Of the 7000 languages now spoken across the world, only about 600 are expected to survive until the end of the century.
The road runs out seven kilometres before the last village in India.
Nestled at the edge of the Torsa River delta on the border with Bhutan, and against the foothills of the mountain range that will become the mighty Himalayas, Totopara is happily isolated from much of the turbulence of the countries around it.
The rains of the monsoon season regularly cut the village off by road, and the electricity supply is not yet so reliable as to seriously disturb the quiet.
But there is a battle going on in Totopara, a quiet war being waged to retain a sense of community, of identity and of culture, against the forces of economy and the pull of conformity that grips so many of the world’s small cultures. Totopara’s is a fight to keep a language alive.
The village takes its name as the home of the Toto people. Ethnically distinct from their neighbours, they have lived in the area beyond all memory and storytelling. “We have been here for hundreds of years... this is our homeland,” village elder Ashok Toto tells The Age.
They remain a small group, and now find themselves a minority in their own community, numbering about 1400 of the 5000 or so who live in the village. Farmers mainly, they Toto grow rice and betel nut or sell their labour on nearby plantations, where they are known as quiet, steady workers.
The Toto speak their own language, a tongue that shares no close derivation with any of those spoken around — Nepali, Bengali, Hindi or Bhutanese.
But the Toto people fear their language, and with it, their culture, history and way of life, is being lost, consumed by an education system that obliges their children to speak Bengali, and an economy that pushes them towards Hindi and English. Ashok is confident the next generation will grow up comfortable with the tongue of their ancestors.
“Now, out of 10, only two children would have problems in speaking their own language,” Ashok says. “Otherwise this new generation is well-versed in Toto. But for future, it’s risky . . . there will be problem, huge problem . . . because we face difficulties following the way of life of our ancestors. “There is a chance our language and culture will be finished.”
India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth. Just how diverse is a matter of contention, but it is believed India today speaks between 850 and 900 distinct languages, though only 122 are recognised in the census and just 22 are scheduled as official languages in the constitution. Of mother tongues — the vernacular first learned at home — it was estimated in 1961 that India was home to more than 1600.
The first ever linguistic survey of India was completed in 1928, undertaken over 30 years by an Irish linguist and opium trader from the East India Company named Sir George Abraham Grierson, who concluded the country spoke 179 languages.
Acclaimed as triumph at the time, the 8000-page survey was flawed: many of Grierson’s field workers were untrained, he never visited large parts of southern India, and he completely ignored the country’s numerous nomadic tribes.
But as well as being one of the world’s most linguistically diverse nations, India is also losing languages faster than any other place on earth. UNESCO currently lists 197 Indian languages as endangered or vulnerable.
Toto is listed as critically endangered, the final stage before extinction, with perhaps 1000 speakers.
In an effort to counter India’s language loss, or at least record these vernaculars before they disappear, linguist
Ganesh Devy is overseeing the largest ever survey of Indian tongues, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India. Already two years in, the PLSI will not be completed until 2014. By then it will be 21 massive volumes, listing language names, their geography and history, key vocabulary, and examples of songs, poetry and storytelling.
The distinctions between languages, dialects and patois, so intermingled in multicultural India, are carefully defined for the PLSI. The survey considers a tongue a language when 70 per cent of its basic vocabulary – simple verbs, as well as words to describe space, time, kinship, colours, geography, anatomy, animals and plants — are original.
Dr Devy says India is likely behind only Papua New Guinea in its number of languages, ahead of Indonesia and polyglot African countries like Nigeria and Cameroon.
“India is one of those countries that has managed to keep their linguistic diversity alive until this date. I have a rather clear estimate now of about 850 languages.” But he says India’s minority languages, particularly those linked to a shrinking ethnic population, are facing increasing pressure.
“Over the last 50 years, India has lost about 150 languages. That is three languages per year, one language every four months that is lost forever. That is worrying, because all these languages hold wisdom.
“Every language is a unique world view. We need as many of these views as possible to see our world in its totality. Every language we lose, our ability to perceive the world is reduced.”
It is a paradox, Dr Devy says, that in this modern age of mass, widespread and rapid communication, the most fundamental form of human communication – spoken language – is being lost faster than ever before. Of the 7000 languages now spoken on earth, only about 600 are expected to survive until the end of the century.
In 2010, an 85-year-old Andaman Island woman called Boa Senior died. She was the last speaker of the Bo language, and it died with her. In her final years, her language was recorded by linguists, but it lives now only as a relic.
The Ayapaneco language of Mexico has only two known fluent speakers remaining alive. They live 500 metres from each other in the southern village of Ayapa, but they don’t like each other, and refuse to talk. The loss of a language is rarely so clear-cut. It is usually a slow, almost imperceptible process.
At first, domains of a language become unused. If a minority language-speaking Indian farmer needs to speak Hindi to communicate at the market or with neighbouring landholders, the words describing agriculture in his native tongue become redundant, and he moves to the larger language for the sake of his livelihood. As more and more ‘‘domains’’ are closed off, a language is slowly throttled.
