Ho language

This article is about the Austroasiatic language of India. For the Tibeto-Burman language also known as Ho of China, Vietnam and Laos, see Hani language.
Ho
Native to India, Bangladesh
Ethnicity Ho people
Native speakers
 1.04 million  (2001 census)[1]
Austroasiatic
Varang Kshiti,
Oriya, Devanagari, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 hoc
Glottolog hooo1248[2]

Ho (also known as Bihar Ho and Lanka Kol) is a Munda language of the Austroasiatic language family spoken primarily in India by about 1.04 million people (0.103% of India's population) per the 2001 census. It is spoken by the Ho people and is written with the "Varang Kshiti" (also "Warang Chiti" script). In some regions, in Oriya, Devanagari and Latin [3] but are considered non-ideal by the native speakers who prefer exclusive use of Varang Kshiti. [4] The name "Ho" is derived from the native word "ho", which means "human".[5]

Distribution

The largest concentrations of Ho speakers are in the East Singhbhum district of southern Jharkhand and in the Mayurbhanj district and Keonjhar district of northern Odisha. Ho is closer to the Mayurbhanj dialect of Mundari than the language spoken in Jharkhand. Although Ho and Mundari are linguistically closer, the ethnic identity of the speakers is distinct.[5] [6]

References

  1. ↑ Ho at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Ho". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ "The Warang Chiti Alphabet". Swarthmore.edu. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  4. ↑ Harrison, Anderson, David, Gregory. "Review of Proposal for Encoding Warang Chiti (Hoorthography) in Unicode" (PDF). Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Ho Web Sketch: Ho writing" (PDF). Livingtongues.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  6. ↑ Anderson, edited by Gregory S. (2008). The Munda languages (1. publ. ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32890-X.

Further reading

External links