The Nihali language: grammar, texts and vocabulary

Language: Nihali and English
Pages: 344

About the Book
India is the homeland of languages of five different families- Dravidian,
Austroasiatic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman and Andamanese. There are a few
languages which are not part of any of these genetic groups and Nihali
happens to be one of them. Nahals come under scheduled tribes and their
population is estimated to be around 4000. The Language Tables of Census of
India 2001 enumerate a total of 122 languages at the national level- 22
Scheduled and 100 Non-Scheduled. This is an outright understatement of the
existing reality. There are around 200 languages in the country out of which
75% to 80% are spoken by the tribal communities, which are ignored by the
criterion of having less than 10,000 speakers. To remedy the situation the
Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore has undertaken a massive
national project to protect and preserve these endangered languages.
Globalization and overwhelming importance of English are commonly cited as
causes of language endangerment in India. But even the major regional
languages like Telugu, Marathi, Hindi or Odiya also act as killers of minor
tribal speeches. Over the past millions of years, the Indian experience had
been one of retention of minor tongues, but with the intrusion of electronic
media of regional languages, the younger generation is shifting its loyalty
towards them at the cost of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances the
study of Nihali by Prof. Nagaraja is a vital addition to our understanding of
the current phenomenon of language endangerment.

As the title suggests the present volume consists of grammar, texts and
vocabulary besides a brief introduction. Dr. Nagaraja has co