Bhumij is an Austroasiatic language belonging to the Munda subfamily, related to Ho, Mundari, and Santali, primarily spoken by Bhumij peoples in the Indian states

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 ...

. As per the 2011 census, only 27,506 people out of 911,349 Bhumij people spoke Bhumij as their mother tongue, as most Bhumijas have shifted to one of the regional dominant languages. Thus the language is considered an extremely endangered language.

History

Bhumij speakers have traditionally lived throughout the Kherwarian area in the modern states of Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal. While spoken by very few Bhumij people today, it was much more widespread historically. Those who lived east in Dhalbhum mostly shifted to the

Bengali language Bengali, also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Bangla (, , ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. ...

and lost their local tongue, while those who lived around the

Chota Nagpur Plateau The Chota Nagpur Plateau () is a plateau in eastern India, which covers much of Jharkhand state as well as adjacent parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar. The Indo-Gangetic plain lies to the north and east of the plateau, and th ...

held on to their language. However, the number of Bhumij speakers has significantly declined since the early 20th century. This decline attributed to the classification of Bhumij as a dialect of

Mundari language Mundari (Munɖari) is a Munda languages, Munda language of the Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language family spoken by the Munda people, Munda tribes in eastern Indian states of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and northern Rangpur Di ...

and the language replacement within the Bhumj society. Bhumij was mainly an oral language until the development of the Ol Onal script by the Ol Guru Mahendra Nath Sardar between 1981-1992. Bhumij is closely related to Ho,

and Santali and are often described as sister languages. Bhumij tribal people have protested for greater recognition and government funding for Bhumij-language education and public broadcasting resources.

Geographic distribution

The highest concentrations of Bhumij language speakers are in East Singhbhum and Seraikela Kharsawan districts of

, the Jangal mahals region of

( Jhargram,

Bankura Bankura () is a city and a municipality in the state of West Bengal, India. It is the headquarters of the Bankura district. Etymology It comes from the old Austric word ráŕhá or ráŕho which means “land of red soil”.P.R. Sarkar Rarh - ...

and Purulia districts) and Mayurbhanj district of

Official status

In January 2019, Bhumij was accorded the status of second language in the state of

. States like Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar have a large number of Bhumij people, yet the Bhumij language has not been given the status of a state language in these states so far.

Writing system

Bhumij language has been written in Ol Onal script, invented between 1981 and 1992 by Mahendra Nath Sardar. The

Bengali script The Bengali script or Bangla alphabet (, Romanization of Bengali, romanized: ''Bāṅlā bôrṇômālā'') is the standard writing system used to write the Bengali language, and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. ...

Odia script The Odia script (, also ) is a Brahmic script used to write the Odia language. To a lesser extent, it is also used to write Sanskrit and other regional languages. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. The script has deve ...

and

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 ...

are also used to write the language.

History

Geographic distribution

Official status

Writing system

See also

References

Sources

Further reading