Visva-Bharati develops dictionaries for tribal communities

Kolkata | Visva-Bharati university has published dictionaries for certain tribal communities for studying and analyzing the marginal languages of the country, an official said on Tuesday.

The dictionaries and other books have been published by the university's Centre for Endangered Languages (CFEL) department for Koda, Mahali and Kurukh communities, pairing them with more than 10 languages, including Bangla, Hindi and English.

The dictionaries are also available on CFEL's website www.cfelvb.in and mobile application on the Android platform.

This centre has published 19 books so far, including the grammar for Birhor community and fieldwork tools useful for conducting linguistic field surveys in West Bengal and other parts of the country, the official said.

Some of these books were released during a recent national seminar, jointly organised with the National Tribal Research Institute (NTRI), New Delhi, and Visva-Bharati.

The seminar was inaugurated by Officiating Vice-Chancellor Prof Binoy Kumar Saren, the first tribal VC of Visva Bharati, a central university.

“When a tribal language dies, valuable oral history, customs, and indigenous wisdom, often about the environment and sustainable living, are lost. Language preservation also empowers tribal communities and encourages identity, pride, and continuity across generations, focusing on retaining multilingualism in the country,” Saren said.