Tribal languages are not dying

If you thought that the number of people speaking the languages used by tribes, nomads and de-notified tribes of India was falling with every generation, then you are in for a surprise.

A survey of People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) conducted by tribal activist and linguist, Dr Ganesh Devy, reveals that the number of languages considered weak had fallen. This indicates that the so-called ‘weak languages’ had actually a large number of speakers.

The survey has also identified many languages which had not been covered by the Census of Languages conducted by the Indian government.  The pre-publication launch of the PLSI for 12 states covering a total of 375 Indian languages will be done at a two-day long Bhasha Vasudha programme being held on Saturday and Sunday at Vadodara.

The states for which the pre-publication launch of the PLSI will be done are Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. Representatives of 890 languages are attending this one-of-a-kind
global language conference in Vadodara.

"The PLSI is the first nationwide linguistic survey since George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India that was carried out at the beginning of the twentieth century," Devy said while talking to DNA.  Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, founded by Devy, has been working for the last several years in this direction. "At no time in the past, and in no country in the world, have representatives of nearly 890 languages come together on a common platform," Devy said.