Malto ( ) or Paharia ( ), or rarely Rajmahali, is a Northern Dravidian language spoken primarily in

East India East India is a region consisting of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and also the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The states of Bihar and West Bengal lie on the Indo-Gangetic plain. Jharkhan ...

by the Malto people.

Varieties

There are two varieties of Malto that are sometimes regarded as separate languages, Kumarbhag Paharia (

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 ...

: कुमारभाग पहाड़िया) and Sauria Paharia (

: सौरिया पहाड़िया). The former is spoken in the

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 ...

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 ...

states of

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, and tiny pockets of

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 ...

state, and the latter in the

, and

Bihar Bihar ( ) is a states and union territories of India, state in Eastern India. It is the list of states and union territories of India by population, second largest state by population, the List of states and union territories of India by are ...

states of India. The

lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

between the two is estimated to be 80%.

Mal Paharia language Mal Paharia is a language spoken by 51,000 of 110,000 ethnic Mal Paharia in the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal in India, and regions of Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South As ...

may have a Malto-based

substrate Substrate may refer to: Physical layers *Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached ** Substrate (aquatic environment), the earthy material that exi ...

. The 2001 census found 224,926 speakers of Malto, of which 83,050 were labelled as speaking Pahariya, and 141,876 spoke other mother tongues (dialects).

Phonology

Malto has a typical Dravidian vowel system of 10 vowels: /a, e, i, o, u/ and their lengthened forms. Malto also does not have any vowel clusters or diphthongs. * The cluster /ŋʁ/ is pronounced �ɢ * Southern and western dialects have /ʔ/ instead of /q/ and /h/ instead of /ʁ/ and /ŋʁ/. Coda /ð/ is an allophone of /d̪/. * /ʁ/ may actually be a voiced uvular stop � (Das 1973)

Grammar

The general grammar of the language is not dissimilar from that of the surrounding communities. One interesting aspect of their culture influencing the syntax of the language is present in its assignment of gender to nouns.

Gender

The gender of words in the Malto language is classified as either being masculine, feminine, or neutral. The masculine form is present when denoting anything related to man or vicious deities. Likewise the feminine form is present for nouns denoting women, the Supreme Being, and minor deities. Although the colloquial term for father 'abba' is a traditionally feminine noun, it is meant to show respect. Coupled with the Supreme Being also being feminine, the respect for the women of the community is evident through their grammar. Otherwise nouns are referred to with neutral gender, which by far makes it the most popular form.

Writing system

Seeing as how the literacy rates amongst the Malto people is very low, it makes sense that the language is not a traditionally written language. When the language had first been memorialized in writing (by Ernest Droese in 1884) it shared the

writing system as with many languages in India. The written portion of the language being supplemented much later on in its life, gives the effect of Malto remaining authentic through the dialogue of their culture. Sample Text (taken from Source 11): నబిర్కి కెతబెనొ కుర్క్పెథ్ ఇణ్య్ కోడిథ్ టున్డ ఏన్ ఎణ్గ్కి ఛాక్రియన్ నిణ్గ్ అగ్దు తెయిన్: ఆహ్ నిణ్గ్ అగ్ అగ్దు నిణ్గ్ పావె మేన్జెహ్. డడెనొ ఒర్త్ కూక్రుకి సడిథ్, గొసణ్యికిపావెసర్యెత్ర, అథికిగొట్డాన్డిన్ సొహ్జెత్ర ఆణ్య్ అవ్డప్ ఛొవ్, యొహన్నహ్ డడెనొ బప్తిస్మెఛహ్, అన్తె పాపెకి మాపి లగ్కి గుమెనారెకి బప్తిస్మ సబాన్ మెన్త్ర్ సెగ్యహ్. అన్తె యిహుదియ. Malto Story Audio Taken from Source 12: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ByAodEbhV34

References

11. https://www.omniglot.com/writing/malto.htm 12: https://globalrecordings.net/en/program/38320

Bibliography

* * * * * *

External links

About the Malto tribe

Malto basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Endangered Languages Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paharia, Sauria, Language Agglutinative languages Dravidian languages Languages of Bangladesh Languages of India Endangered languages of India Languages written in Devanagari