This is an historic and very important linguistics project. It will deepen our understanding of the true diversity of the Indian subcontinent, while also providing data (and perhaps fire) for change and new policies. I like that it will also record many minority and endangered languages and dialects.
India: fight to preserve dying languages
by Jason Overdorf
For the first time since the British Raj, Ganesh Devy’s People’s Linguistic Survey of India will catalog the nation’s myriad tongues. The enormous exercise will call into question colonial definitions of civilization and ethnicity that have persisted through the 60-year history of independent India.
“This is one of our heritage treasures that we have not been overtly aware of,” said Anvita Abbi, a professor of linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. “It’s very important to conduct these surveys and catalog [these languages], because it will help us formulate the appropriate language policy. We do not have an appropriate language policy [in India] because we don’t have an idea of the breadth and length of lingusitic diversity.”
Reminiscent of Sir James Murray’s Oxford English Dictionary project — which drew on the knowledge of hundreds of volunteers, including a prolific murderer, for information about the origins of English words — the People’s Linguistic Survey promises to be a remarkable resource for academic researchers and a vital aid in the struggle to preserve dying tongues.
But the growing stack of tomes may have broader implications, too, for India’s education system, and even the political organization of its 28 states and seven union territories.
“This will provide good material for fresh thinking about cognitive categories in every walk of life,” said Devy, who is a professor at the the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology in Gujarat.
“If I may say so, in all modesty, perhaps this will come to be seen as one of the more important linguistic projects during the last 100 years in India,” he said. It is indeed a huge endeavor.
The original British language survey took some 30 years to complete. More recently, India’s registrar general, which conducts the census, has taken 15 years to survey just four states.
But Devy’s army of volunteers have already finished work in nine states. Progress is underway in seven more. The first results are slated, from Jharkhand, to be published in November — with Gujarat and Maharashtra ready for the World Languages Meeting in Gujarat in January.
Devy expects the entire project — including a series of books in English — to be finished by the end of 2014.