R ESEARCH D ESIGN AND M ETHODOLOGY
3.3 The Bodo−Assamese Bilinguals
The Bodos are believed to be among the earliest settlers of Assam. Historical notice of the Kacharis is available from the Annals of the Ahoms, according to which the first confrontation of the Kacharis with the advancing Ahoms happened in 1488 A.D., when the Kacharis were occupying Dimapur as their capital and from where they were driven away to Maibong by 1536 A.D. However, during retreats from invaders only the ruling chiefs (Rajas) along with a few followers escaped, while the rest of the Kachari population became subjugated to the victors and continued to live with them (Endle, 1911). The Bodos form a significant proportion of the existing linguistic groups in Assam. The total population of Assam was 312.05 lakhs (Census 2011) out of which the population of Bodos in Assam is to the extent of 4.36 % as per 2011 census data. The principal language spoken by Bodos is ‘Bodo’ (a.k.a.
Boro) which is a language descending from the Tibeto-Burman family. The geographical spread of Bodo is patchy in nature. Bodo is spoken in communities across Assam. However, large blocks of Bodo localities are found only in western Assam. The majority of the Bodo people are found in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) areas of Kokrajhar, Baksa, Udalguri and Chirang. In central and eastern Assam, the Bodos live in small villages, and are surrounded mainly by Assamese people. The Bodos also live outside the state of Assam, in the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya (Baro 2001). Outside India, a small number of Bodo speakers are found in Nepal (Ethnologue). According to the 2001 census report, the total population of Bodo speakers in India is 1,543,300 and 3,300 in Nepal (Ethnologue).
3.3.1 The Bodo−Assamese Contact Situation
Based on two contact languages (Bodo and Assamese), a major proportion of the Bodo population in Assam can speak in both Bodo and Assamese. Most of them speak Assamese as their second language and a part of the tribe speaks Assamese as
their mother-tongue. Strong and far reaching influence of Indo-Aryan languages, viz., Assamese/Bengali was noticeable even early on 1903, as reported in the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI). Hinduization of the Bodo tribe from as early times as the period of consolidation of Ahom rule in Assam and their own adoption of Hinduism has perhaps been one contributory factor to the strong Indo-Aryan influence on Bodo speech (Basumatary, 2015).
A strong tendency on the part of the Bodo people to switch over to contact Indo- Aryan languages and widespread and far-reaching bilingualism among the Bodo population was reported even earlier (Grierson, 1903). Since then, fortuitous bilingualism among the native speakers has been continuing. In the 1971 census, more than 56% of speakers of Bodo in Assam were reported to be bilingual, while more than 97% of them had returned Assamese as their second language. The majority of the people of this community are bilingual in the sense that they use their own Bodo dialect in speaking among themselves, while Assamese is used as the medium of expression with the neighboring Assamese people. As the plain tribe lives along with the Assamese people, it has become necessity for them to learn Assamese and they do speak Assamese while conversing with their neighbours. Due to this nature of contact, they can be called bicultural bilinguals as they freely move between the two cultures. The case is, however, not the same with the Assamese population as very few of them need to learn Bodo, as Assamese is the dominant language at the state level.
