Intelligibility and Language Attitudes among the Tharu Dialects of the Western Indo- Nepal Tarai

Intelligibility and Language Attitudes among the Tharu Dialects of the Western Indo-Nepal Tarai

Compiled by Ken Hugoniot

SIL International ®

Data and materials collected by researchers in an era before documentation of permission was standardized may be included in this publication. SIL makes diligent efforts to identify and acknowledge sources and to obtain appropriate permissions wherever possible, acting in good faith and on the best information available at the time of publication.

Abstract

This second survey of the Tharu dialects of the Indo-Nepal Tarai was undertaken mainly to replicate parts of the first Western Tharu survey carried out by Webster in 1993 (Webster 2017). Jeff Webster advised that the recorded text tests using the Kathoriya text be redone, as he was suspicious that the Kathoriya text the first survey had used was heavily mixed with Hindi and thus not not representative of the actual Kathoriya dialect. Because of this, he feared that the recorded text test results were inaccurate (see Appendix B for more information). Data collection for this survey was completed during the months of March and April 1996. The basic purposes for this survey were:

1. To replicate the Kathoriya recorded text tests done by the first survey with a new, more authentic

text, and

2. To probe further into attitudes among Western Tharu groups regarding the speech of Kathoriya

Tharus. Towards fulfilling the first purpose, four recorded text tests were conducted, two in the west and

two in the east of the Western Tharu area. The only real difficulty encountered was in communication when, occasionally, our subject could not speak Hindi adequately. Fortunately, there was generally a sufficiently bilingual Tharu person nearby to help. Despite this and other minor obstacles inherent in fieldwork, I feel confident with our recorded text test results.

Unfortunately, time did not permit the sort of research into attitudes toward Kathoriya that we would have desired. Only around thirty questionnaires were administered, and the results of these did not take us very far towards ascertaining general attitudes vis-à-vis Kathoriya Tharu. To further frustrate our designs, we found that those Tharus who did not live near a Kathoriya village had never heard of the Kathoriya Tharus.

This survey report written some time ago deserves to be made available even at this late date. Conditions were such that it was not published when originally written. The reader is cautioned that more recent research may be available elsewhere. Historical data are quite valuable as they provide a basis for a longitudinal analysis and help us understand both the trajectory and pace of change as compared with more recent studies.—Editor

Contents

Maps

1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose

1.2 Goals

1.3 Summary of findings

1.3.1 Recorded text test results

1.3.2 Language attitudes

2 Study of dialect area

2.1 Dialect intelligibility—further findings

2.1.1 Procedures

2.1.2 Results

2.2 Summary

3 Language attitudes

4 General conclusion

5 Recommendations

5.1 Literature development and literacy programs

5.2 Further survey Appendix A: International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Appendix B: Webster’s Recommendation for Follow-up to “A Sociolingustic Survey of the Tharu

Dialects of the Western Indo-Nepal Tarai” Appendix C: Recorded Text Test Procedure Appendix D: Subject Biodata Appendix E: Recorded Text Test Results Appendix F: Recorded Text Test Transcripts References

Maps

Map 1. Uttar Pradesh and parts of Nepal

This and succeeding maps were created by Ed Boehm. Used with permission.

Map 2. Western portion of the survey area

Map 3. Eastern portion of the survey area

1 Introduction 1

In the first Tharu survey (Webster 2017), it appeared that the Kathoriya variety of Tharu was a link dialect that could be understood by both the speakers of Rana Tharu to the west and of Dangora Tharu to the east, even though these two latter dialects were not very well understood by one another. Webster therefore recommended that one literature development project be done in the Kathoriya dialect that would meet the needs of all three dialects. Further developments, however, have thrown these conclusions into doubt. Only one Kathoriya recorded text test (RTT) was tested in the Rana and Dangora areas. It turned out the text in that test had a lot of Hindi mixed in with the Tharu. This may have made

it more understandable to people in the other jats 2 who had some proficiency in Hindi. In addition, little information was collected in the first survey regarding the attitudes of Rana and Dangora Tharus towards the Kathoriya—attitudes that would determine its acceptability for any literature development. In light of these deficiencies, the following purposes and goals were formulated for a follow-up Western Tharu survey.

For the purposes of the previous survey (Webster 2017) and this survey, the Western Tharu area

was defined as that part of the Indo-Nepal Tarai which extends southeast from U.P.’s 3 Naini Tal district along both sides of the India-Nepal border as far as the eastern border of U.P.’s Gonda district. The Western Tharu area also includes Nepal’s Dang Valley, which is separated from the Tarai by a low mountain range. In India, the Western Tharu area comprises the eastern part of Naini Tal district (part of which is now Udham Singh Nagar district) and the northern border areas of Kheri and Gonda districts in U.P. In Nepal, it comprises most of the districts of Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke, and Dang Deukri.

