{"id":9171,"date":"2023-09-12T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/combonimission.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=9171"},"modified":"2023-09-08T10:44:32","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T09:44:32","slug":"india-saving-an-endangered-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/09\/12\/india-saving-an-endangered-language\/","title":{"rendered":"India. Saving an Endangered Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hrusso Aka, an indigenous language in northern India, <\/em>was <\/em>on the verge of extinction. A Jesuit, whose mother tongue was Konkani, a language along the western coast of India, c<\/em>a<\/em>me to help the Hrusso Aka natives save their dying tongue.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A tribal language in northern India was moving toward extinction in the late 1990s. In 1999, a 25-year-old Jesuit decided to live among its speakers to learn their tongue and help them prevent its slide down the deep pit of oblivion.<\/p>\n

The Hrusso Aka language is spoken by the indigenous people in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. It is an ethnically diverse state, shares international borders with Bhutan in the west, and Myanmar in the east. In the north, it shares over 1,000 kilometres of disputed border with China. The Hrusso Aka people don\u2019t look like the Indians; they look more like the Mongols.<\/p>\n

When China invaded Tibet in 1950, some Tibetans fled to where the Hrusso Aka people thrive today. According to an account, Hrusso Aka women had a practice of smearing their face with paints to make themselves look undesirable – a way to protect themselves from men from the outside. Because of this practice, the British and the Assamese called them Aka, which means painted in Assamese, a language in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hrusso Akas has a population of about 10,000\u201d said Father Vijay D\u2019Souza, Jesuit, who has been working to preserve the language for many years. He is the Director of North Eastern Institute of Language and Culture<\/em> in Guwahati. He has a doctorate degree in Linguistics from the University of Oxford. He\u2019s also an associate member at the University of Oxford\u2019s Faculty of Linguistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut according to our estimate\u201d, he continued, \u201conly about 4,000 to 5,000 people are speaking the language today. So, it\u2019s quite endangered that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A language is considered endangered when the young are no longer learning to speak it because the parents have stopped passing it on to them, D\u2019Souza explained. That is what is happening in Hrusso Aka villages. \u201cPeople stop passing on their own language to their children when they feel speaking that language is not to their advantage. Parents think their children should speak Hindi, or English, in our context here. In other parts of the world, it may be Spanish or French,\u201d the priest pointed out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A mother tongue would run the risk of getting endangered when its people start thinking that speaking in a foreign language would promise them a better future, the linguist Jesuit pointed out. \u201cI think that is one of the major reasons why a language is facing the threat of extinction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But a language, especially a minority one, gets endangered not only by the prospects of better future of its speakers, but also by the government\u2019s idea of achieving national integration that views minority languages as a threat to that goal, he noted. \u201cSometimes the language is banned in schools. Parents may want to pass it on to their children, but the school says you need to speak only in this particular language.\u201d Father D\u2019Souza said. \u201c<\/p>\n

According to a National Geographic post on April 16, 2018, some 230 languages worldwide went extinct between the period of 1950 and 2010. \u201cChildren become smarter when they know more languages,\u201d the priest said. \u201cChildren can easily learn more than one language.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

English is a prestige language in India. People who speak English are regarded as educated.\u00a0 \u201cWe can\u2019t deny English is required for the children\u2019s future, for them to connect to the global scenario and be part of the global community,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there\u2019s an erroneous belief that if you speak in your mother tongue it will hamper your ability to speak English, which is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

India\u2019s former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had spoken the languages of Urdu, Marathi, Hindi, Telugu, and English. Rao, an Indian prime minister from the non-Hindi speaking region of South India, spared his nation from an economic collapse by launching and accelerating free-market reforms. Gandhi, the Great Soul of India himself, was a polyglot who had spoken in Gujarati, English, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, and even the very old Sanskrit.<\/p>\n

Aside from English, the Hrusso Aka language is also threatened by Hindi, one of the official languages in India, D\u2019Souza said. Hindi has become the lingua franca among Indians who speak different languages.<\/p>\n

India has 122 major languages and 1,599 other languages, according to the Census of India of 2001. Hindi enjoys prestige among non-Hindi Indians and is massively promoted on TV.<\/p>\n

Father D\u2019Souza has also observed many young Indians have become fond of speaking in Hindi and are now ashamed of their own mother tongue. They even teach Hindi to their children.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

D’Souza gives the credit for saving the language to its native speakers. The first step he took to help them save it was \u201cto learn the language.\u201d In the evening, D\u2019Souza went around collecting words. He got fascinated with the \u201cvery complex sound structure of the language.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe published the first ever book in Hrusso Aka language in 1999,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people became very excited because their language has been written for the first time.\u201d It was a hymn book. In 2017, D\u2019Souza developed the language\u2019s alphabet and subsequently modified it in collaboration with a team of Hrusso Aka native speakers. In the same year, they also founded a literature team \u201cthat became the Hrusso Aka language academy in 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important measure is to spread awareness among the people about language endangerment\u201d, he said, \u201cunless the native speakers themselves wake up to this reality, we from the outside can do a little to ensure the language\u2019s survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The most important measure in ensuring the language\u2019s survival is capacity-building, and it is bearing fruit now, D\u2019Souza noted. \u201cWhen people realize the beauty of their language and start composing poems, stories, and helping out in making dictionaries and textbooks, there\u2019s an involvement of many people, and the language has a better chance of survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To ensure the language\u2019s survival, D\u2019Souza and his team of native speakers have also made three language documentations and have archived 150 hours of recordings, which were stored permanently at online sites. \u201cIf the language becomes dormant, people can go back 50 to 100 years to those deposits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The third measure in ensuring the language\u2019s survival involves composing literature, like children\u2019s rhymes, poetry, church songs, and even secular songs, D\u2019Souza added. The Hrusso Aka Language Academy has been producing social media content. Its Facebook news channel, the first ever in the language, summarizes world and local news in its mother tongue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe just produced it experimentally and we started getting 2,000 views – D\u2019Souza said -. For a community of 10,000 people, 2,000 views for a story is viral. We are very proud that news is now available in their own language.\u201d (Open Photo: Hrusso Aka women in their traditional dress. WM) \u2013 (Oliver Samson)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hrusso Aka, an indigenous language in northern India, was on the verge of extinction. A Jesuit, whose mother tongue was Konkani, a language along the western coast of India, came to help the Hrusso Aka natives save their dying tongue. \u00a0 A tribal language in northern India was moving toward extinction in the late 1990s. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}