Nahali

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Nahali , Nihali or Kalto (further spellings Nahal , Nahale , Nihal ) is an isolated language that is spoken by around 5000 people in western-central India in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra . The language contains many borrowings from the neighboring Indo-Aryan , Dravidian and Austro-Asian Munda languages , but about 25% to 30% of the vocabulary cannot be explained etymologically from these languages. Nahali is obviously a residue of a very early Indian language layer - the oldest still tangible - that was later overlaid by Austro-Asian, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages.

Possible relationship with other languages

The thesis that Nahali may be related to another almost extinct isolated language - the Kusunda spoken in central Nepal - is very speculative. Both belong to the oldest language class on the Indian subcontinent. A very early separation of Nahali from the Munda languages , which represent a branch of Austro-Asian, can not be completely ruled out . Another hypothesis sees Nahali as the only representative of an otherwise extinct main branch of the Austro-Asian languages. Attempts to relate Nahali to the Dene-Caucasian macro family or to the Andaman languages have so far been less than convincing.

Problematic research situation

The status of the Nahali remains unclear, in particular, because so far only a few linguistic field research has been carried out. In particular, there is no comprehensive presentation of the grammar. Kuiper (1962) is more of a grammatical sketch. The lexical work of Mundlay (1996) is largely speculative and hardly offers a reliable basis for a genetic assignment.

The Nahal tribe

In Victorian times the Nahals or Nihals were notorious as predatory wild jungle people. After 1800 a Mughal prince carried out a “punitive action” against them and ended their tribal independence. Their tribal area is just south of the Tapti River around the town of Tembi in the Nimar District of the Central Provinces of the Indo-British Period, now in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh .

literature

  • FBJ Kuiper: Nahali. A Comparative Study. Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 1962.
  • Asha Mundlay: Nihali Lexicon. In: Mother Tongue . II, 1996. ( Very speculative )
  • P. Whitehouse: External Relations of Nihali and Kusunda. In: Mother Tongue. III, 1997.

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