Manḍa is a

Dravidian language The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant i ...

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 ...

, spoken in the highlands of

Thuamul Rampur Thuamul Rampur is a town in Thuamul Rampur Block, Kalahandi District of Odisha State. The town is 72 km from the district capital Bhawanipatna and 500 km from the state capital Bhubaneswar. It is also referred as the Kashmir of Kalahandi ...

block of

Kalahandi district Kalahandi (locally pronounced ''Kalahani'') is a district of Odisha in India. Archaeological evidence of Stone Age and Iron Age human settlement has been recovered from the region. Asurgarh offered an advanced, well civilised, cultured and ur ...

. It only became known to Western academia in 1964. Its speakers are generally known as 'Khond Parjas' by outsiders but self-identify as Manda Khonds. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the language was spoken in around 60 villages and the total number of speakers was estimated to be at 4000-5000. However the language is facing endangerment 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 ...

, which all speakers are bilingual in.

References

External links

Manda basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Dravidian languages Endangered languages of India Languages attested from the 1960s Languages of Odisha {{Dr-lang-stub