Intelligibility testing results Dialect attitudes

5.1 Lexical similarity results

In each Lohorung village we collected and analyzed a wordlist based on the guidelines in Appendix A. Sites were selected based on information regarding Lohorung population and geographic location. Pangma was chosen based on its status as the largest and oldest Lohorung community. Angala has a high Lohorung population and is in the western part of the Lohorung area. Dhupu was chosen as a data collection site because it is one of the easternmost Lohorung villages. Upon arrival, we found that, while there is a strong ethnic identity among Lohorung, there are very few people in Dhupu who speak the Lohorung language. The Lohorung wordlist participants from Dhupu did not fully meet our screening criteria, due to Lohorung not being the language they spoke best. However, given the low vitality of Lohorung in Dhupu, a wordlist was elicited to document the variety that was spoken in Dhupu. Lexical similarity percentages among the three wordlists compared are shown inTable 3. Table 3. Lexical similarity percentages matrix Gairi Pangma 90 Dhupu 88 88 Angala Analysis of Dhupu’s wordlist shows 90 percent lexical similarity with Pangma, which points towards likely high intelligibility between the Dhupu and Pangma varieties of Lohorung. Wordlist comparison between Gairi Pangma and Angala reveals a lexical similarity of 88 percent. This is suggests that there may be intelligibility between any two of these two varieties, but testing is needed to confirm that hypothesis.

5.2 Intelligibility testing results

To investigate the intelligibility implied from the wordlist comparison, we administered the Lohorung Pangma RTT in Angala. Intelligibility testing was not done in Dhupu due to low Lohorung language vitality. Table 4 shows the results of the RTT test administered in Angala. Table 4. RTT results for Lohorung speakers in Angala Test Location Angala Pangma Lohorung Pangma story Avg 85 89 SD 9.3 11.0 n= 11 10 The high average score and low standard deviation implies that most participants in Angala understand the Pangma story. In fact, the average score of participants in Angala was only slightly lower than for the HTT in Pangma. Intelligibility of the Pangma speech variety in Angala is high.

5.3 Dialect attitudes

In order to provide supplemental information to corroborate people’s scores on the RTT, we asked several questions before and after the RTT. Before participants listened to the RTT, we asked them, “Where is the purest Lohorung spoken?” Of thirteen respondents, all said Pangma while half also said Angala. Even though the RTT was not administered in Dhupu, answers to pre-RTT questions reveal attitudes about the Lohorung that is spoken elsewhere. When Dhupu participants were asked where it is most purely spoken, most said Pangma eight of ten. When Angala participants were asked “Where is the least pure Lohorung spoken?,” no clear negative attitudes surfaced. Diding was most frequently mentioned four of thirteen. Half of Dhupu’s respondents said Dhupu. Angala respondents strongly identified with the Pangma story and held positive attitudes about it. After listening to the Lohorung Pangma story, ten of the eleven participants identified the speaker as being from Pangma. All respondents felt the storyteller’s speech was good, seven of whom said they liked it “because it’s our language.” Eight out of eleven participants reported understanding “all” of the story, two said they understood “most,” and one said they understood “half.” When asked how different they felt the storyteller’s speech was from their own, ten thought it was the same while only one said it was “a little different.” Even though people in Angala recognized the speech in the story as coming from Pangma, they also thought the speech was good, and even identified it as their own. In addition, the majority of people understood all of the story.

5.4 Summary