NEW DELHI: Nearly 10 per cent of the world’s 4,000 languages facing ‘extinction’ threat in next 50 years is spoken in India, says a literary expert.
However, Garo and Khasi languages are showing an upward trend because educated people in these communities have started using these languages for writing, says linguist Ganesh N Devy.
Other northeast languages showing the same trend include Mizo (Mizoram) and Kokborok (Tripura).
Devy said while the danger of extinction looms large over some languages, many, including Santhal, Gondi (spoken in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra) and Bheli (Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat) seem to thrive well.
“They publish poems, write plays and perform them. In some of the languages, even films are being made. For instance, they have started making films in Gondi. The Bhojpuri film industry is prospering…the language itself is growing, probably the fastest in the country,” he said.
He felt that English posed no real threat to major Indian languages. Devy, chairman, People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) said the most threatened are the coastal languages of the country.
“Many languages are on the verge of disappearance and most of them are the coastal languages. The reason is that livelihood in coastal areas is no longer safe. The corporate world is doing deep sea fishing. Traditional fishing communities, on the other hand, have moved inwards…away from the coast, thus giving up their languages,” he told PTI in an interview.
He, however, said some tribal languages have also shown growth in recent years. Devy was in the national capital on Thursday for the release of 11 volumes of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, claimed to be the world’s largest linguistic surveys.
The country’s total 780 languages were surveyed by a team of 3,000 people in 27 states under the study.
Devy, also founder director of the Bhasha Research and Publication Center, Vadodara and Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat, said the study will cover the remaining states of Sikkim, Goa and Andaman and Nicobar islands by December. (PTI)
