know and use as a lingua
franca and find it considerably easier to learn the Pidgin than a full
sized foreign than a full sized foreign language". He continues that
"under the circumstances, it is clearly advisable to make use of the
pupils already-existing knowledge of the Pidgin as a foundation on
which to attain the initial literacy".
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Hall’s statement with
reference to the situation in New Guinea would apply with equal
validity to Nagaland and it is hoped that there will be a reappraisal
of the language situation with specific reference to the function of
English in the State. If Bahasa Indonesia, a Pidgin language, can
function effectively as a medium of instruction at all levels and as
the language of the courts in Indonesia, nothing but prejudices and
inertia prevents the assigning of such a function to Naga Pidgin in
Nagaland.
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Notes:
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The writer is
thankful to Dr.D.P.Pattanayak, Director, CIIL, Mysore for the benefit
of consultations ans for useful suggestions.
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| 1. |
The term Naga has been used to refer to people living in the
hill regions of Indo-Burman border between the valleys of
Brahmaputra and Chindwin. Besides Nagaland, the Nagas are found
in Arunachal Pradesh parts of Assam nad Manipur, and across the
international border of Assam and Manipur, and across the
international border in Burma. Despite the very wide use of the
term Naga from time immemorial, the Nagas themselves do not know
the term Naga came to be applied to them. They never had any
generic term for the entire people. Rather a Naga was known as
belonging to such and such village.
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| |
Nagaland
was ushered into full-fledged statehood on December, 1, 1963. It
has in the east, a long international border with Burma, it
borders Assam in the west and northwest, Arunachal Pradesh in
the north-east and Manipur in the south. The State has an area
of 6,366 square miles. Kohima, situated at the height of 4,800
feet, is its capital.
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| 2. |
Lt. Brigges in his tour diary (1841) mentions that on arrival at
the Lotha Hills, 70 nagas came down, many of them knowing
Assamese. Similar statements are available in the reports of
John Butler (1855), Badgly (1875) etc. (reproduced in Alemchiba
1970).Referring to the Pidgin Naga, Hutton (1921) states that
"the Assames langauge as used in the Naga hills, (i.e. Pidgin
Naga), is peculiarly well adapted for the reproduction of Naga
idioms, as a vehicle of interpretation. It makes a far better
lingua franca for the hills than Hindustani or English
would, the substitution of which for Asamese (Pidgin Naga) has
been occasionally suggested" (italics supplied by this writer).
Haimendorf (1936) states that "fortuantely many people including
children spoke fluently Nagamese, the lingua franca of the
entire Naga hills".
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| 3. |
The figures given in the brackets are the numerical strength of
the community concerned for the census year 1971, as given in
the census centenary Monograph No. 10 (1973).
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| 4. |
The Census returns of 1971 are not available for Chokri, Khezha,
Zemi and Liangmei. The figures given in brackets are from the
1961 Census returns.
|
| 5. |
The census figures for the Kachari, Rongmei, Chin and Mao in
Nagaland are not available. These communities living in
Nagaland seem to have been wrongly listed under some other
linguistic groups.
|
| 6. |
Census of India 1971 : 1. India Population 1972 (A. Chandra
Sekhar).
|
| 7. |
The Southern variety shows opposition between an unvoiced
unaspirated stop and a voiced unaspirated stop series, each in
its turn showing aspirated counterparts. In addition, it
distinguished between /r/ and /l/ on the one hand and between
/s, , h/ on the other hand. The
variation of the vowels has not been studied.
|
| 8. |
Even when two or more varieties share a set of grammatical
catergories, they may differ in the choice of the markers. For
the present the differences in the markers are ignored.
|
| 9. |
Optional deletion of the plural marker is a very common feature
with most of the Indian langauges, for instance : Sema
(Tibeto-Burman)
/afo/’elder sister’/afoqo/ ‘elder sisters’ but/afo kini/ ‘two
elder sister’/afo kutomo/’many elder sisters’
|
|
Gujarati
(Indo-Aryan)
|
/chokri/
‘girl’/, chokrio/ ‘girls’ but/ be chokri/ ‘two girls’ Tamil
(Dravidian)
|
/kolantai/
‘child’ / kolantaikal/ ‘children’
but / nalu kolantai/ ‘four children’
/rombo kolantai/ ‘many children’ |
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