Tribal languages in India face extinction threat
- Posted By
10Pointer
- Categories
Miscellaneous
- Published
29th Aug, 2020
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- There are 7,000 living languages in the world and around 3,000 are considered as endangered.
- This means that almost half of the planet’s current linguistic diversity is under threat.
- Around 197 Indian languages are in various stages of endangerment in our country, the highest in the world.
- There are 780 living languages at present and 400 of them are at risk of dying.
- There are five tribal languages that are moving towards extinction in India.
- The most threatened language is Majhi in Sikkim (with only 4 speakers).
- The Mahali language in eastern India, Koro in Arunachal Pradesh, Sidi in Gujarat and Dimasa in Assam are facing extinction.
- UNESCO has put Asur, Birhor and Korwa in its list of world’s endangered languages with Birhor being categorised as Critically Endangered.
- Two major tribal languages included in the Eighth Schedule- Bodo and Santali, have shown decline.
- According to UNESCO, any language that is spoken by less than 10,000 people is potentially endangered.
- In India, after the 1971 census, govt. decided to not include any language spoken by less than 10,000 in the official list of languages.
