Santali language

History

Till the nineteenth century Santali remained an oral language and all collective traditional knowledge, history, stories, songs etc. were transmitted by word of mouth from generation to generation. The interest of Europeans in the study of Indian languages led to the first efforts at documenting Santali language. Bengali and the Roman scripts were first used to write Santali before 1860s by European anthropologists, folklorists and missionaries like Campbell, Skrefsrud and Bodding. Their efforts resulted in Santali dictionaries, documentation and translations of collected folk tales, study of the basic morphology, syntax and phonetic structure of the language.

In the 1970s the separate Ol Chiki script for Santali by Pandit Raghunath Murmu, which is used exclusively by the Santali speaking people of Singhbhum and Odisha.

There is no single script which is uniformly accepted by all Santals. Devanagari remains the script recognised for teaching learning of the language in Jharkhand, Bengali script in West Bengal.However, Roman script has been widely used by majority of the educated intellectuals. A major share of the original documented corpus as well as the most authentic and scientific research efforts are available in the Roman Script.

Contribution of Pandit Raghunath Murmu

A need for the separate script was felt by some visionary Santals, as none of the existing scripts was sufficient to communicate the Santali language phonetically. This further resulted in the invention of new script called Ol Chiki. This script was invented by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in 1925. He is popularly known as Guru Gomke among the Santals, a title awarded to him by the Mayurbhanj Adibasi Mahasabh. He is respected among Santals for his noble deed, action and contribution of the script Ol Chiki for the Santal society. He wrote over 150 books covering a wide range of subjects. It includes works such as grammar, novels, drama, poetry, and short stories in Santali using Ol Chiki as part of his extensive programme. Among the most acclaimed of his works are Darege Dhan, Sidhu Kanhu, Bidu Chandan and Kherwal Bir Pandit.

Grammatical sketch

The following brief grammatical sketch is based on Ghosh 2008. It does not purport to give a full account of the language's grammar but rather give an impression of the structure of the language.

Consonants

Santali has 21 consonants, not counting the 10 aspirated stops which occur almost only in Indo-Aryan loanwords and are given in parentheses in the table below.

In native words, the opposition between voiceless and voiced stops is neutralised in word-final position. A typical Munda feature is that word-final stops are "checked", i. e. glottalised and unreleased.

Vowels

Santali has eight non-nasal and six nasal vowels.

There are numerous diphthongs.

Morphology

Santali, like all Munda languages, is a suffixing agglutinating language.

Number

Three numbers are distinguished, singular, dual and plural.

Case

The case suffix follows the number suffix. The following cases are distinguished:

Possession

Santali has possessive suffixes which are only used with kinship terms: 1st person -ɲ, 2nd person -m, 3rd person -t. The suffixes do not distinguish possessor number.

Pronouns

The personal pronouns in Santali distinguish inclusive and exclusive first person and anaphoric and demonstrative third person.

The interrogative pronouns have different form for animate ('who?') and inanimate ('what?'), and referential ('which?') vs. non-referential.

The indefinite pronouns are:

The demonstratives distinguish three degrees of deixis (proximate, distal, remote) and simple ('this', 'that', etc.) and particulate ('just this', 'just that') forms.

Numerals

The basic cardinal numbers are:

The numerals are used with numeral classifiers. Distributive numerals are formed by reduplicating the first consonant and vowel, e.g. babar 'two each'.

Verbs

Verbs in Santali inflect for tense, aspect and mood, voice and the person and number of the subject.

Object markers

Transitive verbs with pronominal objects take infixed object markers.

Syntax

Santali is an SOV language, though topics can be fronted.

Reciprocal influence of Santali language on other languages

Santali, belonging to the Austroasiatic family and having a tradition traceable from pre-Aryan days, retained its distinct identity and co-existed with languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan family, in Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and other states. This affiliation is generally accepted, but there are many cross-questions and puzzles.

Relative influences between Santali and other Indian languages are not yet fully studied. In modern Indian languages like Western Hindi the steps of evolution from Midland Prakrit Sauraseni could be traced clearly. In the case of Bengali such steps of evolution are not always clear and distinct, and one has to look at other influences that moulded Bengali's essential characteristics.

A notable work in this field was initiated by linguist Byomkes Chakrabarti in the 1960s. Sri Chakrabarti investigated the complex process of assimilation of non-Aryan elements, particularly the Santali elements, by Bengali. He showed the overwhelming influence of Bengali on Santali. His formulations are based on the detailed study of reciprocal influences on all aspects of both languages and try to bring out the unique features of the languages. More research is awaited in this area.

Notable linguist Khudiram Das authored the 'Santhali Bangla Samasabda Abhidhan' (সাঁওতালি বাংলা সমশব্দ অভিধান), a book focusing on the influence of the Santali language on Bengali and providing a basis for further research on this prime subject. 'Bangla Santali Bhasha Samparka (বাংলা সাঁওতালী ভাষা-সম্পর্ক)' is a collection of essays in ebook format authored by him and dedicated to eminent liguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji on the relationship between the Bengali language and Santali language.

Rising significance of Santali

A great recognition of Santali was reached in December 2013 when the University Grants Commission of India decided to introduce the language in the National Eligibility Test to prepare future lecturers for the language in colleges and universities.