The Bonda language, also known as Bondo or Remo, is a south Munda language of the

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

language family spoken in

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of Sc ...

, formerly known as Southern Odisha, in

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. It had 2,568 speakers, all in Odisha, according to the 1951 Census of India,N. Gopalakrishnan,
Linguistic Survey of India
', p. 271 increasing to approximately 9,000 speakers in 2002 according to

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Classification

The Bonda language is an indigenous language belonging to the Southern subgroup of the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic language family. Bonda is a

spoken language A spoken language is a language produced by articulate sounds or (depending on one's definition) manual gestures, as opposed to a written language. An oral language or vocal language is a language produced with the vocal tract in contrast with a si ...

with no traditional written system recorded. Bonda is a part of the Gutob-Remo branch, due to the similarities Bonda shares with another Southern Munda Language named Gutob

History

The Bonda language derives its name from the tribe of the

Bonda people Bonda (also known as the Bondo, Bondo Poraja, Bhonda, or Remo) are a Munda ethnic group approximately 12,000 (2011 census) who live in the isolated hill regions of the Malkangiri district of southwestern Odisha, India, near the junction of the t ...

, an indigenous group located in Odisha known as the Bonda Highlanders. In their native language, the Bonda people regard themselves as "Remo', which translates to human, and derive their language name from that root, calling their language as the human language or 'Remosam' in their native tongue

Geographic distribution

The language differs slightly, classified according to whether it can be categorized as Plains Remo (Bonda) or Hill Remo (Bonda).

Plains Remo

This is a subdivision of Bonda, localized in 35 villages throughout the Khairpat within the

Malkangiri district Malkangiri district is the southwesternmost district in the Indian state of Odisha. It has two Vidhan sabha constituencies. History Local legend claims Valmiki wrote the Ramayana on the banks of the Tamasa river. The region was known as ''Mal ...

in Odisha. In 1941, 2,565 people categorized the Plains Remo. That number nearly doubled in 1971, with 4,764 people classifying themselves as Plains Remo. The increase in population was not correlated with language extension. There are 3,500 speakers as of 2002, but few are monolingual.

Hills Remo

This is a subdivision of Bonda, localized in the Jeypore Hills region of Odisha. There are 5,570 speakers as of 2002.

Phonology

Stress

In Bonda,

primary stress In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...

is placed on the last syllable in a word, syllables with

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

s, glottal stops, or checked consonants. However, Plains Remo primarily stresses the second syllable in a word. Bonda words can have a maximum of 5 syllables.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are placed either in the beginning or middle of a word, usually used in combination of two different vowel types.

Consonants

There are 33 consonants in the Bonda language. /z/ only occurs in loanwords from

Odia Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to: * Odia people in Odisha, India * Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family * Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...

Vowels

Bonda has 5 vowel

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s: /a, e, i, o, u/. In Bonda, vowels are

nasalized In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internatio ...

and clusters are commonplace.

Grammar

Syntax

Bonda follows the SOV (Subject + Object + Verb) sequence, but other word orders are possible.

Gender

Age and gender serve as classification denominations for individuals. Female names end in /-i/ and male names end in /-a/. Animals are also distinguished by gender.

Compound verb

The

compound verb In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a '' light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, ...

is not frequently used in Bonda and can be used as a conjunctive participle.

Vocabulary

Kinship terminology

In Kinship terms, the

velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...

, ŋ, is often used. Various kinship terms also represent multiple positions.

References

External links

Patricia Donegan & David Stampe’s Online Remo DictionaryRemo to English Talking Dictionary
* {{authority control Languages of India Munda languages