1.1 Purpose

As stated above, the basic reason for this additional survey was to determine if Kathoriya Tharu is indeed an appropriate dialect for a language project that would be acceptable to all the Western Tharu dialect groups. To fulfill this purpose, two things had to be determined:

1. Is Kathoriya Tharu as intelligible to Rana and Dangora Tharus as results from the first survey indicated?

2. What are the attitudes of Rana and Dangora Tharus towards the Kathoriya variety? If literature

were developed in Kathoriya Tharu, would it be accepted by the Ranas, Dangoras, and other Western Tharu jats as a standard for Western Tharu?

If Kathoriya Tharu was found to be an inappropriate dialect for development of a general Western Tharu literature development and literacy project, then two more things had to be determined:

1. Is there any other Western Tharu dialect that would be appropriate for literature development for

the whole area?

2. If there is no single dialect that is intelligible and acceptable over the whole Western Tharu area,

then how many literature development and literacy projects will need to be done? Which Tharu jats would these projects involve?

1 Refer to the introduction section of Webster 2017 for an overview of the geography, people, and language of the Western Tharu area.

2 In normal usage in South Asia, when people say jat, they mean caste. Tharus however use the term jat when referring to the various endogamous groups, or clans, of Tharus. These groups are not castes; they are not divided on

occupational lines, nor are they hierarchically stratified. In this report, the term jat refers to a Tharu endogamous group, not a caste.

3 “U.P.” refers to Uttar Pradesh throughout this report.

1.2 Goals

The purposes of this survey were very specific, being, as it was, a follow-up to the previous more comprehensive and general survey. Therefore, the goals for this survey were also specific. In order to answer the questions posited above, the following goals were set:

1. Create another recorded text test in the Kathoriya dialect of Kheri district in U.P. Administer this test

to Rana subjects at two points (both in Naini Tal district of U.P.) and to Dangora subjects at two points (as far east from Kheri district as possible).

2. Using questionnaires, investigate the attitudes of each ethnolinguistic group (especially Rana, Dangora, Kathoriya) towards the speech of the other groups.

3. Investigate the possible existence of other major distinct Tharu dialects in the Western Tharu area. If any exist, then investigate the attitudes of the other ethnolinguistic groups towards them.

1.3 Summary of findings

1.3.1 Recorded text test results

A new recorded text test was created in a Kathoriya village in Kheri district. When compared to the RTT results from the previous survey, all the tests in this survey yielded slightly lower average scores. There was only one test point, however, where the average score was more than 5 percentage points lower than the average score from the previous test. This was in a Dangora village in the Dang Valley (Dang Deukri district) of Nepal. There the average score was 82% with a high standard deviation. This makes it very difficult to determine whether the population at that test point can fully understand the Kathoriya dialect or not. The other results would seem to reinforce the results of the previous survey, indicating good intelligibility of the Kathoriya dialect among other jats located far to the east and far to the west of the Kathoriyas.

1.3.2 Language attitudes

This survey was mainly concerned with only one aspect of language attitudes. That is, what are the attitudes of each of the Tharu dialect groups toward the members of the other groups, especially the Kathoriya group? The data showed that there were no strong opinions either way by any jat about any of the other jats. There seemed to be two reasons for this. First, most of the non-Kathoriya subjects who were questioned did not live near any Kathoriya villages. Since the Kathoriya jat is quite small, these subjects had never even heard of Kathoriyas or the Kathoriya dialect. The second reason for inconclusive attitude data was simply that most Tharus seem to take a very laissez-faire attitude towards other dialects of Tharu and even towards other languages. A few individuals voiced some negative statements about one or two of the other dialects, but these were a minority.

2 Study of dialect area

The RTT data gathered in this survey are very limited. By themselves, these data do not yield a great deal of information about the Western Tharu dialect area. Therefore, the results of this dialect area study should not be analyzed in isolation. Rather, these results should be analyzed in the context of the results of the initial Western Tharu survey (Webster 2017). In that survey, a more comprehensive series of RTTs was done. The results from the RTTs conducted in the present survey should be treated as additions and, in some places, corrections to the data contained in the initial survey report (Webster 2017).

2.1 Dialect intelligibility—further findings

2.1.1 Procedures

The procedures used for testing dialect intelligibility are described in Appendix C. For a more detailed description and in-depth discussion of the recorded text test procedure, refer to Casad (1974) and Blair (1990). See also the report from the previous Western Tharu survey for a good description of RTT procedures (Webster 2017).

As mentioned above, one of the main goals of this survey was to replicate the Kathoriya RTTs from the first survey using a new text. It was feared that the old text contained too much Hindi mixing and therefore could not be considered valid. The element of Hindi mixing in the Kathoriya text was only discovered some time after the previous survey was finished. A Tribhuvan University anthropologist, an expert on Tharus and their language, pointed this out. This first Kathoriya text was rendered even further invalid when we revisited the village where it had been collected. We found that the village was only 50% Kathoriya. The other 50% of the population were Dangoras. The new Kathoriya text for this survey was collected from a village just 10 to 15 kilometers from the first. According to its inhabitants, this village is around 85% Kathoriya, the other 15% being Dangoras. We were told that there are Dangora minorities living in all the Kathoriya villages. After creating the new RTT, we did a hometown test with ten subjects of the same village. In order to get some sense of the validity and purity of the new text, the following questions were asked of each subject at the conclusion of the test:

1. Is this pure Kathoriya Tharu?

2. Is this the way Kathoriya people talk in your village?

3. Was there any Dangora Tharu mixed with the Kathoriya Tharu in this story? The answers to all three questions were unanimous. To questions 1 and 2, all the subjects replied in the affirmative. To question 3, all the subjects replied in the negative. This was perhaps a crude measure of validity, but we were faced with few other options. Thus, this RTT was chosen for this survey.

