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Munda languages
The Munda languages are a group of closely-related languages spoken by about eleven million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, which means they are distantly related to languages such as the Mon and Khmer languages, to Vietnamese, as well as to minority languages in Thailand and Laos and the minority Mangic languages of South China. Bhumij, Ho, Mundari, and Santali are notable Munda languages.
The family is generally divided into two branches: North Munda, spoken in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, as well as in parts of Bangladesh and Nepal, and South Munda, spoken in central Odisha and along the border between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
North Munda, of which Santali is the most widely spoken and recognised as an official language in India, has twice as many speakers as South Munda. After Santali, the Mundari and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by Korku and Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small isolated groups and are poorly described.
Characteristics of the Munda languages include three numbers (singular, dual and plural), two genders (animate and inanimate), a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns, the use of suffixes or auxiliaries to indicate tense, and partial, total, and complex reduplication, as well as switch-reference. The Munda languages are also polysynthetic and agglutinating. In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent except in the middle of words.
The Munda languages are often interpreted as prime examples of father tongues since the languages were passed down through generations from the paternal, rather than maternal, side.
Many linguists suggest that the Proto-Munda language probably split from Proto-Austroasiatic somewhere in Indochina.[citation needed] Studies by Chaubey et al. (2011), Arunkumaret al. (2015), Metspalu et al. (2018), and Tätte et al. (2019) all show that the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family was created as the result of a male-biased linguistic intrusion into the Indian subcontinent from Southeast Asia during the Late Neolithic period (Sidwell & Rau 2019 cited Tätte et al. (2019), estimate a date of formation between 3,800 and 2,000 years ago), which carried the paternal lineage O1b1a1a into India from either Meghalaya or the sea. These studies and analyses confirm George van Driem's Munda Father tongue hypothesis. Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests they arrived on the coast of modern-day Odisha about 4000–3500 years ago (c. 2000 – c. 1500 BCE) and spread after the Indo-Aryan migration to the region.
Rau and Sidwell (2019), along with Blench (2019), suggest that Pre-Proto-Munda had arrived in the Mahanadi River Delta around 1500 BCE from Southeast Asia via a maritime route, rather than overland. The Munda languages then subsequently spread up the Mahanadi watershed. 2021 studies suggest that Munda languages impacted Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.
Munda consists of five uncontroversial branches (Korku as an isolate, Remo, Savara, Kherwar, and Kharia-Juang). However, their interrelationship is debated.
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Munda languages
The Munda languages are a group of closely-related languages spoken by about eleven million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, which means they are distantly related to languages such as the Mon and Khmer languages, to Vietnamese, as well as to minority languages in Thailand and Laos and the minority Mangic languages of South China. Bhumij, Ho, Mundari, and Santali are notable Munda languages.
The family is generally divided into two branches: North Munda, spoken in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, as well as in parts of Bangladesh and Nepal, and South Munda, spoken in central Odisha and along the border between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
North Munda, of which Santali is the most widely spoken and recognised as an official language in India, has twice as many speakers as South Munda. After Santali, the Mundari and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by Korku and Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small isolated groups and are poorly described.
Characteristics of the Munda languages include three numbers (singular, dual and plural), two genders (animate and inanimate), a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns, the use of suffixes or auxiliaries to indicate tense, and partial, total, and complex reduplication, as well as switch-reference. The Munda languages are also polysynthetic and agglutinating. In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent except in the middle of words.
The Munda languages are often interpreted as prime examples of father tongues since the languages were passed down through generations from the paternal, rather than maternal, side.
Many linguists suggest that the Proto-Munda language probably split from Proto-Austroasiatic somewhere in Indochina.[citation needed] Studies by Chaubey et al. (2011), Arunkumaret al. (2015), Metspalu et al. (2018), and Tätte et al. (2019) all show that the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family was created as the result of a male-biased linguistic intrusion into the Indian subcontinent from Southeast Asia during the Late Neolithic period (Sidwell & Rau 2019 cited Tätte et al. (2019), estimate a date of formation between 3,800 and 2,000 years ago), which carried the paternal lineage O1b1a1a into India from either Meghalaya or the sea. These studies and analyses confirm George van Driem's Munda Father tongue hypothesis. Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests they arrived on the coast of modern-day Odisha about 4000–3500 years ago (c. 2000 – c. 1500 BCE) and spread after the Indo-Aryan migration to the region.
Rau and Sidwell (2019), along with Blench (2019), suggest that Pre-Proto-Munda had arrived in the Mahanadi River Delta around 1500 BCE from Southeast Asia via a maritime route, rather than overland. The Munda languages then subsequently spread up the Mahanadi watershed. 2021 studies suggest that Munda languages impacted Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.
Munda consists of five uncontroversial branches (Korku as an isolate, Remo, Savara, Kherwar, and Kharia-Juang). However, their interrelationship is debated.