The Union government has taken up a project to document endangered languages and identified eight universities to shortlist and document them. Their grammar too will be documented. A sum of Rs. 37 crore has been earmarked for the purpose.
The Central University of Karnataka (CUK) at Kadaganchi in Kalaburagi district and the Central University of Kerala at Kasaragod will take up the work in South India and CUK will be the lead university.
Funds sanctioned
CUK Vice-Chancellor H. M. Maheshwaraiah told The Hindu on Sunday that the government had sanctioned Rs. 3.6 crore to the varsity to take up the project.
He said the CUK proposed to seek at least three years to complete the project. The varsity would soon start the process to appoint support staff, project assistants and research scholars to take up the documentation and digitalisation of available documents pertaining to endangered languages in south India.
Mr. Maheshwariah said that the identification of endangered languages, apart from those in the list released by the UNESCO recently, had become a daunting task after the failure of the Census Commissioner to identify those on the verge of extinction in the Census 2011. Census reports from 1961 to 2001 had the details of all the languages and their status, but the Census 2011 did not have these details.
As per the information available with the Registrar General of the Languages division in the Union Home Ministry, there were more than 190 languages about whom there was no information.
Tribal communities
Prof. Maheshwaraiah said that in Karnataka there were 49 tribal communities and there was no information about their languages, dialect and grammar. Initially, the CUK proposed to take up the study and identification of endangered languages in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry, he added.
The varsity has been chosen as the lead university for the project in south India, says Vice-Chancellor H.M. Maheshwaraiah