Santhali Language
Santali is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austroasiatic, related to Ho andMundari.
It is spoken by around 6.2 million people in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan andNepal, although most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand,Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Tripura, and West Bengal.[1]
The language has its own script, known as Ol Chiki[2] and a variant of the Latin alphabet is used, too.
Founder of Ol-Chiki Script
Pandit Raghunath Murmu ( May 5, 1905, Dandbose, Odisha State, India – February 1, 1982) was the creator of the writing known variously as Ol Chiki script, Ol Cemet' ("language of writing"), Ol Ciki, Ol, and sometimes as the Santali alphabet, in 1925, used for writing the Santali language of
India and neighbouring countries. He was also a spiritual Guru for
Santhals.He wrote "Sarna Dhorom Hitlay ar bang HITAL".He preached "Sarna
Dhorom". He also worked a lot for safeguarding tribal interests in Jharkhand.
He was born in a village, called (Dahardih) Dandbose, on 5 May 1905 in theMayurbhanj district of Odisha, then part of British India. He was a school teacher at [Badam Talia) near Rairangpur, in Odisha .
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Santali has 21 consonants, not counting the 10 aspirated stops which occur almost only in Indo-Aryan loanwords and are given in parentheses in the table below.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | voiceless | p (ph) | t (th) | ʈ (ʈh) | c (ch) | k | |
| voiced | b (bh) | d (dh) | É– (É–h) | ÉŸ (ÉŸh) <j jh> | g (gh) | ||
| Fricatives | s | h | |||||
| Nasals | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Flap | ɽ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Glides | w | j <y> | |||||
Vowels
Santali has eight non-nasal and six nasal vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i Ä© | u Å© | |
| Mid-high | e | É™ É™̃ | o |
| Mid-low | É› É›̃ | É” É”̃ | |
| Low | a ã |
There are numerous diphthongs.
Pronouns
The personal pronouns in Santali distinguish inclusive and exclusive first person and anaphoric and demonstrative third person.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Exclusive | iɲ | ɘliɲ | alɛ |
| Inclusive | alaŋ | abo | ||
| Second person | am | aben | apÉ› | |
| Third person | Anaphoric | ac' | ɘkin | ako |
| Demonstrative | uni | unkin | onko | |
ol-chiki in capital letters and in numericals
source:wikipidia.org