Folklore and songs of the Toto community: The Anthropological Survey of India supports efforts to keep a rare Tibeto-Burman language alive – West Bengal

When scientists of the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) set out to conduct a study on language of the primitive Toto tribe, whose population has dwindled to 1,536, they did not realise that the language is more endangered than the tribe itself.

During their study they recorded the vocabulary, folklore, and even some songs in Toto language, and realised that the language has no script.

For centuries, the language that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group of Indian languages, has survived in the small community completely orally without much research, Asok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, research associate, Linguistics (AnSI), one of the prominent members of the research team, who visited the hamlet of Toto tribe, told The Hindu.

“Being a small community, we found that the Totos communicate among themselves in their own language, but the moment they leave their hamlet of Totopara in Madarihaat block of Alipurduar district, they prefer to not communicate in the language even among themselves,” Mr. Mukhopadhyay said. […]

Interestingly, despite the language lacking a script, members of the community, whose literacy rate as per a sample survey carried out in 2003 was just 33.64 per cent, have penned books and poems in their language albeit in the Bengali script.

Dhaniram Toto, one of the members of the community, has written two books in Toto language over the past two years.

Mr. Toto claims his book, Lokeswar, is about the folk culture of Totos and his other book Uttar Banga Lokpath is about folk tales of the community.

“Since our language does not have a script, I have to take help of the Bengali script,” he says, adding that there is an urgent need to develop a script for the language. […]

“We carried out this study to keep record of the language. It may happen in a few decades that the language may get extinct. The study of the Toto language is essential to understand the overall cultural ambit of the primitive tribe,” said Kakali Chakraborty, head of office, Eastern Regional Centre of (AnSI). […]

Despite the geographical isolation of Totopara, the members have started laying emphasis on education, resulting in about half a dozen of graduates, which includes girls. […]

Source: “Toto language more endangered than tribe” by Shiv Sahay Singh, The Hindu, 1 August 2014
Address : http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kolkata/toto-language-more-endangered-than-tribe/article6270931.ece
Date Visited: Sat Nov 22 2014 10:46:09 GMT+0100 (CET)

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