The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people 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 so ...
and
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
.
Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the
Austroasiatic language family, which means they are more distantly related to languages such as the
Mon and
Khmer languages, to
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
, as well as to minority languages in
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
and
Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...
and the minority
Mangic languages
The Pakanic languages constitute a branch of two Austroasiatic languages, Bolyu and Bugan. They are spoken in Guangxi and Yunnan provinces of southern China. Mang was formerly included, but is now considered by Paul Sidwell to form its own se ...
of
South China.
Bhumij,
Ho,
Mundari, and
Santali are notable Munda languages.
The family is generally divided into two branches: North Munda, spoken in 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 the bas ...
of
Jharkhand
Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in 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 Odisha to the south. It has an area of . It ...
,
Chhattisgarh
Chhattisgarh (, ) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Prade ...
,
West Bengal
West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...
, and
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 ...
, and South Munda, spoken in central Odisha and along the border between
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
and Odisha.
North Munda, of which Santali is the most widely spoken, has twice as many speakers as South Munda. After Santali, the Mundari and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by
Korku and
Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small, isolated groups, and are poorly described.
Characteristics of the Munda languages include three
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
s (singular, dual and plural), two
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
s (animate and inanimate), a distinction between
inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns, the use of suffixes or auxiliaries to indicate
tense,
and partial, total, and complex reduplication, as well as
switch-reference.
The Munda languages are also
polysynthetic
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...
and
agglutinating
An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...
.
In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent except in the middle of a word. Other than in Korku, whose syllables show a distinction between high and low tone, accent is predictable in the Munda languages.
Origin
![Austroasiatic-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Austroasiatic-en.svg)
Most linguists, like
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 notab ...
(2018), suggest that the
Proto-Munda language probably split from
proto-Austroasiatic
Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's ''Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary'', while ...
somewhere in
Indochina
Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, 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 the west an ...
and arrived on the coast of modern-day
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 ...
about 4000–3500 years ago and spread after the
Indo-Aryan migration
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...
to the region.
Rau and Sidwell (2019), along with Blench (2019), suggest that pre-Proto-Munda had arrived in the
Mahanadi River Delta
Mahanadi River Delta in India is a basin of deposit that drains a large land mass of the Indian subcontinent into the Bay of Bengal. The alluvial valley is wide and relatively flat with a meandering river channel that changes its course.
The M ...
around 1,500 BCE from Southeast Asia via a maritime route, rather than overland. The Munda languages then subsequently spread up the
Mahanadi
The Mahanadi is a major river in East Central India. It drains an area of around and has a total length of . Mahanadi is also known for the Hirakud Dam. The river flows through the states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha and finally merged with Bay o ...
watershed. Recent studies suggest that Munda languages spread as far as Eastern Uttar Pradesh and impacted
Eastern Indo-Aryan languages
The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, also known as Māgadhan languages, are spoken throughout the eastern Indian subcontinent (East India and Assam, Bangladesh), including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bengal, Tripura, Assam, and Odisha; alongs ...
.
Classification
Munda consists of five uncontroversial branches (Korku as an isolate, Remo, Savara, Kherwar, and Kharia-Juang). However, their interrelationship is debated.
Diffloth (1974)
The bipartite
Diffloth (1974) classification is widely cited:
*North Munda
**
Korku
**Kherwarian
***Kherwari branch:
Birjia,
Koraku
***Mundari branch:
Mundari,
Bhumij,
Asuri,
Koda
KODA (99.1 FM, "Sunny 99.1") is an American commercial adult contemporary-formatted radio station in Houston, Texas. The station is owned by iHeartMedia. Its studios and offices are located along the West Loop Freeway in Uptown Houston.
KODA ...
,
Ho,
Birhor,
Kol,
Turi
***Santal branch:
Santali,
Mahali
The Mahli are a community in the Indian states of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Basketry was main occupation of mahlis. Mahli speak Sadri, Mundari and Santali as their mother tongue rather than Mahli. May be Mahli is a threatened langua ...
*South Munda
**Kharia–Juang:
Kharia,
Juang
**Koraput Munda
*** Remo branch:
Gata
Davionte Ganter, known professionally as GaTa, is an American rapper and actor known for his role in the FXX TV series ''Dave'', as well as for being the hype man for rapper Lil Dicky throughout his career as well as on the show.
Early life an ...
(Gta),
Bondo (Remo),
Bodo Gadaba (Gutob)
***Savara branch
ora–Juray–Gorum:
Parengi (Gorum),
Sora (Savara),
Juray,
Lodhi
Diffloth (2005)
Diffloth (2005) retains Koraput (rejected by Anderson, below) but abandons South Munda and places Kharia–Juang with the northern languages:
Anderson (1999)
Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows.
[Anderson, Gregory D.S. (1999). "A new classification of the Munda languages: Evidence from comparative verb morphology." Paper presented at 209th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Baltimore, MD.]
*North Munda
**
Korku
**Kherwarian:
Santali,
Mundari
*South Munda (3 branches)
**Kharia–Juang:
Juang,
Kharia
**Sora–Gorum:
Sora,
Gorum
**Gutob–Remo–Gtaʔ
***Gutob–Remo:
Gutob,
Remo
Remo Inc. is an American musical instruments manufacturing company based in Valencia, California, and founded by Remo Belli in 1957. Products manufactured include drum kits, drumhead
A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched ov ...