3.3.2 Linguistic Features of Bodo and Assamese
Bodo and Assamese are two distinctly different languages. They belong to two different language families. Bodo is a Tibeto-Burman language and it falls under the Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw subgroup of Tibeto-Burman family. Its genetic affinity can be represented as: Sino-Tibetan > Tibeto-Burman > Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw >
Bodo-Koch > Bodo > Boro (Burling 2003). Similar to other languages in its family, it is a ‘tone’ language. There are two clearly distinguishable kinds of tone in Bodo:
Rising and Falling. Assamese is an Indo-Aryan language which belongs to the Indo- European language family. It is the easternmost member of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. Its genetic affinity can be represented as:
Indo-European > Indo-Aryan > Eastern Zone > Bengali-Assamese > Assamese (UCLA). It is spoken by over 20 million people primarily in the northeastern state of Assam and in parts of the neighboring states of West Bengal, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
Bodo and Assamese have many dialects with distinctive set of words and phonological and grammatical variations. However, all dialects are mutually intelligible among them. As reported by Bhattacharya (1977, p. 11−12), Bodo has at least four varieties: (1) North Goalpara variety, spoken in the northern regions of Goalpara and Kamrup districts (though both varieties have salient differences), (2) A variety spoken in South Goalpara, Garo Hills and South Kamrup, (3) A variety spoken in Darrang, Lakhimpur and a few places of Arunachal Pradesh, called the north central Assam dialect, and (4) A variety spoken in the Nowgong, North Cachar and Karbi Hills. Basumatary (2005, p. 10−11), on the other hand, reported that Bodo has three major regional dialects: (1) Western dialect, spoken in Kokrajhar, Dhubri and Chirang, (2) Eastern dialect, spoken in Baksa, Kamrup (Northern part of the Brahmaputra valley and mainly Odalguri district respectively) and (3) Southern dialect, spoken in Goalpara (partially from Krishnai-Agia to Dudhnoi Sub-division) and particularly partial part of the Kamrup district (from Boko-Chaygaon to Rani area). Following Basumatary (2005), the variety represented in the current study belongs to the Eastern dialect.
Several regional dialects have been recognized in Assamese and in addition to that there also exist some aregional, community-based dialects. Kakati (1935, p. 16) has divided the Assamese dialects into two major groups: (1) Eastern Assamese, and (2) Western Assamese. However, recent linguistic studies have identified four dialect groups: (1) Eastern group spoken in and around Sivasagar District, (2) Central group spoken in Nagaon, Sonitpur, Morigaon districts and adjoining areas, (3) Kamrupi group spoken primarily in the Kamrup region, and (4) Goalpariya group spoken in the Goalpara region.
The two languages use different scripts and phonological systems. The Bodos had traditionally no script of their own. The Christian Missionaries used Roman script while translating their religious books and composing text books for schools children towards the end of the 19th century. During the first quarter of the 20th century, the Bodo writers used Assamese script for composing books and magazines. The script for teaching in school was Assamese up to 1975. In 1976, Devanagari script replaced Assamese script and is used till today. The Assamese language uses the Assamese script. The evolution of the Assamese script can be divided into three different stages: Old Assamese script or the Kamrupi script (4th/5th to 13th century), the origin of which, in turn, could be traced to the Gupta Brahmi script; Medieval Assamese script (13th to early part of 19th century) and Modern Assamese script from early part of the nineteenth century. Assamese language uses eleven symbols to represent vowels and thirty-seven symbols to represent consonants as against six vowels and sixteen consonants in Bodo (see Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 Symbols representing vowels and consonants in Bodo and Assamese and the associated phonemes in each language along with common phonemes.
Bodo Assamese
/ɔ/, /a/, /i/, /e/, /u/, /kh/, /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /s/, /z/, /th/, /d/, /n/, /ph/, /b/, /m/, /j/, /r/, /l/, /w/, /h/
/o/, /ɔ/, /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ʊ/, /k/, /kh/, /ɡ/, /ɡh/, /ŋ/, /s/, /z/, /t/, /th/, /d/, /dh/, /n/, /p/, /ph/, /b/, /bh/, /m/, /l/, /w/, /x/, /h/, /ɾ/, /j/
/ɔ/, /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /ɯ/, /kh/, /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /z/, /th/, /d/, /n/, /ph/, /b/, /m/, /j/, /r/, /l/, /w/, /s/, /h/
अ, आ, इ, उ, ए, ऐ, ओ, औ, ख, ग, ङ, ज, थ, द, न, फ, ब, म, य, र, ल, व, स, ह
a, , i, , u, , , e, , o, , , , , , , , , я, , !, ", #, $, %, &, ', (, ),
*, +,,, -, , ., , /, , ,
Common phonemes
The Assamese language has been deeply influenced by the various tribal languages in terms of grammar. Besides grammar, vocabulary has been the greatest contribution of the tribal groups towards the formation of the Assamese language, amongst which the Bodo tribe stands out as the biggest contributor (Phangcho, 2006). Assamese and Bodo are not genetically related, but structurally similar in various aspects due to mutual contact in between them. Both languages share a wide range of cognate words.