The Central Institute of Indian Languages is entrusted with the responsibility
of developing Indian languages by assisting their use in education, administration
and mass communication. This task is more challenging for the tribal and
other minor languages because of socio-political as well as linguistic
reasons. Linguistically, in many cases the work will have to start with
the codification of the languages at the lowest level like development
of a writing system, selection of a standard variety for it etc. This
is to be followed up by preparation of grammars, dictionaries and instructional
materials. The Institute has done this kind of work in the past decade
and a half for about 50 tribal and minor languages.
The population of the speakers of tribal and other minor languages being
small, the tyranny of number often goes against their development. When
an area is heterogeneous with many minor languages, more problems are
added for their use in education. In such heterogeneous linguistic situations,
normally a lingua franca may exist for inter group communication and it
may be a pidgin, a nativised version of the dominant Regional Language
or some other exceptional language like these. These languages generally
have a low social status, but have high educational potential.
Codification of sush languages is the first step towards increasing their
acceptability and their use in formal domains. The socio-linguistic work
of the Institute on such languages has also this applicational objective
in view. The grammar of Naga Pidgin is study of variation in Naga Pidgin.
The linguistic variation, which is a normal characteristic of Pidgins,
adds additional problems for their codification in that the standardisation
has to be done by the linguists in the absence of any naturally evolved
variety by the community. This grammar of
Naga Pigdin attempts at standardization, which is based on certain linguistic
principles. We hope that this is acceptable to the speakers of Naga Pidgin.
The Institute has planned to bring out some primers in Naga Pidgin based
on the standardised grammar. It is hoped that these efforts will provide
a solution to the problem of planning language use in Nagaland. |
