The Juang language is a Munda language of the

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...

language family spoken primarily by the

Juang people The Juang are an Austroasiatic ethnic group found only in the Gonsaika hills of Keonjhar district of Odisha. Some Juangs, however migrated to neighbouring plains of Dhenkanal district of Odisha during the Bhuiyan revolt in the late 19th century. ...

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 ...

state, eastern

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 so ...

Classification

The Juang language belongs to the Munda language family, the whole of which is classified as a branch of the greater Austroasiatic language family. Among the Munda languages, Juang is considered to be most closely related to Kharia, although Anderson considers Juang and Kharia to have split off from each other relatively early. Juang can be roughly divided into the Hill and Plains varieties, both of which are spoken in

(Patnaik 2008:508). *Hill Juang: Gonasika Hills (in

Keonjhar district Kendujhar District, is an administrative district of Odisha. The district is one of the fifth Scheduled Areas of Odisha. The town of Kendujhar (or Kendujhargarh) is the district headquarters. The district has 3 Sub-Divisions, Anandapur, Cham ...

) and Pallara Hills *Plains Juang: about 147 villages in southern

and eastern

Dhenkanal district Dhenkanal district is one of the 30 districts of the state of Odisha in Eastern India. Geography Dhenkanal district is one of the centrally located districts in Odisha. It lies between Longitude: 85° 58' to 86° 2' East and Latitude: 20° 29' ...

Distribution

Juang is spoken by about 30,875 people according to the 2001 Indian census, 65% of ethnic population In

state, it is spoken in southern

, northern Angul district, and eastern

(Patnaik 2008:508). Juang is currently an

Endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

and is considered to vulnerable, or (not spoken by children outside of home). Juang currently has roughly under 20,000 speakers remaining

Grammar

In Juang a number of roots are clearly exempt from the

Transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transitiv ...

Intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

opposition, so that the function of the root can be determined only from its co-occurrence with the particular set of tense markers. For Example, pag- Set I 'to break' -Set II 'to be broken1 rag- Set I 'to tear' - Set II 'to be torn1 guj- Set I 'to wash' - Set II 'to be was

Writing System

The writing system used by people who speak the Juang language is

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 ...

References

* Mahapatra, B. P.. “Comparative Notes on Juang and Kharia Finite Verbs”. ''Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications'' 13 (1976): 801–814. * Patnaik, Manideepa. 2008. "Juang". In Anderson, Gregory D.S (ed). ''The Munda languages'', 508–556. Routledge Language Family Series 3.New York: Routledge. . * *

External links

* * http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4341/samples/10020 * http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4341 Languages of India Munda languages Endangered languages of India {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub