This set consists of 2 titles:
Tiwa matre khailu paseng, a handbook that consists of sixty-five conversational lessons arranged in graded manner based on the easy to difficult levels of learning, is designed as a Tiwa language teaching-learning tool that may help in revitalising the language through Tiwa language teaching and learning in designated lant'asals, the Tiwa language practice centres.
The lessons in this volume try to introduce all the grammatical features, basic vocabularies, frequently used words and some cultural terms of Tiwa. Another fundamental part of this volume is the list of vocabulary incorporated at the beginning of every lesson, which helps in understanding the individual lessons. The lessons also contain exercises so that the teachers and learners can assess their teaching and learning themselves.
population of the community. It comes under Bodo-Garo group of languages under Assam-Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burman sub family of the Tibeto-Chinese family (Grierson 1927: 53-4). The term Tiwa is an autonym and Lalung is an exonym (Brahma 2014: 140). It is spoken by some members of the Tiwa community of Karbi Anglong, Marigaon, Nowgong, Hojai and Lakhimpur districts of Assam and Ri-Bhoi, West Jaintia Hills and East Jaitia Hills districts of Meghalaya of India. According to the Language Data, June 2018 of Census of 2011, Govt of India, this language is spoken by 33,921 in India. There are 31,821 speakers of Tiwa in Assam and 2,057 speakers of it in Meghalaya. And, according to the Preliminary Report 2013 of the Census, the population of the Tiwa people in Assam is 2,00,915. As per this report, only 15.84% of the Tiwa community people in Assam speak this language as their mother tongue. If it is compared with the number of speakers in the preceding decades, the number of the native speakers of this language is gradually decreasing. Thus, it comes under the level 6b with the label Threatened as per the language status mentioned in Ethnologue which means 'the language is used for face- to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing users." (Eberhard et al. 2021).
The primary vowels employed in Tiwa are i, e, a, o and u; and, the consonants are p(b), ph, t(d), th, k(g), k, m, n, s(z), f, h, ts, I, r, j and w. If /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ occur as simple onset and simple coda, then they lose their voicedness and are realised as /p/, /t/, /k/ and /s/ respectively. Their voiced counterparts occur in intervocalic positions. And, to represent this kind of complementary distribution both 'b' and 'p', 'd' and 't', 'g' and 'k', 's' and 'z' are used in the writing system of the language. Anyway, depending on the length and the type of juncture between a base and an affix or postpositional word or between two syllables, the voicing feature of a stop changes; e.g., huldi ben very yellowish (/b/ in ben is [+voiced] in word initial position), {-tuk.e) 'till' (the coda /k/ in the first syllable /tuk/ of the suffix is [-voiced] in word medial position).
The Central Institute of Indian Languages was established on 17 July 1969 with a primary objective to fulfil the Government of India's resolution that envisaged a set of concrete measures for the development of Major Indian languages. The Institute is also charged with the responsibility of conducting research on all the minor and lesser-known as well as endangered languages of the country to bring out grammars, dictionaries, style manuals, standardised writing and reading instructions, language pedagogy materials and language technology tools for such languages.
In order to implement the Institute's goal of developing the major Indian Languages and bring them into our teaching and research scheme mainly meant for the school teachers, the Institute has set up seven Regional Language Centres in the various linguistic regions of the country to help and meet the demand for trained teachers. This was thought in order to implement the three language formula and the assurances given to linguistic minorities. These Centres are charged with the responsibilities of developing need based materials and methods of teaching Indian languages as second/foreign languages, train secondary school teachers in languages other than their mother tongues with a view to providing more language choice to young students in secondary schools and thus heighten the awareness of the diversity which goes into the building of the mosaic of Indian Culture through their activities such as inter language translations, original writing in another language, etc.
The tradition of studies in the broad field of linguistics is pretty old at the Asiatic Society since its inception. Such studies were also extended sporadically around the same time in the region which is known as North-East India at present. Perhaps the first systematic book on record was done by J. H. Lorrain entitled Dictionary of the Lushai Language published by the Society in 1940. The next important reference that is made all over the world is Suniti Kumar Chatterji's Kirata-Jana-Krti published by the Society in 1951. After a long interregnum the Asiatic Society initiated regular academic programmes including publications on North-East Region since 2006.
Dr. Satarupa Dattamajumdar, who was a Research Fellow at the Asiatic Society, undertook the present work among the Tiwa (Lalung) as a Post-Doctoral Fellow of ICSSR, Delhi (2013-15). This scheduled tribe of Assam, who are now bilingual, primarily belong to the Tibeto- Burman family of Languages. focus of the author in a total of six chapters in this study was essentially sociolinguistic in nature. She wanted to highlight the extent of observable threat emerging in some loss in the structural and/or functional use of the language of this speech community, specially in a contact situation where it is in network with other encircling language groups in the vicinity. We are told that this marginal tribal community of Assam has already been declared as 'definitely endangered' by the UNESCO. It is at this point that the author of this work examined the ethno-linguistic vitality of the language of the Tiwa (Lalung). For this purpose she based both on macro and micro linguistic field situations on a wider geographical space spread over Karbi Anglong, Nagaon and Morigaon areas, Assam. Thus, the status of comparative and useful correlates have come into relief so far the codification and elaboration of the current usages of the language are concerned. This approach renders this important work towards framing an indicative or instructive policy issue which may sensitize the language planners in evolving certain measures for safeguarding the probable endangerment of this language and finally help sustain it from reaching the oblivion.
Any language becoming endangered and ultimately becoming extinct should be considered as a loss to mankind in general and to the people of the linguistic area in particular. "Any language is to be regarded as endangered if children do not learn it fully any more or not at all- this will inevitably lead to its death in due course, unless the language gets revitalized as a result of new circumstances or successful application of some efforts maintaining it." (Wurm:1993) Language apart from being a set of arbitrary vocal symbols meant for communication also stands for identity of a speech community. Therefore, loss of language or mother tongue means loss of identity of a community which ultimately leads us to interrogate the situation in the light of the socio-political issues. Hence the need for identifying the nature of language endangerment of a speech community becomes imperative in the multilingual and multicultural context especially of north-east India. Tiwa (also known as Lalung) a language spoken in the states of Assam and Meghalaya which has been mentioned as 'Definitely Endangered' by UNESCO is being considered here as a case in this project.
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