2.1.2 Results

Only one new recorded text test was developed for this survey. After being hometown tested, it was administered to subjects at four test points. Tests from the previous survey were used as hometown tests at each of the test points. These testing results are displayed in table 3, along with selected results from the previous survey. Table 1 identifies the locations of the test sites represented by the RTT codes. In each table, the test points and scores from the first survey are identified by italics.

In the first survey, three-letter codes were used to identify RTT sites. In this survey, these sites have been given new codes that conform to the system used to identify RTT sites in the present survey. If the reader wishes to refer to the report of the previous survey (Webster 2017), please see table 1 in order to match the codes of this second survey with the codes of the first survey.

Table 1. Locations and RTT codes of test points

RTT Code Jat Location: Village, Tehsil, District, Country a Rana-NT2

Rana Tharu Bichuwa, Khatima, Udham Singh Nagar, b India Dang-N2

Dangora Tharu Belgunari, Dang, Dang Deukri, Nepal Buksa-1c

Buksa Madnapur, Gandepur Naini Tal, India Dang-N1

Dangora Tharu

Kotani, Dang, Dang Deukri, Nepal

Dang-G1 Dangora Tharu

Chandanpur, Tulsipur, Gonda, India

Kathoriya-2 Kathoriya Tharu

Dusgiya, Nighasan, Kheri, India

Dang-G2 Dangora Tharu Emiliya Kondar, Tulsipur, Gonda, India Kathoriya-1

Kathoriya Tharu

Pavera, Pavera, Kailali, Nepal

Buksa-2 Buksa Khatola No. 1, Rudrapur, Udham Singh Nagar, India Rana-K

Rana Tharu

Bangama, Nighasan, Kheri, India

Rana-NT1 Rana Tharu

Sisana, Sitarganj,Naini Tal, India

a All Indian locations are in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

b Udham Singh Nagar is a newly created district, with the town of Rudrapur as its administrative headquarters. Unfortunately, none of the maps generally available have been updated yet to depict its boundaries. Therefore, it is

not shown on map 2. All the sites mentioned as belonging to Udham Singh Nagar district in this report were originally part of Naini Tal district and are shown as such on map 2.

c All italicized codes are test points from the first survey.

Table 2. RTT code conversion Village code in previous survey New RTT code in this survey

BNM

Buksa-1

DDK

Dang-N1

DGC

Dang-G1

KkP

Kathoriya-1

RKB

Rana-K

RNs

Rana-NT1

Table 3. Summary of recorded text test results

Reference Points

Test Points

* Hometown tests in the second survey were done using tests created during the first survey.

In the shaded area of table 3 are the results from the first Kathoriya RTT (reference point: Kathoriya-1) and the second Kathoriya RTT (reference point: Kathoriya-2). The Kathoriya-1 reference test is the test that was deemed unsatisfactory. The Kathoriya-2 reference test is its replacement. The text for the Kathoriya-2 test was collected in Dusgiya, a village less than 10 kilometers from Pavera, the village where the Kathoriya-1 test text was collected. The Kathoriya-2 reference test was then administered at four test points. All of these test points were within 20 kilometers of reference points from the previous survey. Therefore, reference tests from the previous survey were used for all the hometown tests. Test points that are within 20 kilometers of one another are grouped together in the boxes in table 2.

The scores on a downward diagonal from the upper left corner to the lower right corner are all hometown test scores. In the second survey, these ranged from a low of 90% on a sample of ten subjects in Gonda district (Dang-G2) to a perfect high of 100% on a sample of ten Buksa subjects in Udham Singh Nagar district (Buksa-2). The sample size for each hometown test was ten. There could be various reasons that subjects missed questions on the hometown tests. The most likely possibility is that, because the questions were so easy, their attention wandered, or perhaps they were distracted by others. Village conditions are never ideal for test taking. Sometimes babies are crying or people may be trying to whisper to the subject. Sometimes the subject is simply distracted by the novelty or embarrassment of being the center of attention. All of these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to control for in the village testing situation.

The shaded area of table 3 is the most important part for our consideration. In the top row are scores from the Kathoriya reference test administered during the first survey. The test points Dang-G1

(Gonda district) and Dang-N1 (Dang Valley) were the two easternmost test points in the earlier survey. The score at each of these points was 95, showing a high degree of understanding of the Kathoriya text. Unfortunately, the Kathoriya-1 reference test was not utilized at the Naini Tal Rana test point (Rana-

NT1) or at the Naini Tal Buksa test point (Buksa-1). 4 Therefore, it is more difficult to make a comparison between the results of the two surveys.

