LANGUAGE WARRIORS TO THE RESCUE

Shubhranshu Choudhary, founder, CGNet Swara

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.

“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. “It’s a slow process, but if we believe that Maoism is the biggest internal security threat, then we need to look into this.”

Banwang Losu and Rahul Ranadive

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. “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.

Dr Shailendra Mohan, Deccan College, Pune

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.