3.6.2 Noiri pickpocketing story
The Chillare pickpocketing story, used in Astambha as a passing story instead of HTT, scored an average of 88 percent. The story got a standard deviation of 12.5, which is on the threshold of high standard
deviation. The result almost resembles situation 1 explained in table 6: many people understood the story, but some had difficulty. Among the ten subjects, only six responded to the last of the post RTT
questions “Which story was easier to understand?”. All six of them said they understood the Noiri pickpocketing story better than the Dungra Bhili tiger story. Even two subjects who scored less on the
Chillare story reported in the same way. Three subjects scored an average of 70–75 percent; among these three two of them were females. These three subjects did not score well for the first question because
they did not understand the procedure well.
24
The same subjects failed in the seventh question also, which contains a small dialectical difference.
25
These things might have caused the high standard deviation. Excluding the two subjects who scored 70 percent, the score would be 92.5 percent, with a
standard deviation of 9.
4 Bilingualism, language use and language attitude
4.1 Bilingualism
It is appropriate and inevitable to evaluate the bilingualism level of a community before we attempt to make any decision about a language program. The focus of this research on bilingualism was minimal
because of the overall emphasis on studying Dungra Bhili intelligibility. But the researchers felt the need to make reasonable assumptions about the bilingualism of Noiras in Hindi and Marathi. We used
bilingualism data from previous research among different Bhili subgroups to encourage the mother tongue advocates to accelerate their language promotion among Noiras. We supplemented this
information with the field observation of researchers.
4.1.1 Pilot bilingualism test among Bhils in Northern Dhule district
This data of research is obtained from Watters 2013. Though the study was completed in 1988, its results could still be valid for making assumptions about Noira bilingualism. The Marathi Ramkissan story
RTT was the tool used for pilot bilingualism testing. The test was administered to sixty-nine subjects from seven villages. The results of the test are given in table 9.
Table 9. Results of Bilingualism test among Bhils of Dhule district Educated
Uneducated AverageMean
86 62
Standard Deviation 9.56
24.06 Sample Size
40 29
Those who have achieved to standard five and above in school or who are literate in the Devanagari script are considered educated. Those who have not achieved
beyond standard four, or who have not been to school, are considered uneducated.
24
The first question was repeated more than one time during the test to help them understand the procedure. Even after going through the practice story, some of the subjects could not follow the procedure.
25
The seventh question is ‘Where did the riot happen?’ For ‘riot’ different words are used in the test point and reference point
The result is interpreted as follows: “Those outside of the educational domain are seen to have a competence of a most basic nature in Marathi, a result of frequent contact. Those who received some
education have gone beyond the level of competence that exists as a result of contact to attain to higher levels of bilingualism” Watters 2013:39–40. It should be noted that the bilingualism test using a
narrative text measures bilingual ability up to a maximum of 2 or 2+ on the Foreign Service Institute FSI scale. A subgroup analysis of the results reveals that the Vasava community scored the highest.
Compared to Vasavas, Noiras are far behind in education and development.
4.1.2 SRT test among Rathwi speakers of Madhya Pradesh
Rathwas who speak Rathwi are the largest subgroup of Barelas notified as a Scheduled Tribe along with Bhils in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A Sociolinguistic Study of BareliPauri and Related Languages
2000 is the source of this data. The research was carried out in 1998. Sentence repetition test was used to assess the bilingual ability. One of the SRT sites was Upla village in Rajpur tahsil of Badwani district
Madhya Pradesh. The overall literacy rate of Upla is nine percent. The SRT result of Upla village is summarised in table 10.
Table 10. Hindi SRT results among Rathwi speakers of Upla village Total Uneducated Primary Higher
Average 16
9 12
26 RPE level
2 1+
1+ 3
Sample 28
11 7
10 Standard deviation
10 5
4 8
Uneducated and primary educated scored only level 1+ on RPE scale, much lower than the required level 3+ for the effective use of any materials in a second language. More than 90 percent of
the Rathwa Barelas in Upla fall under this category. Hence it was concluded that Rathwa Barelas are not adequately bilingual to use anything beyond basic materials in the second language. The Rathwa Barelas
in Madhya Pradesh are the same as Rathwa Pauras in Maharashtra. Noiras are very behind in education, have less contact with other people and live in more remote areas than Pauras.
4.1.3 Bilingualism of Noiras
Kategori