Day Three: Slipping through the ridges of India.

सर्वं ज्ञानं मयि विद्यते

All that I have to learn is within me.

India writes in many languages and speaks in many more voices. And yet, communication has never broken down in this subcontinent. With about 2.4% of the world’s land surface and a total of 16% of the world’s population, India houses according to one estimate, 1,652 “mothertongues” – including 103 foreign mother tongues .

Writing came to India much earlier than many other civilizations – from the days of the Indus Valley Civilization, by over four thousand years ago, and the space has also witnessed emergence of some of the great writing systems like the Brāhmī and the Kharosthī – dating back to roughly 500 B.C.

4,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages face a potential threat of extinction, out of which 10 % is spoken in India.

Two of the many endangered languages of India are-

Malayalam – It is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry by the Malayali people, and it is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. The word Malayalam originated from the words mala, meaning “mountain”, and alam, meaning “region” or “-ship” (as in “township”); Malayalam thus translates directly as “the mountain region.” The term originally referred to the land of the Chera dynasty , and only later became the name of its language.

Many of the Portugese words have been derived by Malayalam! Take for instance this table which lists the loan words from Portuguese-

Malayalam	Malayalam Pronunciation	English meaning	Portuguese word
ആയ	āyā	Maid	Aya
അലമാര	alamāra	Cupboard	Armário
അള്‍ത്താര	altāra	Altar	Altar
അണ്ണാറ ചക്ക	Annāra chakka	Pineapple	Ananás
ചായ	chāya	Tea	Chá
ചാവി	chāvi	Key	Chave
ഇസ്തിരി	isthiri	To iron	Estirar
ഇസ്കൂള്‍	iskool	School	Escola
കൊവേന്ത	kovenda	Convent	Convento
ജനാല	janāla	Window	Janela

Sindhi  सिन्धी, is an Indo-Aryan language of the historical Sindh region in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, spoken by the Sindhi people. It is the official language of the Pakistani province of Sindh. In India, Sindhi is one of the scheduled languages officially recognized by the central government, though it is not an official language of any of the states.

There are many Sindhi language television channels broadcasting in Pakistan such as KTN, Sindh TV, and Dharti TV. Besides this, the Indian television network Doordarshan has been asked by the Indian High Court to start a news channel for Sindhi speakers in India.

Various indigenous scripts were formerly used by Hindu business communities to write Sindhi, but those are all now obsolete. The Muslim majority always favoured the use of the Arabic script with some necessary adaptations to record Sindhi sounds.

A proven method to ensure survival of languages is the development of schools that teach in them, enabling the new speakers to preserve and enrich the language. Audio-visual documentation of the important aspects of such language — like storytelling, folk literature and history — will be an ideal start.

For example, Samtali, Gondi (spoken in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra), Bheli (Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat), Mizo (Mizoram), Garo and Khasi (Meghalaya) and Kotbarak (Tripura) are showing an upward trend because educated people in these communities have started using these languages for writing.

“They publish poems, write plays and perform them. In some of the languages, even films are being made. For instance, they have started making films in Gondi.’