“Due to lack of Language Research Centre in both hills and plain, there is a threat to the language and dialect of Manipur.”- Opined by Dr. Th Chandramani, Ministry of HRD

 

Like other languages, Aimol, a Tibeto-Burman language rooted in Manipur is considered endangered. Due to the very few speakers of this language in the country, Aimol is losing its existence (Aimol, 2018). Even the written archives of the Aimol language are very few. Talking about Manipur, the situation is intricate and puzzling due to the lack of correct classification and documentation of a wide number of endangered languages in the state.

 

Roots of Aimol

This tribal language has originated from one of the renowned tribes of Manipur who are well known as Aimols. The major source of income for the tribe is agriculture and domestication that contributes much to the well-being of society (Aimol, 2018). While the presence of the tribe community in the society reduced over the years which significantly reduces the use of Aimol both for writing and speaking purposes. As a result, UNESCO declared it as “a critically endangered language in India”.

More about the Aimols

Animism was being followed by the tribe till the early 20^th century and the community worshipped several deities and spirits. Not only this they used to celebrate six important festivals every year as a part of admiring those deities. Though, with the arrival of Christianity in the society, the villages where the Aimols dwell adopted Christianity and followed their directions. Thereby, those festivals celebrated by Aimols lost their manifestation in the community and are no longer been observed.

 

 

Matter of concern

Here the major concern is the preservation of such language in society before it totally dissolves. For safeguarding the existence of the language, the Scheme for protection and preservation of endangered languages (SPPEL) sponsored by the Ministry of HR development, includes programs to offer a brief phonological and morphological explanation of Aimol (Post & Burling, 2017). The primary aim of the program is to offer a bilingual Aimol-English dictionary for the tribe and the program was structured by the Tribal and Endanger language promotion board at the Manipur Press Club.

Initiative taken by the authority

Everyone knows the preservation of tribal languages is not an easy task, but it is extremely necessary to make people aware of the endangered languages. In this regard, the Manipur government take an oath to protect endangered languages at the event of UNESCO International Mother language day. Besides, the pledge was taken to promote all the endangered languages of Manipur by using every possible way (Post & Burling, 2017). Well, every community or person needs to use their language or dialect in order to preserve their language. Even the government of Manipur is stressing the fact to use tribal languages to safeguard their existence but the schemes were not much effective up to date. Since the government has urged the community and Aimols to make their contribution to the programs and steps taken by the authority in order to preserve the language.

References

Aimol, C. D. (2018). A sociolinguistics study of Aimol. Language in India, 18(12),, 72-79. Retrieved from http://www.languageinindia.com/dec2018/chongomaimolsociolinguistics.pdf

Post, M. W., & Burling, R. (2017). The tibeto-burman languages of northeast india. The Sino-Tibetan Languages,, 213-242. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark-Post-2/publication/282662694_The_Tibeto-Burman_languages_of_Northeast_India/links/5f2a26f0a6fdcccc43abe44d/The-Tibeto-Burman-languages-of-Northeast-India.pdf