Still many elders’ second language skill, particularly elder women’s Tamil spoken skill is so poor.
#HELLO IN BADAGA LANGUAGE FULL#
Exception to this general perception, it is interesting to note that Badagas still have not attained the full fledged bilingual status. It occurs only where bilingualism exists and a dominant language is used in most domains instead of mother tongue.īilingualism among tribal communities is higher than among the general population. Language shift is nothing but switching over from one language to another. In the subject of endangered language, language shift and language loss are the two main topics of discussion among linguists and educationists. This is a serious matter and it is a socio-cultural shock for language enthusiast. Of course, the pity is that most of the present Badagas still do not sense the eroding phase of their mother tongue. Language is like key that can unlock local knowledge about medicinal secrets, ecological wisdom, weather and climate pattern, spiritual attitude etc. Language is an expression of cultural identity and a medium of intelligibility. Losing one’s own language is nothing but losing one’s social identity. That too it kept Badaga’s status as definitely endangered position, the second of the four endangered levels. But, now to our dismay the UNESCO categorised Badaga as one of the endangered languages. With increased population one can expect a stronger Badaga language with more number of speakers. Now the population of Badagas increased into many fold. Usages of the Badaga and its lingua franca status of the Nilgiri district were well maintained up to the middle of the twentieth century. While the Badaga language preserved more of its archaic features it developed its own special characters too. Instead of saying survived, we can say it developed into a stronger position and its usage spread into more domains. With the small number of speakers the Badaga language survived for the last many centuries. Badagas lived in the Nilgiri hills since hundreds of years and were scattered throughout the plateau. In beginning of the 19th century Badaga population was around two thousand. But, eventually the Badaga population was not big at any point of time. That is, even the other ethnic tribes of the Nilgiri hills used to converse with others in Badaga language. Badaga, the language of the larger population among the tribes of the Nilgiris served as a lingua franca since unknown period. They are the speakers of the Dravidian family of languages and most of the languages are mutually unintelligible. Nilgiri plateau is the abode of more than five major tribes and who are basically of Dravidian stock. Mulley also stresses for ‘palato-graphic’ investigation and audio recording of the sounds of the language. This uniqueness has been authenticated in the book ‘Sounds of the World’s Languages,’ published in 1996.
The retroflex sounds of the Badaga language are unique, he said. Rev P K Mulley, a clergyman of CSI in Kotagiri, and a freelance investigator of the Nilgiris for more than three decades, said that even before Pilot-Raichoor could arrive at it, he always knew that the Badaga community evolved from the Nilgiris.
LACITO in Paris houses numerous varieties of Badaga stories and songs collected over the past two decades by Pilot-Raichoor. It is evident from her research that the Badaga community was created in the Nilgiris with small local groups in ancient times. Hence, the four traditional communities of the Nilgiris, Todas, Kotas, Alu Kurumbas and Badagas retain their morphology and categorical distinctions, some very archaic features, which give them an overall grammatical homogeneity, according to her. The core grammar in the Badaga language converges with other Nilgiris languages which can be traced to early south Dravidian features,” she explained.Īccording to her research paper published recently in the Encyclopedia of Nilgiris, edited by international anthropologist Paul Hockings, a professor in the United States, there are evident, but isolated and non-systematic coincidences between Badaga and Alu Kurumba. “Whatever resemblance it has to Kannada points to early medieval and older forms of the language. Alu Kurumba shares most of the characteristic Nilgiri features including verb peculiarities of Badaga language. “Once our minds are freed from the idea that Badaga is a dialect of Kannada, it may become possible to consider more objectively the Alu Kurumba-Badaga linguistic relationship,” she said.