Mundari (Munɖari) is a

Munda language 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 langu ...

of the Austroasiatic language family spoken by the Munda tribes in eastern Indian states of

Jharkhand Jharkhand (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in East India, eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north ...

Odisha Odisha (), formerly Orissa (List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2011), is a States and union territories of India, state located in East India, Eastern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by ar ...

and

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

and northern

Rangpur Division Rangpur Division (; ; ) is a first-level Divisions of Bangladesh, administrative division of Bangladesh. It covers the northernmost part of the country with a population of about 18 million inhabitants within an area of . Rangpur Division shar ...

of Bangladesh. It is closely related to Santali and Bhumij. Mundari Bani, a script specifically to write Mundari, was invented by Rohidas Singh Nag. It has also been written in the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

, Odia, Bengali, and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

writing systems.

History

According to linguist

Paul Sidwell Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based in Canberra, Australia, who has held research and lecturing positions at the Australian National University. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in forensic linguistics, is most nota ...

(2018), Munda languages probably arrived on coast of

from

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia (historically known as Indochina and the Indochinese Peninsula) is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to th ...

about 4000–3500 years ago and spread after Indo-Aryan migration to Odisha.

Geographical distribution

Mundari is spoken in the

Khunti Khunti is the headquarter of Khunti district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. It is in South Chotanagpur division and one of the 24 districts in the Indian state of Jharkhand. The district of Khunti was carved out of Ranchi district on 12 Sept ...

Ranchi Ranchi (; ) is the capital city and also the largest district by population of the Indian state of Jharkhand. Ranchi was the centre of the Jharkhand movement, which called for a separate state for the tribal regions of South Bihar, northern ...

, Seraikela Kharsawan and West Singhbhum, East Singhbhum district of

, and in the

Mayurbhanj Mayurbhanj district is one of the 30 districts of Odisha state in eastern India and the largest in the state by area, nearly equivalent to Tripura. The district's headquarters is located in Baripada, with other major towns including Rairangp ...

, Kendujhar,

Sundargarh district Sundargarh District is a Districts of Odisha, district in the northwestern part of Odisha States and territories of India, state in eastern India. Sundargarh district is bounded by Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh in the west, Jashpur district o ...

by at least 1.1 million people. Another 500,000, mainly in Odisha and Assam, are recorded in the census as speaking "Munda," potentially another name for Mundari.

Dialects

Toshiki Osada (2008:99), citing the ''Encyclopaedia Mundarica'' (vol. 1, p. 6), lists the following dialects of Mundari, which are spoken mostly in

state. *Hasada (): east of the Ranchi- Chaibasa Road *Naguri (): west of the Ranchi- Chaibasa Road *Tamaria () or Latar: Panchpargana area (Tamar, Bundu, Rahe, Sonahatu, Silli) *Kera (): ethnic Oraon who live in the

city area

Phonology

The phonology of Mundari is similar to the surrounding closely related Austroasiatic languages but considerably different from either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. Perhaps the most foreign phonological influence has been on the vowels. Whereas the branches of Austroasiatic in Southeast Asia are rich in vowel

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

, Mundari has only five. The consonant inventory of Mundari is similar to other Austroasiatic languages with the exception of retroflex consonants, which seem to appear only in loanwords. (Osada 2008)

Vowels

Mundari has five vowel phonemes. All vowels have long and short as well as nasalized

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...

, but neither length nor nasality are contrastive. All vowels in open monosyllables are quantitatively longer than those in closed syllables, and those following nasal consonants or are nasalized. Vowels preceding or following are also nasalized.

Consonants

Mundari's consonant inventory consists of 23 basic phonemes. The Naguri and Kera dialects include aspirated stops as additional phonemes, here enclosed in parentheses.

Counting

Relations

Verb

Writing system

Mandari is also written in native Mundari Bani, invented in the 1980s by Rohidas Singh Nag.

Grammar

It has been claimed the Mundari has no word classes, so that nouns, verbs, and adjectives are distinguished only by context. However, this has been disputed, notably by Evans and Osada in 2005.

Notes

References

Sources

External links

Mundari Bibliography at Department of Linguistics, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Detailed language map of eastern Nepal, see language #68 in green along eastern border
* http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage) * http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-A6AA-C@view Mundari language in RWAAI Digital Archive * https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21031r-mundari.pdf *https://omniglot.com/writing/mundaribani.htm *https://omniglot.com/writing/mundari.htm {{Austro-Asiatic languages Munda languages Languages of Bangladesh Languages of India Languages of Jharkhand Languages of Odisha Languages of Nepal Endangered languages of India Languages written in Devanagari ca:Llengües kolàries