Santali language

Santali
Satār
Native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan
Ethnicity Santal
Native speakers
 6.3 million  (2001 census – 2011)[1]
Austroasiatic

  • Munda

    • North Munda
      • Kherwari
        • Santali
Dialects
Mahali (Mahli)
Ol Chiki
Language codes
ISO 639-2 sat
ISO 639-3 Either:
sat – Santali
mjx – Mahali
Glottolog sant1410  (Santali)[2]
maha1291  (Mahali)[3]

Santali is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by around 6.2 million people in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, although most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Tripura, and West Bengal.[4]

Writing System

Santai is written using Ol Chiki alphabet. It is also written in Oriya, [5] Devanagari and Bengali based on the origin of the people. During the British rule it used to be written in Latin. [6]

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. The alphabets of the language are known as Ol Chiki, though people are not very well versed in it. He is respected among Santhals for his noble deed, action and contribution of the script Ol Chiki for the Santal society. For uplifting the Santal community, he contributed a lot through his pen and writings. 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.

Phonology

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.

  Bilabial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Stops voiceless p (pʰ) t (tʰ) ʈ (ʈʰ) c (cʰ) k  
voiced b (bʱ) d (dʱ) ɖ (ɖʱ) ɟ (ɟʱ)
⟨j jh⟩		 ɡ (ɡʱ)  
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.

Vowels

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.

Morphology

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

Nouns

Number

Three numbers are distinguished, singular, dual and plural.

Singular seta. 'dog'
Dual seta-kin 'two dogs'
Plural seta-ko 'dogs'

Case

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

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.

  Singular Dual Plural
First person Exclusive iń ɘliɲ alɛ
Inclusive   alaṅ abo
Second person am aben apɛ
Third person Anaphoric ac' ɘkin ako
Demonstrative uni unkin oṅko

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

Numerals

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

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

Subject markers

  Singular Dual Plural
First person Exclusive -ɲ(iɲ) -liɲ -lɛ
Inclusive   -laŋ -bon
Second person -m -ben -pɛ
Third person -e -kin -ko

Object markers

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-

Syntax

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

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.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Santali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Mahali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Santali". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mahali". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. ↑ "Santali: A Language of India". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. SIL International. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  5. ↑ "Ol Chiki (Ol Cemet’, Ol, Santali)". Scriptsource.org. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  6. ↑ "Santali Localization". Andovar.com. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  7. ↑ Syllabus for UGC NET Santali, Dec 2013

Further reading

Dictionaries

Grammars and primers

Literature

External links

Santali language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator