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.