Malto language

Not to be confused with Mal Paharia language.
Malto
Paharia
Region Bihar; Jharkhand; West Bengal; Bangladesh
Ethnicity Malto; Sauria Paharia
Native speakers
74,000  (2006)[1]
to 108,000 (2003)[2]
Dravidian
  • Northern Dravidian

    • Kurukh–Malto
      • Malto
Bengali script, Devanagari script
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
kmj  Kumarbhag Paharia
mjt  Sauria Paharia
Glottolog malt1248[3]

Malto /ˈmælt/[4] or Paharia /pəˈhɑriə/[5] is a Northern Dravidian language spoken primarily in East India. There are two varieties of Malto that are sometimes regarded as separate languages, Kumarbhag Paharia (Devanagari: कुमारभाग पहाड़िया) and Sauria Paharia (Devanagari: सौरिया पहाड़िया). The former is spoken in the Jharkhand and West Bengal states of India, and tiny pockets of Orissa state, and the latter in the Bihar and West Bengal states of India, and some pockets of Bangladesh. The lexical similarity between the two is estimated to be 80%.

Notes and references

  1. Kumarbhag Paharia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Sauria Paharia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Krishnamurti (2003), p. 27.
  3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Malto". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. "Malto". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.
  5. "Paharia". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.

Bibliography

External links