In the second row of the shaded area are the results from the second survey’s testing with a new Kathoriya text from Dusgiya village in Kheri district. Four points were tested; two were far to the east of the reference point (in Gonda district and Dang valley) and two were to the west of the reference point; (one in a Rana Tharu village and one in a Buksa village, both located in Udham Singh Nagar district.) The sample size for each of these RTT was ten. These test points were chosen for their proximity to the test points in the previous survey. The scores from the two eastern test points, Dang-G2 and Dang-N2, offer a comparison to the scores from the previous survey. In both cases the scores were lower in the second survey. At 92%, the Dang-G2 score was only three percentage points below that of Dang-G1 in the previous survey, and the standard deviation was only two points higher. These differences in scores are effectively negligible given the high probability for error in the village testing situation. The Dang-N2 score from the Dang valley, however, tells a much different story when compared to its counterpart, Dang-N1. The Dang-N2 subjects scored thirteen points lower than the Dang-N1 subjects. The high standard deviation of 13.3 at Dang-N2, though, shows that there was a much wider variance of understanding of the second test than of the first.

It is very difficult to draw any definite conclusions from the scores of the Dang-N2 test. Experience has shown that an arbitrary score of 80% is the rough cut-off point to indicate adequate intelligibility of

a text by a subject. Anything below 80% is considered inadequate. So an average score of 82% is very near the intelligibility borderline. The high standard deviation also indicates that some subjects scored well above that average while some scored well below it. Thus, some understood the test adequately while others did not. The test was followed by a few “post-RTT” questions. When asked how much of the text they understood, four out of ten subjects said that they understood all of it and two out of ten said that they understood most of it. The others indicated that they understood lesser amounts. Seven out of ten subjects said that the Kathoriya text was only a little bit different than the way they speak.

Unfortunately, these self-reported data do not help to clarify the question of intelligibility in this case. It is interesting that despite the high average score on the Kathoriya-2 RTT at Dang-G2, only one subject at that site reported that he had understood all of the Kathoriya text. In addition, seven out of ten subjects at Dang-G2 said that the text was very different than the way they speak. This is very confusing in light of the answers of the Dang-N2 subjects to the same question. However, since no qualifications were given in the question for the adjectives “very” and “a little bit”, it is difficult to determine what a subject may have been thinking when he or she answered the question. It would perhaps be best to put little or none of the weight of our analysis on these self-reported data.

It is a dangerous venture to attempt to find any statistical correlation with a sample size of only ten. But desperation is the mother of many rash undertakings, so we will posit two possible, and very tentative, correlations between the scores and the biodata of the Dang-N2 test subjects. Despite the sample size, the first correlation is really not all that daring. If the average scores of male and female scores on any given RTT are contrasted, the male scores will almost invariably be found to be higher. There are a number of reasons for this: males are on average more educated than women, and they tend to travel more often and farther from the village. People with higher educations tend to score higher on RTTs because they have presumably taken tests before in school and may be more familiar with the concept. They may also have learned some of the national language in school. If the test text includes some borrowings or cognates from the national language, people with some education will probably understand more of the text than those with little or no education. People who often travel far from the village frequently encounter, and sometimes learn, other varieties of speech. If they have encountered the variety of speech contained in the test text they will naturally understand more of it than someone who has seldom or never left the village. The male and female scores on the Dang-N2 test exhibit this

4 With reference to Udham Singh Nagar, see table note b beneath table 1.

same discrepancy between the sexes. The males averaged a score of 88% while the females averaged only 71%.

The second correlation is much more tentative: the results seem to point to a direct relationship between age and score. In other words, the higher the subject’s age, the higher the score. This is, however, only a very general trend. When age and scores are statistically correlated, they yield a coefficient of .68. To put this into perspective, a coefficient of 1 would mean that there was an exact correlation between age and scores. An unlikely coefficient of 0 would mean that there was no correlation at all between age and scores. A coefficient of .68 indicates only a very tentative correlation at best. One possible reason for this trend of older people doing better on the test could be that they have had more contact with other Tharu jats over the years. It could also be a product of recent political and educational trends. The concerted efforts of the government of Nepal to institute and encourage the use of the national language, Nepali, among the Tharus and throughout the country may have had the following result: instead of using a form of Tharu for wider communication with other Tharu jats, the Tharus in Dang Valley and in other parts of Nepal are perhaps now using Nepali as their language of wider communication. These are only guesses, but they definitely deserve further research. It would be good to see if this trend holds in further RTTs and, if so, to investigate further into what the reasons might be. These RTTs would, of course, require larger sample sizes in order to validate the scores and correlations derived from them.

