Publishes paper on endangered languages, giving insight into Walmiki and Malhar

A linguistics professor at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has claimed to have discovered two languages spoken in a few pockets of Odisha and areas bordering Andhra Pradesh.

Panchanan Mohanty, former dean of UoH’s School of Humanities, published a paper in the proceedings of the XX Annual Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, U.K. giving an insight into the two languages. One of them is Walmiki, spoken in Koraput district of Odisha and bordering districts of Andhra Pradesh, and the other, Malhar spoken in a remote, isolated hamlet located 165 km from Bhubaneswar.

Prof. Mohanty claims that Walmiki does not belong to a particular family of languages and its name is also interesting and indicative because the speech community claims descent from the great Indian saint-poet Valmiki. Malhar is spoken by a community consisting of about 75 people, including children, he adds.

“Fortunately, most of them are very fluent in this language because they live isolated from the Odia-speaking neighbours and survive on daily labour and collections from the nearby forest,” he points out.

He says preliminary data collected clearly shows that Malhar belongs to the North Dravidian subgroup of the Dravidian family of languages and has close affinity with the other North Dravidian languages like Malto and Kurux spoken in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar.

“The team is trying to find if there are other speakers of Malhar in any of the nearby places apart from documenting both the languages before they become extinct,” he said in a statement from the UoH.

Prof. Mohanty is also the president of Linguistic Society of India and coordinator of the Centre for Endangered Languages and Mother Tongue Studies, UoH.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – April 07th, 2018