How to Halt a Phonocide!
Protecting the Linguistic Jewels of the Western Ghats
#newspaperinlearning
I was thrilled to read a feature article in today’s The Times of India, titled, “How to Solve a Phonocide”.
The article features a noble initiative by my good friend, Dr. Armstrong, Head, Dept of English, University of Madras, and his vibrant team for having launched the Indigenous and Endangered Languages Laboratory (IELLAB). Their mission is to document the songs, stories, and daily speech of these communities before they vanish forever. Yes, my kindred spirit Dr. Ganesh also features in the news article. 😊
When a language dies, it doesn’t just take its words with it - it takes away generations of ecological wisdom, cultural memory, and unique ways of understanding the world. Linguists call this “phonocide.”
This quiet crisis is currently threatening the indigenous hill tribes of Tamil Nadu. As younger generations migrate for school and work, they are adopting dominant regional languages, leaving their ancestral tongues to fade with their elders.
The project focuses on a “microcontinent” of linguistic diversity within the Western Ghats and Nilgiris, taking up five of the following languages for preservation -
Toda, known as the linguistic jewel of the Nilgiris, is a critically endangered language that has a complex sound system with rare vowels and trills. Its vocabulary is deeply tied to the community’s traditional buffalo and dairy culture.
Kota, spoken by traditional artisans and blacksmiths, contains highly specialized vocabulary for metallurgy, pottery, and music. Instead of being written, its knowledge has historically been passed down entirely through songs and community rituals.
Irula, spoken by expert honey collectors and herbalists, is a living encyclopedia of the forest. It holds thousands of precise terms for medicinal plants, animal behavior, and ecosystems that aren't even documented in modern science yet.
Soliga, spoken by one of India’s oldest forest-dwelling communities, actually encodes the physical landscape into its grammar. It uses special linguistic markers to describe location and distance relative to the mountain slopes.
Badaga, has the largest speaker base (around 130,000 people), but it is highly vulnerable to language shift. The Badaga language is also famous for its vast oral epic tradition, capturing centuries of social and agricultural history on the Nilgiri plateau through proverbs and ballads.
Preserving these languages is a very important academic exercise. Indigenous languages carry vital, sustainable living practices and environmental knowledge that cannot be fully translated into English or Tamil. When we lose a language, we lose a distinct way of naming and understanding the natural world.
In this regard, the feature article serves as a reminder of the noble roles and responsibilities of academics – especially in the domain of English literature – to prevent this phonocide.
Just to add to the article’s insights, I would like to suggest David Crystal’s lovely book titled, Language Death. I would also like to quote from our previous blogpost on 25th September 2017, on how a ‘Banished Manipuri script stages a comeback,’ which was by all means, a ray of hope to linguaphiles all over, that can act as an additional cue and clue to preserve these dying languages.
You may want to read that highly relevant article that complements this article to a tee, on our past blogpost HERE.
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