Language fillip: Members of the Munda tribe, which speaks Mundari

Ranchi, Oct. 22: Tribal languages facing near extinction will now get some hi-tech succour.

As educated tribals are abandoning their mother tongues in favour of mainstream languages, Ranchi University’s tribal and regional language department has come up with a unique project — revitalisation kits for Mundari, Santhali, Ho and Kharia.

Elements of kits for the quartet under the Austin linguistic group include audio and video footage and dictionaries with meanings in English and Hindi. These materials will be digitally converted into compact discs and distributed among linguistic volunteers to help people learn and speak the tribal tongues.

“We are in the first stage of preparing the revitalisation kits, which will take about a year,” said department faculty and project in-charge Ganesh Murmu, who was part of an international team of linguistic researchers, which recently discovered tribal language Koro in Arunachal Pradesh.

Murmu, aided by experts of Mundari, Santhali, Ho and Kharia, has already toured parts of Jharkhand to record the languages in audio and video formats and collect existing folklore in each language that will form part of resource material in the kits.

“The first draft of kits are being made now. These will be shown to community leaders of all four linguistic groups. Their inputs and feedback will be incorporated in the final versions,” said Murmu.

Mundari, Santhali, Ho and Kharia were spoken by a vast tribal population in Jharkhand, Orissa, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. But today, educated tribals in cities and even villages are fast adopting Hindi or English, languages that were diku (foreign) till recently.

“The Constitution has the provision to impart primary education to a tribal child in his or her own mother tongue. But neither is it followed here and nor are tribal children developing a love for their language,” Murmu said.

After the four revitalisation kits are developed, the department, in the next phase of action, will develop kits for minor tribal languages such as Asur, Birhor, Korku and Bhumij, spoken by primitive tribal groups.