In the shaded area of the second column of table 3 is the score for the Kathoriya reference test administered in Bichuwa (Rana-NT2), a Rana Tharu village in Udham Singh Nagar district, west of Kheri district. The Rana-NT2 subjects averaged 86% on the Kathoriya-2 Kathoriya RTT with a high standard deviation of 12.4. This again is a rather difficult score to draw any conclusions from since scores ranged from 64% to 100%. This test exhibited no hint of an age-score correlation. The high standard deviation, however, can be partly explained by the wide gap between the scores of men and women. The average score for males at the Rana-NT2 test point was 93% while the average score for females was 76%. There was also a gap between the average scores of people who had received some education and those with no education. These average scores were 91% and 80% respectively. After taking the test, nine of the ten subjects reported that they had understood all of the text.

In the shaded area of the last column of table 3 is the result of the Kathoriya-2 reference test administered in Khatola No. 1 (Buksa-2), a Buksa village in Udham Singh Nagar district. The average score of 67% for this RTT was dramatically lower than any of the others. There was a high standard deviation of 14.6. No obvious relationship between scores and subject biodata is evident. The low average score, however, allows for much more confident conclusions to be made regarding the ability of the subjects to comprehend the Kathoriya text. Aside from one score of 100% (from the most educated subject in the sample), the rest of the scores ranged only from 50% to 77%. Thus, at the Buksa-2 test point, the Buksa subjects’ ability to understand the Kathoriya text was quite a bit poorer than that of the Tharu subjects at any of the other test points. It is interesting that the lexical similarity data from the first survey (Webster 2017) show that the two Buksa points BNM and BNT shared 69% and 66% similarity respectively with the Kathoriya point KkP (Kathoriya-1 in the present survey). This compares closely with the 67% intelligibility score of the Buksa-2 test point on the Kathoriya-2 reference test.

In the first survey, Buksa subjects did very well on a Rana reference test from nearby Sisana (Rana- 1). The average score on that test was 95% (Webster 2017). Unfortunately, the first Kathoriya text (Kathoriya-1) was not tested at the Buksa test point. However, Webster and his colleagues made the following fallacious assumption, based on other RTT data they had collected:

[Test] points [Rana-NT1] and [Buksa-1] were not tested on [Kathoriya-1]; however, we can extrapolate from the results we do have. Average recorded text test scores among [Rana-NT1], [Rana-K] and [Buksa-1] are uniformly high—all above 95%. Based on these high scores, we could have chosen any one of these points as representative of the other two. This suggests that [Rana- NT1] and [Buksa-1] should not score significantly different from [Rana-K] (90%) on the [Kathoriya-1] test. (Webster 2017).

The assumption that any of these three test points (Rana-NT1, Rana-K, and Buksa-1) could be representative of the other was mistaken, as further research has shown that these points did not exhibit uniform scores. The mistaken assumption was compounded by the fact that the only one of the three The assumption that any of these three test points (Rana-NT1, Rana-K, and Buksa-1) could be representative of the other was mistaken, as further research has shown that these points did not exhibit uniform scores. The mistaken assumption was compounded by the fact that the only one of the three

In the first survey the Buksas were assumed to be one of the Tharu jats, though it was mentioned that the Buksas are recognized as a separate Scheduled Tribe by the government of India (Webster 2017). It is the conclusion of this survey, however, that the Buksas are indeed a separate tribe rather than a Tharu jat. All the Buksas that were asked about this averred that they were not Tharus. In addition, the Rana Tharus living nearby the Buksas said the same thing—the Buksas are not Tharus.

2.2 Summary

It seems clear that, however close it may be to the Rana speech varieties nearby, the Buksa speech variety must be considered a separate dialect from the Kathoriya speech variety in Kheri district. This is the only clear-cut distinction these intelligibility study results will allow us.

It is interesting that the Dangoras to the east, in Gonda district (Dang-G2), scored better than the Ranas to the west (Rana-NT2) who are actually closer geographically to the Kathoriya reference point. This may be because of the presence of Kathoriya villages not far from Emiliya Kondar (Dang-G2). The villagers in Dang-G2 reported that this was the case. The subjects in both Rana-NT2 and Dang-G2, however, seemed to adequately understand the Kathoriya text. Obviously, the Tharus of Dang Valley understand a large portion of the Kathoriya speech variety. It should not be assumed, however, that their understanding of the Kathoriya speech variety is enough to make Kathoriya Tharu an adequate medium for literacy development in Dang Valley. The Dang Valley subjects scored much lower on the Kathoriya RTT the second time around. This new score was somewhere on the intelligibility borderline traditionally used to demarcate separate dialects.

The data collected in this survey should not be considered without reference to the data from Webster’s survey. In RTTs administered by that survey, the Rana subjects did poorly when tested on western Dangora texts (Webster 2017). The Dangora subjects averaged below 80% whenever tested with Rana texts. If Kathoriya cannot be considered a “link” dialect, uniting all the varieties of Western Tharu, then we have to say that the Rana and Dangora varieties are separate and distinct dialects. The differences apparent between the speech of Dang Valley and all the other varieties (including other Dangora varieties) pose a question as to what its status should be. Is it different enough from everything else to enable us to boldly bestow separate “dialect” status upon it? Probably not, but our data show that it contains at least enough differences to make it distinct and slightly separate from the other varieties of Western Tharu.

