7. The future tense markers ga and e
are not there in Mundari.
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8. As stated earlier there are lexical differences. In
spite of these linguistic differences, because of social acceptanceBhumij as
a dialect of Mundari, Bhumij may be treated as a dialect of Mundari, Bhumij may be treated as
a dialect. However, in view of the linguistic differences a separate grammar is written for
Bhumij,
which will give detailed information on this question.
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Informants:
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The data were collected during various visits from 1980
to 1986. I collected data primarily with three informants, namely Sri Kartik
Singh from the village Jambani who is a graduate working in the State
Government of Orissa, Sri Saheb Ram Singh from the village Dalkisol who is
an under graduate and Sri Harish Chandra Singh from the village Kamala Sole
who is also an under graduate student. I also worked with Sri Gagan Bihari
Singh for sometime, who is also an under graduate student. All these
informants are from Mayurbhani District of Orissa. I also checked the data
with other native speakers.
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The grammar is based mainly on the
data collected from Sri Kartik Singh.
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BHUMIJ SOUNDS
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Bhumij has 61 sounds of which, 20 are
vowels and 41 are consonants. The total number of sounds of this language is
not lesscomparatively though in certain places, the sounds are very few.
There are no front rounded vowels but there is one unrounded back vowel.
There are nasalised vowels which are restricted in distribution. Further, it
may be stated here that most of the words having nasalised vowels are
borrowed words. The borrowed words lost the nasal of the original word and
the preceding vowel is nasalised.
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Bhumij has good number of consonants
particularly stops. The stop sounds are more in number compare to other
sounds. Bhumij has fully developed aspirated stops due to the borrowing of
words both from Hindi and Oriya. At the same time, it has its peculiar sound
like glottal stop. This language has tense stops also.
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Affricates are only at the palatal
region but there is only one fricative sound which is at the alveolar
region. There are 6 nasalconsonants. There is only one lateral produced at
the alveolar region. There are two flap sounds; one is produced at the
alveolar region and the other is produced at the retroflex region. This
retroflex flap is more like lateral flap than the usual alveolar region and
the other is produced at the retroflex region. This retroflex flap is more
like lateral flap than the usual retroflex flap.
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