Languages that don’t dominate global headlines are often overlooked. However, Santalii, a Munda language with roots in Central East India, has received much attention from linguists and indigenous peoples. At the beginning of the 21st century, about 6 million people spoke the language. This is a huge figure for a regional language. Most of the users (about 4.8 million) live in India. Another 150,000 people live in Bangladesh. The language is also spoken by about 40,000 people in the tea-growing region of Nepal.
Where are the people who speak sandalwood?
If you’re looking for a Santalii-speaking population center, look no further than the eastern states of India. Jharkhand has more than 2 million users. West Bengal follows with a population of about 2 million. Odisha has a population in the hundreds of thousands, while Assam has a population of about 100,000. This geographical concentration has made Santali the official language of India. The position is not merely bureaucratic. It is a sign of identity.
The language is divided into two main dialects: the northern dialect and the southern dialect. It is a prominent member of the Kherwarian branch of the Northern Munda family. Its cousins are Mundari and Ho, each with about a million users. Despite these internal changes, the core structure remains consistent.
Why do they call themselves Santali?
The Santals has a special way of identifying himself. They use hɔṛ for “man” and hɔṛ hɔpɔn for “sons of mankind”. You may also hear the term mañjhi or mãjhi, meaning “chief”, used as an ethnic name. When referring to their language, they say hɔṛ rɔṛ.
Regional names vary by location. In North West Bengal the language is known as jaŋli or paharia. It is known as ṭhaṛ in South West Bengal and Orissa. In Jharkhand, the locals call it “Parsi”. These names reflect the different cultural landscapes that the language passes through.
How does Santalii syntax work?
Santalii phonology has several unique features. It uses “checked” or preglottalized consonants at the end of words. Think of sεc̆’ for “towards” or dak’ for “water”. The sound is sharp and clear.
Morphologically, the language is strongly dependent on endings and infixes. This prefix is rare and occurs only in some “frozen” forms. Nouns are divided into animate and inanimate stems. Inanimate stems can have locative or directional affixes, which adds precision to the description of space and movement.
Santalii verbs are very complex with subjects, tenses, aspect, transitivity, different objects, possessive and finite suffixes.
This complexity is not random. It’s systematic. The subject usually appears in the word immediately before the verb. Sometimes the subject itself is a pronoun. For example, consider the sentence “yes I will go.” In Santali it becomes hε~ “yes” + iñ-iñ “I” + c̆ala’k-a “go”. In another example, “They killed my pig” translates sukri-ko “pig” + gɔ’c̆-ke-d-e-tiñ-a “die”. word packs aor
