Deori (also Deuri) is a
Tibeto-Burman
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...
language in the
Tibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spe ...
family spoken by the
Deori people of
Assam
Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...
and
Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...
. Deori are also a part of
Bodo–Kachari people
Bodo–Kacharis (also Kacharis or Bodos) is a name used by anthropologists and linguists to define a collection of ethnic groups living predominantly in the Northeast Indian states of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal. These peoples a ...
. Among the four territorial groups only the Dibongiya have retained the language. The others—Patorgoyan, Tengaponiya, and Borgoyan—have
shifted to
Assamese. It is spoken in
Lohit district
Lohit () is an administrative district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. The district headquarters is located at Tezu. As of 2011 it is the third most populous district of Arunachal Pradesh, after Papum Pare and Changlang.
Etymol ...
of
Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...
, and in
Lakhimpur,
Dhemaji,
Tinsukia,
Sivasagar and
Jorhat
Jorhat ( /) is a major city in Upper Assam division, Upper Assam and among the fastest growing urban centres in the state of Assam in India.
Etymology
Jorhat ("jor" means twin and "hat" means market) means two hats or mandis - "Masorhaat" and ...
districts of
Assam
Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...
. The primary literary body of Deori is known as "deori chucheba chengcha" (Deori sahitya sabha).
In the
colonial times this language became associated with the
Chutia people erroneously, and came to be known as the "Chutia language" in the
Linguistic Survey of India
The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a lingu ...
. Modern scholarship do not associate the Deori language with the Chutia community.
The Deori language is one of the most influential languages which has helped develop the
Assamese language
Assamese () or Asamiya ( ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It has long served as a ''lingua franca'' in parts of Northeast India."Axomiya is the major langu ...
in Upper Assam.
However, the word for water has a similar form in many other languages of the Sal branch of Sino-Tibetan to which Deori belongs, so it is not conclusive evidence that Deori speakers were the first to occupy this area.
Vocabulary
Some of the words of Deori present in Assamese derived from the dictionary ''Chuperemago''
Kishor Deori, Chuperemago(1997)
/ref> are:
References
Bibliography
*
*
Further reading
* Acharyya, Prarthana & Shakuntala Mahanta. (2018). ''Production and perception of lexical tone in Deori''. Sixth International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL), June 18–20, 2018, Berlin, Germany. 93–97. doi:10.21437/TAL.2018-19.
* Goswami, Upendranath. (1994). ''An introduction to the Deori language''. Guwahati: Anundoram Borooah Institute of Language, Art, and Culture.
* Jacquesson, François. (2005). ''Le Deuri: Langue Tibéto-Birmane d’Assam''. Leuven: Peeters Publishers.
* Mahanta, Shakuntala, Indranil Dutta, & Prarthana Acharyya. (2017). Lexical tone in Deori: loss, contrast, and word-based alignment. In Honeybone, Patrick, Julian Bradfield, Josef Fruehwald, Pavel Losad, Benjamin Ress Molin- eaux, & Michael Ramsammy (eds.), ''Papers in Historical Phonology'' 2. 51–87. doi:10.2218/pihph.2.2017.1906.
* Nath, Arup Kumar. (2010). ''A lexico semantic study of Tiwa and Deori: Two endangered languages of the Tibeto Burman Family''. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University (Doctoral dissertation). http://hdl.handle.net/10603/31796.
* Saikia, Sangeeta. (2012). ''A socio-linguistic survey of Deori speech community''. Gauhati: Gauhati University (Doctoral dissertation).
* Saikia, Sangeeta. (2013). Deuri Asomar Bhasha. In Devy, Ganesh Narayandas (ed.), ''Peoples Linguistic Survey of India'' 5(2). 3-15. India: Orient Blackswan Private Limited.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deori Language
Sal languages
Languages of Assam
Languages of Arunachal Pradesh
Endangered languages of India