Ichagarh, Singhbhum The Bhumij of this region were said to speak their mother tongue at home and within the community, as
well as a form of Bengali which the people called “Manbhum Bengali.” They were reported to use more borrowing from Bengali state language of the area until only a few years before the study, when
speaking their mother tongue compared to the Bhumij of Bundu and Tamar. However, at that time, they still maintained strong attitudes toward their mother tongue by declaring, “When we use Thar we use
Thar only and cannot afford to be laughing stock of others by practising indiscriminate mixture of Bengali into our Thar” Nigam and Dasgupta 1964:188. In addition, the authors report that nowhere
was the shift toward Bengali in adopting forms so prevalent as to make Bhumij Thar imperceptible from Bengali. Elements of “purism” in terms of Bhumij pronunciation persist, especially with regard to the
checked unreleased consonants word finally
d̚, b̚. Yet while the data seemed to indicate relative stability of the mother tongue, other signs indicative
of shift were observed, such as the tendency of school children to avoid speaking their mother tongue in the schools for fear of ostracism by other children. It was not clear based on Nigam and Dasgupta’s
evidence whether a stable diglossia or a tendency toward language shift was occurring. The latter can truly only be addressed in a diachronic study.
1.2.5 Linguistic aspects of Bhumij speech
In their research, Nigam and Dasgupta observed certain structural differences between the speech of the Bhumij and that of Standard Mundari with respect to 1 phonetics and phonology, 2 grammar and
morphology, and 3 the lexicon. The following section contains a summary of their findings:
1. Phonetics and phonology •
[e] and [o] are articulated higher than in Standard Mundari in a manner that resembles Bengali. •
[ ɔ] as a phoneme seems to be adopted by the Bhumij. In some cases it has replaced the Mundari [o].
• The Mundari phoneme [
ʔ] is often dropped in Bhumij speech while the preceding vowel is lengthened.
• C
hecked stops unreleased stops [d̚] and [b̚] are used less often. 2. Grammar and morphology
• The animate vs. inanimate distinction prevalent in Munda languages seems to be relaxed in Bhumij.
• Bhumij tends to use personal pronouns as free morphemes in the manner of Indo-Aryan languages
rather than as a verbal affix characteristic of Munda languages. •
Bhumij tends to omit the dual marking a Munda family feature and uses the word for “two” instead.
• Bhumij includes the use of the Hindi -ko postposition for accusative case and also uses the definite
article ta. •
Bhumij appears to make greater use of the Bengali number system than other Munda groups. •
Bhumij uses -abubu suffix for future tense borrowed from Oriya. 3. Lexicon
The researchers observed many borrowings from the neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages, more than what occurs in Standard Mundari.
In summary, Nigam and Dasgupta describe Bhumij Thar as a variety of Mundari that was probably Mundari at one time, but has undergone some simplifications in grammar and phonology. It is their
subjective analysis that, since the Bhumij seem more willing to spread out and live among various groups, their speech has borrowed more heavily from regional languages especially Bengali at the time
of their study than have other Mundari speeches.
1.2.6 Relationship between Bhumij and Mundari
The relationship between Bhumij and Mundari has been addressed progressively, since the time of Risley 1891, reprinted in 1981:117, who wrote, “There can be no doubt that the Bhumij are closely allied to,
if not identical with, the Mundas; but there is little to show that they ever had a distinct language of their own.” In 1927 Grierson reported that the Bhumij tend to speak whatever Munda language is
dominant in the area, and that his survey yielded no information to suggest the existence of a separate dialect: “The obvious reason is that Bhumij is not the name of a dialect but of a tribe” Grierson 1927,
reprinted in 1967:95. Evidence from more recent linguistic studies by Bhattacharya 1975 and Nigam and Dasgupta 1964 described dialectal differences between the two. It was the recommendation of
Nigam and Dasgupta that further studies be done among the Bhumij from a triangular approach of the three major disciplines of “linguistics, psychology and anthropology” 1964:196 in order to round out
understanding of Bhumij speech patterns.
One such aspect, which the survey team felt was lacking, is an investigation of intelligibility. The subjective analysis that one group of people understand another group can have a range of
interpretations that often have more to do with social issues than with linguistic or psychological issues. In addition, often linguistic descriptions alone give a false impression that two groups can understand
each other, when actually the complexities of the spoken language make understanding difficult. As a result, it was felt necessary to test the hypothesis that Bhumij and Munda are mutually intelligible. Due
to time constraints, only one direction of intelligibility was investigated: the intelligibility of Mundari by the Bhumij.
1.3 Previous survey
