JOWAI: Khasi language is the tool to unite the Khasi and the Pnar communities, a professor of Linguistics at NEHU said recently during the silver jubilee celebration of the Khasi Department at Jaintia Eastern College at Khliehriat in West Jaintia Hills.
Professor B Khynriam, who presented a paper on the topic, said language is one of the important tools to bring people of the community together.
“We have a common language and local dialect, the common standard language is a collection of all the local dialects which proved that we are speaking the same Monkmer Austro Asiatic language similar to Combodia and Thailand,” she said.
The NEHU professor also spoke on the danger that Khasi language faces. “If we don’t preserve our language it might be extinct and when we don’t have a language, the tribe will also automatically disappear.”
A one-day workshop was also held. Students of St Anthony’s College and Rymbai Presbyterian Higher Secondary School attended it. The Khasi Department in the college was set up in 1992.
A book entitled Ka Rympei Jubilee of the Khasi Department was also released.