3 Language attitudes

The study of language attitudes attempts to describe people’s attitude towards the different speech varieties that are known to them, and about the choices people should make with regard to language use. In this survey, language attitudes among the Tharu were studied through the use of an orally

administered questionnaire. 5 Some research into Tharu language attitudes was done by the previous

5 These questions were integrated into a longer questionnaire used to gather data for a separate research project from the same respondents (Kilgo, forthcoming). The other questions and their responses concerned language use

among the Tharus and attitudes vis-à-vis Hindi. Those questions, though interesting, do not fall within the immediate scope of this survey, neither were there enough respondents to make any analysis here worthwhile, thus they have not been discussed in this report. The previous Tharu survey (Webster 2017) dealt more extensively with

language use and bilingualism. We found no reason to cast any doubt on the findings of the previous survey regarding these topics.

survey. It was hoped that in this second survey more thorough data could be obtained regarding these attitudes. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, only a few questionnaires were actually collected and these not very systematically. In the current survey, priority was given to RTT data rather than language attitude data. Because the sample is so small, any conclusions drawn from them would be unreliable. We will, however, venture a few comments about the scanty data we have.

The first four questions were quickly abandoned when we realized that no one could supply a coherent answer to them. It seemed that the notion of people in one place speaking Tharu better than people in another place was incomprehensible to them. The lack of understanding of these questions makes sense in light of the fact that there is apparently no standard or prestige variety of Tharu.

In an attempt to get information on attitudes toward specific Tharu jats, a matrix was devised in which the same questions were repeated in regard to each of the other jats successively. We found that almost all Tharus were only familiar with other Tharu jats in their own immediate area, i.e., within their district. The Ranas and Dangoras, being widespread, were known to everyone, but smaller jats like the Kathoriyas were often unknown to the respondents. Only a few questionnaires were administered to Dangora and Kathoriya subjects, but 26 were administered to Rana subjects. Only six of these subjects had heard of the Kathoriya jat. Of these six subjects, five lived in Bangama village, Kheri district, very near to Kathoriya villages. The other twenty subjects were all from the villages of Bichuwa and Amau in Udham Singh Nagar district and did not live close to any Kathoriya villages. Only one of these subjects had heard of the Kathoriya jat. All of the respondents had heard of the Dangora jat. Because so few of the respondents were able to answer questions about the Kathoriyas, only the responses of the Rana subjects to the questions about the Dangora dialect have been included here. The answers of the Rana respondents are summarized in table 4, which shows the number of people who gave each response.

Table 4. Language attitude survey results

Questions

Answers

Is Dangora Tharu just like Rana

Just like it

Different

Tharu or different?

Is Rana Tharu very different from

Little different

Very Different

Dangora Tharu or only a little bit

different? Can you understand Dangora

Yes

A little bit

Tharu?

If speaking to a Dangora person

We speak our own languages what language do you use?

Dangora Tharu

Rana Tharu

2 11 3 a

Do you like Dangora Tharu?

Yes

Don’t know

a One person said that he spoke Hindi with Dangora people.

Notice that though all the respondents had heard of the Dangora jat, only twenty were able to answer the rest of the questions. All twenty respondents said that Dangoras speak differently than Ranas. Seventeen respondents said that there is a large difference between the two dialects. Eight respondents said that they could understand Dangora Tharu. Twelve said either that they could not understand Dangora Tharu or they could only understand a little bit of it. Eleven of the respondents said that when speaking with a Dangora they speak in the Rana dialect. Only two said that they speak in the Dangora variety. A few of the others said that when speaking to a Dangora person, each person speaks in his own dialect. Half of the respondents said that they liked the Dangora dialect. A quarter of the respondents said that they didn’t like it. The other quarter had no opinion.

In addition to the questionnaire, one other small measure of language attitude was taken during the survey. After they had finished, most of the RTT subjects were asked if they could say where the speaker of the text was from and what his jat was. They were also asked if the Tharu in the text they had just In addition to the questionnaire, one other small measure of language attitude was taken during the survey. After they had finished, most of the RTT subjects were asked if they could say where the speaker of the text was from and what his jat was. They were also asked if the Tharu in the text they had just

At the Rana-NT2 test site only one subject thought that the Kathoriya text was good Tharu, four said that it was not good Tharu and four more said that it wasn’t even Tharu at all! In this survey, this was the only indication that there may be some negative perceptions among other groups of the Kathoriya speech variety. Seven of the subjects were able to say that the speaker of the text was from somewhere to the east, but only one person was able to identify the speaker’s jat. That person had traveled to the speaker’s home area. Most of the subjects were unable to guess at the speaker’s jat.

The Dang-N2 subjects were more positive towards the Kathoriya text. Six subjects said that the text was good Tharu, three gave no answer and only one replied negatively, saying that it was “not pure Tharu”. Only four subjects were able to say that the speaker was from the west. The others were unable to give even a general direction for his location. Two subjects accurately labeled the speaker as a Kathoriya, one said he was a Rana and one said he was a Dangora. The rest were unable to venture a response.