It happens to larger languages too. Dr Devy cites the example of his native tongue, Marathi, which no longer has any cricket commentary on radio or TV. “The sports domain of my language has been shut off, those words are lost.”
Languages are lost over generations. As minority tongues become increasingly unviable, children are less likely to pick them up.
“Today, all over the world, there is a very big gap between those in their 50s and 60s and those in their teens and 20s,’’ Dr Devy says. ‘‘About 35 per cent of the young people in the world face the problem that they don’t have a strong connection to the languages spoken by their parents.”
G.D.P. Sastry, head of the Centre for Tribal and Endangered Languages at Mysore’s Central Institute for Indian Languages, says up to 30 per cent of India’s mother tongues are endangered.
In the state of Tripura, the language of the Korbong tribe is spoken by only 25 people, belonging to four families in one village. The Bongcher language in the same state has only 500 speakers.
“As these villages grow smaller, when old people die or young people move away, the languages get smaller and smaller — the simple attrition of people contributes to language attrition,” Dr Sastry says.
An absence of formal education in minority mother tongues contributes to language loss, as does, unexpectedly, inter-tribal marriage.
“In homes where the wife speaks one language, and the husband another, the child will speak a third language, Hindi or English or another major language, but neither of the parents’ mother tongues,” Dr Sastry says.
On the porch of his home in Totopara, Ashok Toto (all Totos carry the surname), speaks to The Age in Hindi. The irony is not lost on him. “But we speak only our language inside our homes when we are with our families.”
The children in the village go to a Bengali-speaking school. Most speak Hindi too, and some Nepali, but English is neither widely nor well-spoken. A lack of English tends to keeps Totos in the village and linked to their culture, but it cruels their employment opportunities, in particular preventing them from securing well-paying government jobs.
The day The Age visits Totopara, the Toto people are celebrating a wedding. It is one of the few occasions the community is all together.
Ashok’s cousin Bhavesh explains that the Toto community used to meet regularly, called together by a Karbari, essentially a town crier, who would visit all Toto houses requesting their presence on behalf of tribal elders. Now, with their community so intermingled with others, it feels exclusionary to hold Toto-only meetings, and they occur infrequently. It is the same with their language.
“Other communities here are in the majority, so obviously we pick up their language and culture. If we are sitting with people from other community, they can’t understand our language. We understand other people’s feelings, so we talk in our common language.”
But in the aftermath of the wedding ceremony, held in a small clearing next to a grove of betel trees, Toto men sit and play cards while the women dance. Others crush maura, a millet which is fermented to make eu, a strong, dark liquor.
“Here we speak our language,” Bhavesh says. “Here we are Toto people still.”
The road runs out seven kilometres before the last village in India.
Nestled at the edge of the Torsa River delta on the border with Bhutan, and against the foothills of the mountain range that will become the mighty Himalayas, Totopara is happily isolated from much of the turbulence of the countries around it.
The rains of the monsoon season regularly cut the village off by road, and the electricity supply is not yet so reliable as to seriously disturb the quiet.
But there is a battle going on in Totopara, a quiet war being waged to retain a sense of community, of identity and of culture, against the forces of economy and the pull of conformity that grips so many of the world’s small cultures. Totopara’s is a fight to keep a language alive.
The village takes its name as the home of the Toto people. Ethnically distinct from their neighbours, they have lived in the area beyond all memory and storytelling. “We have been here for hundreds of years... this is our homeland,” village elder Ashok Toto tells The Age.
They remain a small group, and now find themselves a minority in their own community, numbering about 1400 of the 5000 or so who live in the village. Farmers mainly, they Toto grow rice and betel nut or sell their labour on nearby plantations, where they are known as quiet, steady workers.
The Toto speak their own language, a tongue that shares no close derivation with any of those spoken around — Nepali, Bengali, Hindi or Bhutanese.
But the Toto people fear their language, and with it, their culture, history and way of life, is being lost, consumed by an education system that obliges their children to speak Bengali, and an economy that pushes them towards Hindi and English. Ashok is confident the next generation will grow up comfortable with the tongue of their ancestors.
“Now, out of 10, only two children would have problems in speaking their own language,” Ashok says. “Otherwise this new generation is well-versed in Toto. But for future, it’s risky . . . there will be problem, huge problem . . . because we face difficulties following the way of life of our ancestors. “There is a chance our language and culture will be finished.”
India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth. Just how diverse is a matter of contention, but it is believed India today speaks between 850 and 900 distinct languages, though only 122 are recognised in the census and just 22 are scheduled as official languages in the constitution. Of mother tongues — the vernacular first learned at home — it was estimated in 1961 that India was home to more than 1600.
The first ever linguistic survey of India was completed in 1928, undertaken over 30 years by an Irish linguist and opium trader from the East India Company named Sir George Abraham Grierson, who concluded the country spoke 179 languages.
Acclaimed as triumph at the time, the 8000-page survey was flawed: many of Grierson’s field workers were untrained, he never visited large parts of southern India, and he completely ignored the country’s numerous nomadic tribes.
But as well as being one of the world’s most linguistically diverse nations, India is also losing languages faster than any other place on earth. UNESCO currently lists 197 Indian languages as endangered or vulnerable.
