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    Unique Indian Languages That Are Forgotten

    By Aniket Pande
    27 Jan'23  3 min read
    Unique Indian Languages That Are Forgotten
    Synopsis

    Languages have existed for as long as 1,50,000 years. For millennia, languages have rendered form to communication and charm to stories. It is the language that makes poetry, prose and para possible.  This is the story of languages. Those forgotten languages, their beauty, history and facts trying to understand why couldn’t they get as popular as their contemporaries. Read the article to learn about the forgotten languages of India.

    Unique Indian Languages That Are Forgotten
    Synopsis

    Languages have existed for as long as 1,50,000 years. For millennia, languages have rendered form to communication and charm to stories. It is the language that makes poetry, prose and para possible.  This is the story of languages. Those forgotten languages, their beauty, history and facts trying to understand why couldn’t they get as popular as their contemporaries. Read the article to learn about the forgotten languages of India.

    Whenever the word language pops up, it is inevitable that we think about our mother tongue, English or any other language spoken in and around us. If you pay close attention you’ll figure out that most of our thinking is also done in the language that we speak the most. Though we have 22 official languages in India, there are more than 19,000 different languages/dialects spoken in India.

    According to the 2011 census, 96.71 per cent of Indians have one of the 22 official languages as their mother tongue. Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia and Telugu are the oldest languages and are still in use. But in this article, we explore the forgotten languages of India. Languages which lost their lustre over a period of time.

    We list 10 languages of India that are forgotten or almost about to be forgotten if the number of speakers keeps decreasing given the popularity of other languages.

    1. Ahom

    Ahom was the primary language used in the Ahom Kingdom of Assam. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ahom language faced the rising popularity of Assamese. The number of speakers dwindled post-16th century and by the 19th century, Ahom was a language reserved mostly for religious ceremonies. Today, it is no longer in use. Numerous efforts have been made to revive the language but one of the greatest challenges is the absence of recorded phonology. In 1920, G Baraua published an Ahom-Assamese-English dictionary and Stephen Morey developed the Ahom computer font in 1997.

    1. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit makes it to the list as a dying language. It is not dead yet. Some of the most important Indian texts such as Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana and Mahabharata were written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit fascinated the French philosopher, Voltaire, who translated the Upanishads into German and then the British, who opened numerous Sanskrit schools in Wales, Scotland and England. It was most common among the Brahmins who were able to read and write. As it was just one sect, there were only a limited number of speakers. It still holds a solid position among priests in India who perform religious ceremonies but the number of people speaking the language is too less.

    Also Read: Online Sanskrit Courses & Certifications

    1. Prakrit

    It was a popular language majorly spoken between 600 BCE (Before Common Era) and 1000 CE (Common Era). Prakrit was also known as classical Sanskrit mainly used for Jain literature. Dandin, the Indian grammarian and poet of the 7th and 8th centuries, and King Bhoja described Prakrit to be highly suitable for literature. The first fictional romance was composed in Prakrit. Important Jain literature such as the Anaghas and Upangas were written in Prakrit. It was slowly shadowed by the rise of Sanskrit.

    1. Kutchi

    Kutchi is the language of the people of Kutch also known as ‘The White Desert’. It is in Gujarat. Kutchi, a language of the border region, has an influence of Urdu from the Pakistani side and Gujarati from the Indian side. Language experts believe that Kutchi was written in Khojki or Dholavira script, both of which are extinct now. It is based on the Devanagari script and that’s what grants it a place in the list of Indian Unwritten Languages. The script was extinct during British rule. It is not yet a completely forgotten language but the earthquakes of 2004 that shook the cores of Bhuj and killed more than 25,000 people also led to a sharp decline in the number of Kutchi speakers. Sindhi and Gujarati are popular languages of the Kutch region but Kutchi still manages to live in some hearts.

    1. Apabhramsha

    After Prakit was formalised during the middle Indo-Aryan period, their variations were known as the Apabhramsha language. Grammarians of that age treated all deviations from Prakrit as Apabhramsha. Commentaries of Indian grammarian Dandin suggest that certain popular dialects of the 3rd century known as Apabhramsha rose to prominence and found their place in literature. It prevailed in the region of the Ganges belt and was common among Jains. Apabhramsha too is one of the forgotten languages.

    Also Read: Top 6 Skill-Enhancing Summer Activities For Students

    Since 1971, Govt. of India counts only those languages as official languages that are spoken by more than 10,000 people. Apart from the languages mentioned above, there are many other forgotten languages such as Rangkas, Andro, Tolcha and Sengmai. It is tough to determine the future of many other languages being dropped due to the popularity of other commonly used languages. The loss of language is big because, with a language gone, we also lose a unique way of looking at and expressing things.

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