Assam: AASU, NTF take steps to preserve critically endangered languages

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: The only surviving person who can speak, write, read and make others know the Khamyang language in Assam is an octogenarian man, Bhogeswar Thumung. The endangerment status of the Khamyang language is so critical that in the absence of Bhogeswar Thumung, this language will be wiped out from this linguistic world.

Taking into account the whole lot of loss that a state or a country incurs at the death of a language, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has stepped up to preserve, publicize and develop the endangered languages of Assam with a mission of digital preservation of endangered languages. To begin with its mission, the students’ body has picked up three endangered languages of the state – Khamyang, Tai Phake, and Singpho.

To translate its mission into reality, the students’ body signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Nanda Talukdar Foundation (NTF) to digitally archive rare literature from endangered literature in Assam under the ambitious digitizing Assam literature project. The digitizing Assam (https://assamarchive.org/) initiative is a collaborative effort between NTF and the Assam Jatiya Bidyalaya Educational and Socio-economic Trust that has already digitized over 2.9 million pages of rare Assamese literature and made their publicity accessible as open-source resources.

Briefing the media after the signing of the MoU, AASU president Utpal Sarma said, “We’ve chosen these three languages that together have less than 10,000 speakers. The MoU we’ve signed with NTF is meant to digitally preserve all existing books and literature, besides their cultures, community skills, etc. We’re committed to working on the digital preservation of books, languages and literatures of endangered languages of Assam.”

AASU’s chief adviser Samujjal Bhattacharjya said, “Digitising Assam is a positive step for the community life of Assam. The digitisation of each and every language, book and literature of Assam is a must. We’re going to complete the project we’ve taken within five months. The Khamyang language is among the 30 critically endangered languages as the list of 246 endangered languages published by the Union Ministry of Culture as per UNESCO’s Language Atlas.”

AASU general secretary Samiran Phukon, NTF secretary Mrinal Talukdar, and Assam Jatiya Vidyalaya Educational and Socio-economic Trust’s managing trustee Dr. Narayan Sarma also spoke on the occasion.

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