***
Gtaʼ: Plains Gtaʔ, Hill Gtaʔ
However, in 2001, Anderson split Juang and Kharia apart from the Juang-Kharia branch and also excluded Gtaʔ from his former Gutob–Remo–Gtaʔ branch. Thus, his 2001 proposal includes 5 branches for South Munda.
Anderson (2001)
Anderson
Anderson or Andersson may refer to:
Companies
* Anderson (Carriage), a company that manufactured automobiles from 1907 to 1910
* Anderson Electric, an early 20th-century electric car
* Anderson Greenwood, an industrial manufacturer
* Anderson ...
(2001) follows Diffloth (1974) apart from rejecting the validity of Koraput. He proposes instead, on the basis of morphological comparisons, that Proto-South Munda split directly into Diffloth's three daughter groups, Kharia–Juang, Sora–Gorum (Savara), and Gutob–Remo–Gtaʼ (Remo).
His South Munda branch contains the following five branches, while the North Munda branch is the same as those of Diffloth (1974) and Anderson (1999).
*''Note'': "↔" = shares certain innovative isoglosses (structural, lexical). In Austronesian and Papuan linguistics, this has been called a "
linkage
Linkage may refer to:
* ''Linkage'' (album), by J-pop singer Mami Kawada, released in 2010
*Linkage (graph theory), the maximum min-degree of any of its subgraphs
*Linkage (horse), an American Thoroughbred racehorse
* Linkage (hierarchical cluster ...
" by
Malcolm Ross.
Sidwell (2015)
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 notab ...
(2015:197) considers Munda to consist of 6 coordinate branches, and does not accept South Munda as a unified subgroup.
*North Munda
**
Korku
**
Santali,
Munda
*
Sora–
Gorum
*
Juang
*
Kharia
*
Gutob–
Remo
Remo Inc. is an American musical instruments manufacturing company based in Valencia, California, and founded by Remo Belli in 1957. Products manufactured include drum kits, drumhead
A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched ov ...
*
Gtaʼ
Distribution
Reconstruction
The proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340-363).
[Sidwell, Paul and Felix Rau (2015). "Austroasiatic Comparative-Historical Reconstruction: An Overview." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). ''The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages''. Leiden: Brill.] Proto-Munda reconstruction has since been revised and improved by Rau (2019).
[Rau, Felix. (2019). ''Munda cognate set with proto-Munda reconstructions'' (Version 0.1.0) ata set Zenodo. ]
See also
*
Nihali language
Nihali, also known as Nahali or erroneously as Kalto, is a moribund language isolate that is spoken in west-central India (in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra), with approximately 2,000 people in 1991 out of an ethnic population of 5,000. The Nihal ...
*
Munda peoples
The Munda peoples of eastern and central parts of the Indian subcontinent are any of several tribal groups who natively speak Munda languages of Austro-asiatic language family, formerly also known as Kolarian, and spoken by about nine million ...
References
Notes
General references
* Diffloth, Gérard. 1974. "Austro-Asiatic Languages". ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. pp 480–484.
* Diffloth, Gérard. 2005. "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology to the homeland of Austro-Asiatic". In: Sagart, Laurent, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (eds.). ''The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics''. RoutledgeCurzon. pp 79–82.
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* 2006-a. Munda Languages. In E. K. Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Press.
* Zide, Norman H. and G. D. S. Anderson. 1999. The Proto-Munda Verb and Some Connections with Mon-Khmer. In P. Bhaskararao (ed.) Working Papers International Symposium on South Asian Languages Contact and Convergence, and Typology. Tokyo. pp. 401–21.
* Zide, Norman H. and Gregory D. S. Anderson. 2001. The Proto-Munda Verb: Some Connections with Mon-Khmer. In K. V. Subbarao and P. Bhaskararao (eds.) Yearbook of South-Asian Languages and Linguistics-2001. Delhi: Sage Publications. pp. 517–40.
* Gregory D. S. Anderson and John P. Boyle. 2002. Switch-Reference in South Munda. In Marlys A. Macken (ed.) Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, South East Asian Studies Program, Monograph Series Press. pp. 39–54.
* Gregory D. S. Anderson and Norman H. Zide. 2001. Recent Advances in the Reconstruction of the Proto-Munda Verb. In L. Brinton (ed.) Historical Linguistics 1999. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 13–30.
;Historical migrations
*Blench, Roger. 2019
The Munda maritime dispersal: when, where and what is the evidence?*Rau, Felix and Paul Sidwell 2019.
The Maritime Munda Hypothesis" ICAAL 8, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 29–31 August 2019.
*Rau, Felix and Paul Sidwell 2019.
The Maritime Munda Hypothesis" Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 12.2 (2019): 31-53
External links
SEAlang Munda Languages ProjectSEAlang Munda Etymological Dictionary(Kiel, Peterson)
Donegan & Stampe Munda siteMunda languages at Living TonguesThe Ho language webpage by K. David Harrison, Swarthmore CollegeRWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)*
http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-66EE-3@view Munda languages in RWAAI Digital Archive
{{Austro-Asiatic languages