Allocation for preserving languages welcomed

Chennai: The linguistic minority community in the state has welcomed state govt’s decision to allocate ₹2 crore for documenting and preserving the Saurashtra and Badaga languages, spoken in Tamil Nadu, along with linguistic resources and phonetic forms of various tribes including Todar, Kothar, Solagar, Kani and Narikuravars from an ethnographic perspective.Finance minister Thangam Thennarasu made the announcement while presenting the Budget on Monday. Badaga, one of the Dravidian languages, was considered the ‘lingua franca’ of the Nilgiris district until the last century. Unesco has classified the language under the ‘definitely endangered’ category. The language lacks a script. According to Badaga leaders, there has always been a worry that if the status of the language continues to be in the endangered category, the Badaga language would become extinct. They thanked the government for its decision to document and preserve the language along with Saurashtra and other tribal languages for the benefit of future generations. Saurashtra scholar S D Gnaneswaran, who has translated several Tamil literary works including the epic ‘Silapathikaram’ into Saurashtra, said that the allocation in the Budget would go a long way in developing the language. “Our people were predominantly weavers when they migrated to Tamil Nadu, and though they kept the language alive through speech, they failed to give importance to the script, due to their nature of work and it is lost to the people of this region, now we are slowly reviving the learning of script among children from the community through special certified courses,” he said. Tamilaga Sourashtra Munnetra Peravai president O V R M Rajkumar welcomed the announcement for documenting Saurashtra language. “We thank chief minister (M K Stalin),” he said. Ethnography refers to scientific description of different races and cultures, and hence doing it in an ethnographic perspective is a welcome move, he said.
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