4 General conclusion

The following conclusions and the subsequent recommendations should be viewed only in reference to the conclusions and recommendations of the previous Western Tharu survey (Webster 2017). Essentially, they are additions and corrections to the conclusions and recommendations found in Webster.

Webster enumerates four major specific findings of his survey in regard to language development and literacy programs in the Western Tharu area:

1) a vast majority of the population is not likely to be adequately bilingual in Hindi;

2) the Tharu language is widely used in nearly every domain, and attitudes are very positive towards it;

3) Kathoriya Tharu appears to be widely understood among all of the different Tharu speech varieties tested in the Western Indo-Nepal Tarai; and,

4) lexically, Kathoriya Tharu is a central point midway between the more divergent Rana and Dangora varieties (Webster 2017).

The second survey encountered no data that would cast any doubt on the first two findings. Nor did subjective personal observations provide any reason to doubt these findings. We did not collect any wordlists in this survey so we have no data that could possibly refute the fourth finding. The results of the RTTs done in this survey, however, would appear to throw some doubt on Webster’s third finding. The average score for the Dang Valley (Dang-N2) subjects was 13 percentage points lower than the score of the Dang Valley subjects in the first survey. At 82% this score is on the borderline of acceptable intelligibility. A high standard deviation makes it even more of a borderline intelligibility case.

In addition, the Buksa tribe of Naini Tal district in U.P. was not tested on the Kathoriya test in the first survey. In this survey, subjects in a Buksa village were tested with the Kathoriya RTT. Their average score was only 67%. This indicates poor intelligibility of Kathoriya Tharu.

5 Recommendations

5.1 Literature development and literacy programs

Based on the third finding above, Webster made the following recommendation: “…that any literature development be done in Kathoriya Tharu. Indications are that written materials done in Pavera village of Kailali District, Nepal (or a village that speaks this same dialect), would likely be adequately understood by all the Tharu varieties covered in this survey” (Webster 2017). Given the results of the new RTTs, it would be hard to endorse this recommendation without reservations. It is difficult to determine, based on these rather ambiguous RTT results, whether Kathoriya Tharu would be an intelligible medium for Based on the third finding above, Webster made the following recommendation: “…that any literature development be done in Kathoriya Tharu. Indications are that written materials done in Pavera village of Kailali District, Nepal (or a village that speaks this same dialect), would likely be adequately understood by all the Tharu varieties covered in this survey” (Webster 2017). Given the results of the new RTTs, it would be hard to endorse this recommendation without reservations. It is difficult to determine, based on these rather ambiguous RTT results, whether Kathoriya Tharu would be an intelligible medium for

One of these factors is the relative sizes of the various Tharu jats. The Rana and Dangora jats are by far the largest, their populations dwarfing the populations of the others. The Kathoriyas are a much smaller jat. We discovered that, unless they lived near a Kathoriya village, other Tharus had never heard of the Kathoriyas. This could prove problematic if literature were to be developed in Kathoriya Tharu for use by Ranas and Dangoras. They might reject it if it was too different and was from some small, unrecognized jat. There is very little evidence pointing to strong negative attitudes among the Tharus in regard to each other’s speech. But if such attitudes were to surface, a small jat with no special claim to status would be unlikely to win the respect of larger jats.

Another factor to keep in mind, especially in the case of the Dang Valley Tharus, is the effect of second languages on the way Tharus speak. Tharus in India learn Hindi as their second language while Tharus in Nepal learn Nepali. It became quite evident to us during the course of our research that there were differences in speech between Nepali Tharus and Indian Tharus that seemed to be caused by influences from their respective national languages. One wonders if perhaps the Tharu dialects are diverging as people on both sides of the border gradually mix more and more of the national language with their own. Any dichotomy caused by the influence of the national languages would likely be reflected in the speech of the Ranas in the west and the Dangoras in the east. The majority of Dangora Tharus live in Nepal while the majority of Rana Tharus live in India.

Demographic and geographic factors pose yet another caution against using Kathoriya as a single literature development and literacy medium for the whole Western Tharu area. The Western Tharu population numbers in the hundreds of thousands. This large population is spread linearly across a vast area of the Indo-Nepal Tarai. From east to west this area spans around 350 kilometers. Given the language variance across this area, it is very likely that some kind of adaptations may prove to be necessary regardless of which kind of language development approach is taken.

In light of the RTT results and the above observations, it is difficult to make any unequivocal recommendation for literature development and literacy programs in the Western Tharu area. Essentially, there are two alternative approaches to take for language projects in this area. The first would be a one-project approach. This project would attempt to use Kathoriya as an improvised standard for the whole Western Tharu area. The second approach would involve two parallel projects, one in the west among the Rana Tharus and one in the east among the Dangora Tharus. It is still possible that a single Kathoriya-based project would be understood and accepted by people in the whole area. If it worked, this would be the most efficient solution. It seems, however, that there are many potential pitfalls awaiting such an approach. A two-project approach, using the Rana and Dangora varieties, would

be the more conservative and probably more satisfactory solution. This survey recommends such a two- project approach. In the end, two sets of materials might prove unnecessary. But the two jats are so large and, in many ways, culturally disparate that it seems very likely that some adaptation would be necessary in order for each jat to accept the materials as its own.