Toto is listed as critically endangered, the final stage before extinction, with perhaps 1000 speakers.
In an effort to counter India’s language loss, or at least record these vernaculars before they disappear, linguist
Ganesh Devy is overseeing the largest ever survey of Indian tongues, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India. Already two years in, the PLSI will not be completed until 2014. By then it will be 21 massive volumes, listing language names, their geography and history, key vocabulary, and examples of songs, poetry and storytelling.
The distinctions between languages, dialects and patois, so intermingled in multicultural India, are carefully defined for the PLSI. The survey considers a tongue a language when 70 per cent of its basic vocabulary – simple verbs, as well as words to describe space, time, kinship, colours, geography, anatomy, animals and plants — are original.
Dr Devy says India is likely behind only Papua New Guinea in its number of languages, ahead of Indonesia and polyglot African countries like Nigeria and Cameroon.
“India is one of those countries that has managed to keep their linguistic diversity alive until this date. I have a rather clear estimate now of about 850 languages.” But he says India’s minority languages, particularly those linked to a shrinking ethnic population, are facing increasing pressure.
“Over the last 50 years, India has lost about 150 languages. That is three languages per year, one language every four months that is lost forever. That is worrying, because all these languages hold wisdom.
“Every language is a unique world view. We need as many of these views as possible to see our world in its totality. Every language we lose, our ability to perceive the world is reduced.”
It is a paradox, Dr Devy says, that in this modern age of mass, widespread and rapid communication, the most fundamental form of human communication – spoken language – is being lost faster than ever before. Of the 7000 languages now spoken on earth, only about 600 are expected to survive until the end of the century.
In 2010, an 85-year-old Andaman Island woman called Boa Senior died. She was the last speaker of the Bo language, and it died with her. In her final years, her language was recorded by linguists, but it lives now only as a relic.
The Ayapaneco language of Mexico has only two known fluent speakers remaining alive. They live 500 metres from each other in the southern village of Ayapa, but they don’t like each other, and refuse to talk. The loss of a language is rarely so clear-cut. It is usually a slow, almost imperceptible process.
At first, domains of a language become unused. If a minority language-speaking Indian farmer needs to speak Hindi to communicate at the market or with neighbouring landholders, the words describing agriculture in his native tongue become redundant, and he moves to the larger language for the sake of his livelihood. As more and more ‘‘domains’’ are closed off, a language is slowly throttled.
It happens to larger languages too. Dr Devy cites the example of his native tongue, Marathi, which no longer has any cricket commentary on radio or TV. “The sports domain of my language has been shut off, those words are lost.”
Languages are lost over generations. As minority tongues become increasingly unviable, children are less likely to pick them up.
“Today, all over the world, there is a very big gap between those in their 50s and 60s and those in their teens and 20s,’’ Dr Devy says. ‘‘About 35 per cent of the young people in the world face the problem that they don’t have a strong connection to the languages spoken by their parents.”
G.D.P. Sastry, head of the Centre for Tribal and Endangered Languages at Mysore’s Central Institute for Indian Languages, says up to 30 per cent of India’s mother tongues are endangered.
In the state of Tripura, the language of the Korbong tribe is spoken by only 25 people, belonging to four families in one village. The Bongcher language in the same state has only 500 speakers.
“As these villages grow smaller, when old people die or young people move away, the languages get smaller and smaller — the simple attrition of people contributes to language attrition,” Dr Sastry says.
An absence of formal education in minority mother tongues contributes to language loss, as does, unexpectedly, inter-tribal marriage.
“In homes where the wife speaks one language, and the husband another, the child will speak a third language, Hindi or English or another major language, but neither of the parents’ mother tongues,” Dr Sastry says.
On the porch of his home in Totopara, Ashok Toto (all Totos carry the surname), speaks to The Age in Hindi. The irony is not lost on him. “But we speak only our language inside our homes when we are with our families.”
The children in the village go to a Bengali-speaking school. Most speak Hindi too, and some Nepali, but English is neither widely nor well-spoken. A lack of English tends to keeps Totos in the village and linked to their culture, but it cruels their employment opportunities, in particular preventing them from securing well-paying government jobs.
The day The Age visits Totopara, the Toto people are celebrating a wedding. It is one of the few occasions the community is all together.
Ashok’s cousin Bhavesh explains that the Toto community used to meet regularly, called together by a Karbari, essentially a town crier, who would visit all Toto houses requesting their presence on behalf of tribal elders. Now, with their community so intermingled with others, it feels exclusionary to hold Toto-only meetings, and they occur infrequently. It is the same with their language.
“Other communities here are in the majority, so obviously we pick up their language and culture. If we are sitting with people from other community, they can’t understand our language. We understand other people’s feelings, so we talk in our common language.”
But in the aftermath of the wedding ceremony, held in a small clearing next to a grove of betel trees, Toto men sit and play cards while the women dance. Others crush maura, a millet which is fermented to make eu, a strong, dark liquor.
“Here we speak our language,” Bhavesh says. “Here we are Toto people still.”
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