minister/story-R14irKPze5IqsiIufJ66aP.html">New education policy will give Hindi its due importance, says minister</a>
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</span></aside><p>The National Education Policy of 1968 – a revision
is in the works – however, tried to push local languages by recommending
a complicated three-language formula. </p><p>The first language would
be the mother tongue/regional language; the second, in Hindi-speaking
states, would be any other modern Indian language/English and in
non-Hindi-speaking states, the second language would be Hindi or
English. When it comes to the third language, in Hindi-speaking states,
it would be English or a modern Indian language not studied as the
second language; and in non-Hindi-speaking states, the third language
would be English or a modern Indian language not studied as the second
language.</p><p>This was accepted in principle by states but never applied.</p><p>“The
Constitution leaves the choice of language for children to the parents;
exploiting this, states have encouraged English-medium schools and
allowed private entrepreneurs to move into the field that should have
been the State’s domain,” says Dr Rao. “Then came the IT sector and
imprinted in the minds of parents that English must be the lingua
franca…It’s difficult for languages, even the major ones, to survive
such lopsided policies and increasing preference for foreign languages
in schools”.</p><p>Is it surprising then that the language tree is
slowly wilting in a country that, along with Nigeria, Indonesia and
Papua New Guinea, has the largest number of living languages?</p></div></div></article></div></div></div></section>
<br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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