Obviously, it would be good to have yet more language data and more demographic, cultural and political information about the Western Tharu area. But, given the size of the area and the limited resources available to a short-term survey effort, it seems unwise to attempt any further surveys of this kind in this area. A very huge effort would be needed to gather what might be considered the “critical mass” of data required for an ideal recommendation. This is probably not necessary. There are not the resources for such a task and it is likely that we have accumulated enough good “informed guesses” to base a decision upon. It is inevitable that any initial project plan will be modified over time. Even with better decision-making data, any plan for Western Tharu could very well undergo drastic modifications along the way. This would seem to be the nature of such an ambitious plan. Persons involved in these projects should be aware of the possibility of major changes in the project plan and be prepared to be flexible in the face of such a possibility. If this criterion is met, then there seems to be no reason to delay the creation and implementation of a two-project plan.

If a two-project approach were to be chosen, the Dangora project would probably be best based in Nepal’s Dang Valley in Dang Deukri district. Dangora Tharus are spread far and wide, but this seems to

be the group’s homeland or at least the place they identify most with culturally. In addition, the Dang Valley contains a large and concentrated population of Dangoras.

The Rana project should probably be undertaken in U.P.’s Udham Singh Nagar district or Kheri district since these areas seem to be the most predominantly Rana. In light of the following factors, it seems that Kheri district would be a somewhat better choice: 1) The Rana population of Kheri district is more isolated and traditional than that of Udham Singh Nagar district. In fact, many women still wear the traditional Rana dress. The area is bounded on the north by the Nepal border and on the south by a large tract of forest that makes up Dudhwa National Park. The Rana population of Udham Singh Nagar district is somewhat more educated and progressive than the Kheri population. As a result, they are probably more bilingual in Hindi, whereas the speech of the Kheri Ranas may be more free of Hindi influences. 2) The Rana population of Kheri is more homogenous than that of Udham Singh Nagar district. In Udham Singh Nagar, many Kumaonis and other hill people have come south from the mountains, bought up Tharu land, and settled in their villages where they have assumed a dominant political and economic position. Most of them also consider themselves higher caste than the Tharus. The population of many villages in Udham Singh Nagar district has become nearly 50% Pahari. In contrast, the Kheri district area is basically completely Tharu. Most are Rana Tharu, but a few villages are Kathoriya and there are some Dangora immigrants living in the Rana and Kathoriya villages. With these considerations in mind, we recommend that a Rana project be initiated in a village in U.P.’s Kheri district or, alternately, in the contiguous border region of Nepal’s Kailali district.

If a single Kathoriya project were undertaken, Dusgiya village or one of the villages near it in U.P.’s Kheri district or in Nepal’s Kailali district would be suitable. Pavera, the village in Kailali mentioned in the recommendation of the previous survey, would not be an acceptable base for language development since it is only 50% Kathoriya.

Note that in the first survey, the Buksa people were assumed to be a Tharu jat. We discovered that this is not the case. They asserted that they are actually not Tharus, and when we asked Tharus from nearby villages they affirmed that this is true—the Buksas are not Tharus. Their language also seems to

be somewhat different from that of the other Tharus. They obviously had difficulty in understanding the Kathoriya text. This indicates that a separate Buksa project could be needed in the Naini Tal district of U.P. The results of the previous survey, however, hint at the possibility that there may be a high degree of bilingual ability among the Buksas. Additionally, the previous survey found that Buksa subjects understood a text from a Rana village in the same district very well. This is a matter that requires further study before any recommendation can be made.

5.2 Further survey

We affirm the opinion of Webster: “The biggest need for further survey lies east of Gonda district (Dang District in Nepal)… The different Tharu varieties along the Nepal-India border east to the eastern border of Nepal need to be surveyed, and dialect centers determined” (Webster 2017). This question is being addressed to some extent in current research by Ed Boehm (forthcoming) through the collection of wordlists and the use of historical-comparative methods.

If Kathoriya Tharu were to be chosen as a unifying dialect for literature development, then another of Webster’s recommendations for further survey should also be followed. Specifically, “The Kathoriya Tharu recorded text test should be tested in selected points to determine how far this language variety will reach”. Webster recommended use of the Kathoriya-1 text but we of course recommend the Kathoriya-2 text instead. Regarding the use of Kathoriya Tharu as a link dialect for literature development, Webster goes further to recommend the following: “Before extensive literature development is begun, further language attitude studies are necessary to probe attitudes towards oral and written Kathoriya Tharu.” If Kathoriya Tharu is found to be an unacceptable medium for literature development, then we recommend that our above suggestions for a two-project (Rana and Dangora) approach be followed.

Intelligibility and Language Attitudes among the Tharu Dialects of the Western Indo- Nepal Tarai