Do language boundaries overlap with provincial boundaries in India? The answer is, no. We try to define the overlapping zones with bilingual populations. Popular assumptions of language use in different provinces mostly rely on the notion of homogeneity. We assume that two schools located at two sides of any provincial border area will have two different languages used as the medium of instruction. The reality is quite different though, the children of these two schools play together, talk to each other and constantly interact. They communicate through a common tongue. But still they have two different formal school languages.
Systematic investigation of the language use of children in such schools portray instances of language mixing. This mixing is often described and analysed with terms like translanguaging, plurilinguality, code mixing, superdiversity, crossing etc. Can we predict the structures of the language mixing? Instead of focusing on the community specific vocabulary, the data taken from border schools exhibit the mixing of inflections, classifiers (specific word-forms used with numerals and nouns to specify their class), etc., for example.
Totasai is a small village located at Bengal-Odisha border. A small team of linguists from my institution has been talking to the children and teachers of the Mundari community for the last three years1. The children rarely use Mundari, which is the traditional community language. The children of Totasai village can access the government run Bengali medium school for basic, elementary and higher level education. The same children go to Odisha to access markets or to access medical facilities. Odisha is a province closely located to their village. Interaction and game sessions with the children revealed that they use a mixed linguistic variety for their everyday communication. It is neither Mundari, nor Bangla /Odia – it is a mixed language. The language has several local names: Ghoruya, Kulatiya, Kulaitya to name a few.
If you visit the village, it’s quite likely that you won’t be able to figure out the variety spoken there. Children will use Bangla and broken Mundari but do not use the mixed variety in front of outsiders. The mixed forms are used as a playground talk.
The moment the children enter the classroom, they stop using the mixed form. If we assume that a similar kind of mixed language is used informally at the two sides of a border, can we expect any difference in the structure of the hybrid/mixed language ? Could these differences be attributed to the fact that the children use two different formal languages at their respective schools? Or, is it the case that children from a school located in Bengal and the one located in Odisha play together and use the same variety?
Language policy and planning has a major role to play in this regard. After more than seventy years of Indian independence, we still have different language-in-education policies for different provinces of India. The centralised policies have little effect. More important than the policy, the attitudes of the school teachers towards the local languages vary. Some teachers do not allow the hybrid or mixed varieties in the classroom, fluency in the target formal language is the primary goal. Attitudes of some other teachers may differ. They can allow the usage of mixed languages even inside the formal classroom.
Spatial ideologies are different. Language in education policies of different provinces reflect different attitudes towards language mixing in formal classrooms. Attitudes towards languages are different too.
Here is an example from the children of the Kurmali speech community of Bengal, located at the border of Jharkhand. The word for ‘from’ is Bangla, while the common location marker for the community is ‘le’. We can say that the formal regional language has an influence here.
modhu ɔr bahinek theke sundor
madhu his sister than beautiful
‘Madhu is more beautiful than her sister.’
The following example in Mundari spoken in the Bengal-Odisha border has a Bangla classifier, though Mundari does not have classifiers.
ne daru-Ta isua moTo
This wood-CLA very thick
‘This plank is very thick’
These two examples can indicate the use of hybrid languages by children in border schools. Diffusion of languages is evident, but the nature of hybridity across the borders can raise more critical questions.
Source of data:
1Jadavpur University SRIELI project ; IIT-Kharagpur Microsoft Research India Project on Language Technology for Mundari
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