Kurmali language

Kurmali language is mainly spoken in three eastern states of India, that is, in southeastern district Seraikela Kharswan, East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, Bokaro and Ranchi districts of Jharkhand; in northern district Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Kendujhar, Jajpur and Sundargarh of Odisha; and in south western district Paschim Medinipur, Jhargram, Bankura, Purulia and northern districts Maldah, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakhin Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri of West Bengal. Apart from the core area of the language, the language is also spoken in Udalguri and a few speakers are also found in Cachar, Santipur, Nagaon of Assam; the eastern districts of Chandrapur and Gadchiroli in Maharashtra. Apart from this, a few speakers are also found in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar[1][9] and in neighbour country Bangladesh[10][11] and Nepal.[12][13][11]

Grierson's linguistic map of East Chota Nagpur, 1903

During the British Raj, the Kurmali language was known as Panchpargania (meaning "five regions") for present-day Bundu, Barenda, Sonahatu (split into Sonahatu and Rahe), Silli, Tamar blocks of Ranchi district of Jharkhand state as a trade language between two linguistic region. Now the Sonahatu and Rahe make the core region of Panchpargania.[14]

As per the Census of 2011, there are 311,175 Kurmali Thar speakers in India (hailing mostly from West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Maharashtra) and 244,914 Panch Pargania speakers (mostly from Jharkhand), making a total of 556,089 Kurmali speakers in India.[1] They are grouped under the umbrella of "Hindi languages".[2] Note that both, Kurmali Thar and Panch Pargania are dialects of the Kurmali language.[2] In Nepal, there are 227 Kurmali speakers.[12]

The speakers of Kurmali are spread over a vast region of East India, especially in fringe areas of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. These states are mostly dominated by Bengali, Nagpuri and Odia speakers. Local dialectal change and language shift can be noticed in these areas. The Kurmi of West Bengal identify themselves as speakers of Kurmali but due to age-long settlement in the Bengali region their language is shifting towards the Manbhumi dialect of Bengali, as similarly occurred in northern Odisha with Bengali and Odia admixture.[2] In the 1903 Linguistic survey of India, the shift was explained this way:[15]

There are ... emigrants from ... highlands into the Bengali-speaking area. These have retained their own language, though ... borrowing words and grammatical forms from those amongst whom they live. The result is a kind of mixed dialect essentially Bihārī in its nature, but with a curious Bengali colouring. [...] In Manbhum this [Kurmalī] language is principally spoken by people of the Kurmī caste, who are numerous in the districts of Chota Nagpur, and in the Orissa Tributary state of Mayurbhanja.

— G. A. Grierson (1903). Linguistic survey of India, Vol. V, Part II, p. 145

The Kurmali language bears between 61 and 86 percent lexical similarity with Panchpargania; 58–72 percent with Khortha; 51–73 percent with Nagpuri (Sadri); 46–53 percent with Odia; 41–55 percent with Bengali; and 44–58 percent with Hindi.[6] Hence the Panchpargania is usually considered a major variety of the Kurmali language, although sometimes it is classified as a distinct language. Similarly, due to the great influence of the Bengali language on Kurmali (as the speakers of this language are in the process of shifting to dominant or prestige languages of the region), many linguists label it as Jharkhandi Bangla and sometimes it is clustered as a Manbhumi dialect.[16] Kurmali also closely resembles the Khortha language and has a good number of loanwords from the Munda language family, specifically from the Santali language, although not as much as Khortha language.[14]^{: 296, 297}

It is believed that the early form of the Kurmali language was spoken by Kudmi Mahato, a group that was one of the original homesteaders of Jharkhand (Manbhum region).[17] Now it is also influenced by Nagpuri language (Sadri) in Jharkhand.[7] Although the language is now Indo-Aryan in nature, it has some distinctive features like lexical items, grammatical markers and categories that are neither available in Indo-Aryan nor Dravidian, nor even in Munda languages. Thus it is believed that the language was once a separate, unrelated language. However, because of its long settlement in the Aryan belt, the native speakers gradually abandoned the original structure and switched to an Aryan form of the language, while retaining the substrate of the old.[14] The language currently falls in 6b (threatened) and 7 (Language shifting) level of the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), which correspond to the UNESCO language endangerment category level "Vulnerable" and "Definitely Endangered".[18][19] However, Ethnologue place Kurmali at 6a (vigorous) level and its variety Panchpargania (widely used in Jharkhand) at level 3 (trade) of EGIDS, both of which correspond to "Safe" status of UNESCO language endangerment category level.[6][20]

The basic Kurmali cardinal numbers are:

The language Kurmali (Kudmali) is spoken by 555,465 people as a native language in India.[1] The Kudmi (Kudmi Mahato), the native speakers of the language, are the main users. As per The People of India (1992), the language is spoken by ten communities as a mother tongue, including two Scheduled Tribe and three Scheduled Caste communities.[21][lower-alpha 2] Those ten communities include Bedia, Bagal, Dharua, Dom, Jolha, Kamar, Kumhar, Tanti, Nai, Ghasi, Karga, and Rautia.[22][23][11] In addition, bilingual tribals like Bhumij, Ho, Kharia, Lohara (or Lohar), Mahli, Munda, Oraon, Santal, Savar and Bathudi communities speak the language as a second or subsequent language.[24][2]

The language contributes to community identity in festivals like Bandna, Tusu, Karam and Jhumair, in which the songs are formatted in Kurmali. An example of this is the Jhumar song.

There are some institutions, where the Kurmali language is a higher education core subject.

• Ranchi University, Ranchi[11]
• Kolhan University, Chaibasa[25]
• Binod Bihari Mahto Koylanchal University, Dhanbad
• Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
• Sidho Kanho Birsha University, Purulia[26]
• Jhargram University, Jhargram[27]
• Vinoba Bhave University, Hazaribag[11]
• Chitta Mahato Memorial College, Purulia[28]

• SINGH, GYANESHWAR (25 November 2020). Historical Perspective of Kurmali Language. Blue Rose Publishers. Archived from the original on 18 April 2023. Retrieved 17 November 2021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• Majumder, Arup (5 June 2018). "Kurmali Kinship Terms and Its Morphology: An Anthropo-linguistic Study". Jadavpur Journal of Languages and Linguistics. 2 (1): 38–48.
• Dash, Biswanandan (5 August 2014). Kurmali noun morphology. An inflectional study on gender and number. ISBN 978-3-656-71900-7.
• Saha, Atanu, ed. (2021). Dictionary of the Kurmali Language: Bangla-Kurmali-English-HIndi. Jadavpur University Press. ISBN 978-93-83660-54-4. OCLC 1300421436.
• Mahato, Kshudiram (1983). Kurmāli śabdakosha. Purulia: Purulia Pustak Mandir. OCLC 23147093.