Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, August 08 2010:
The Tarao Tribe Literature Committee of Chandel today strongly denounced the inclusion of Tarao dialect among the list of endangered languages in the online version of the World Atlas of Endangered Languages vis-a vis census 2009 .
The wrong report of inclusion of the dialect which is still spoken by the tribe residing in Manipur is really a serious issue, a statement of the committee said, seeking support of academicians, particularly Chief Research Officer, Dr Th Chandramani of Centre for Tribal and Endangered Languages for upholding the preservation as against the process of extinction of the language.
"Time is now ripe to bring all the smaller languages into the lime light rather than push them into darkness," it says stating they are for the preservation and against documentation of the process of unnatural death of minor or endangered languages.
Such languages are not counted even by the Census Commissioner of Indian who excludes languages spoken by population less than 10,000 .
Mention may be made that some languages presently spoken by scheduled tribes and scheduled caste people in Manipur were reported vanished in the World of Endangered Languages (2009) vis-�-vis Census of the UNESCO.
In order to prove that the languages are still spoken by the tribes and castes as their mother tongues, documentations were started by a team of Centre for Tribal Endangered Language, CIIL led by its chief research person Dr Th Chandramani.
The documentation works begun recently started from Aimol dialect which had been included among the list of extinct languages.