| Santhali | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan |
| Ethnicity | Santals |
| Native speakers | 6.2 million (1997) |
| Language family |
Austro-Asiatic
|
| Dialects |
Mahali (Mahli)
|
| Writing system | Latin, Ol Chiki |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | sat |
| ISO 639-3 | either: sat – Santali mjx – Mahali |
Santali is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan . Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has its own alphabet, known as Ol Chiki, but literacy is very low, between 10 and 30%. Santhali is spoken by the Santhals.
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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.
Santali has 21 consonants, not counting the 10 aspirated stops which occur almost only in Indic loanwords and are given in parentheses in the table below.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | voiceless | p (ph) | t (th) | ʈ (ʈh) | c (ch) | k | |
| voiced | b (bh) | d (dh) | ɖ (ɖh) | ɟ (ɟh) <j jh> |
g (gh) | ||
| Fricatives | s | h | |||||
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Flap | ɽ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Glides | w | j <y> | |||||
In native words, the opposition between voiceless and voiced stops is neutralized in word-final position. A typical Munda feature is that word-final stops are "checked", i. e. glottalized and unreleased.
Santali has eight non-nasal and six nasal vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ĩ | u ũ | |
| Mid-high | e | ə ə̃ | o |
| Mid-low | ɛ ɛ̃ | ɔ ɔ̃ | |
| Low | a ã |
There are numerous diphthongs.
Santali, like all Munda languages, is a suffixing agglutinating language.
Three numbers are distinguished, singular, dual and plural.
| Singular | seta | 'dog' |
|---|---|---|
| Dual | seta-kin | 'two dogs' |
| Plural | seta-ko | 'dogs' |
The case suffix follows the number suffix. The following cases are distinguished:
| Case | Marker | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -Ø | Subject and object |
| Genitive | -rɛn (animate) -ak', -rɛak' (inanimate) |
Possessor |
| Comitative | -ʈhɛn/-ʈhɛc' | goal, place |
| Instrumental-Locative | -tɛ | Instrument, cause, motion |
| Sociative | -são | Association |
| Allative | -sɛn/-sɛc' | Direction |
| Ablative | -khɔn/-khɔc' | Source, origin |
| Locative | -rɛ | Spatio-temporal location |
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.
The personal pronouns in Santali distinguish inclusive and exclusive first person and anaphoric and demonstrative third person.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Exclusive | iɲ | ɘliɲ | alɛ |
| Inclusive | alaŋ | abo | ||
| Second person | am | aben | apɛ | |
| Third person | Anaphoric | ac' | ɘkin | ako |
| Demonstrative | uni | unkin | onko | |
The interrogative pronouns have different form for animate ('who?') and inanimate ('what?'), and referential ('which?') vs. non-referential.
| Animate | Inanimate | |
|---|---|---|
| Referential | ɔkɔe | oka |
| Non-referential | cele | cet' |
The indefinite pronouns are:
| Animate | Inanimate | |
|---|---|---|
| 'any' | jãheã | jãhã |
| 'some' | adɔm | adɔmak |
| 'another' | ɛʈak'ic' | ɛʈak'ak' |
The demonstratives distinguish three degrees of deixis (proximate, distal, remote) and simple ('this', 'that', etc.) and particulate ('just this', 'just that') forms.
| Simple | Animate | Inanimate |
|---|---|---|
| Proximate | nui | noa |
| Distal | uni | ona |
| Remote | həni | hana |
| Particularized | Animate | Inanimate |
|---|---|---|
| Proximate | nii | niə |
| Distal | ini | inə |
| Remote | enko | inəko |
The basic cardinal numbers are:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 20 | 100 |
| mit' | bar | pɛ | pon | mɔ̃ɽɛ̃ | turui | eae | irəl | arɛ | gɛl | isi | sae |
The numerals are used with numeral classifiers. Distributive numerals are formed by reduplicating the first consonant and vowel, e.g. babar 'two each'.
Verbs in Santali inflect for tense, aspect and mood, voice and the person and number of the subject.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Exclusive | -ɲ(iɲ) | -liɲ | -lɛ |
| Inclusive | -laŋ | -bon | ||
| Second person | -m | -ben | -pɛ | |
| Third person | -e | -kin | -ko | |
Transitive verbs with pronominal objects take infixed object markers.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Exclusive | -iɲ- | -liɲ- | -lɛ- |
| Inclusive | -laŋ- | -bon- | ||
| Second person | -me- | -ben- | -pɛ- | |
| Third person | -e- | -kin- | -ko- | |
Santali is a SOV languages, though topics can be fronted.
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