Tiwa matre khailu paseng, a handbook that consists of sixty-five conversational lessons arranged in graded manner based on the easy to difficult levels of learning, is designed as a Tiwa language teaching-learning tool that may help in revitalising the language through Tiwa language teaching and learning in designated lant'asals, the Tiwa language practice centres.
The lessons in this volume try to introduce all the grammatical features, basic vocabularies, frequently used words and some cultural terms of Tiwa. Another fundamental part of this volume is the list of vocabulary incorporated at the beginning of every lesson, which helps in understanding the individual lessons. The lessons also contain exercises so that the teachers and learners can assess their teaching and learning themselves.
population of the community. It comes under Bodo-Garo group of languages under Assam-Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burman sub family of the Tibeto-Chinese family (Grierson 1927: 53-4). The term Tiwa is an autonym and Lalung is an exonym (Brahma 2014: 140). It is spoken by some members of the Tiwa community of Karbi Anglong, Marigaon, Nowgong, Hojai and Lakhimpur districts of Assam and Ri-Bhoi, West Jaintia Hills and East Jaitia Hills districts of Meghalaya of India. According to the Language Data, June 2018 of Census of 2011, Govt of India, this language is spoken by 33,921 in India. There are 31,821 speakers of Tiwa in Assam and 2,057 speakers of it in Meghalaya. And, according to the Preliminary Report 2013 of the Census, the population of the Tiwa people in Assam is 2,00,915. As per this report, only 15.84% of the Tiwa community people in Assam speak this language as their mother tongue. If it is compared with the number of speakers in the preceding decades, the number of the native speakers of this language is gradually decreasing. Thus, it comes under the level 6b with the label Threatened as per the language status mentioned in Ethnologue which means 'the language is used for face- to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing users." (Eberhard et al. 2021).
The primary vowels employed in Tiwa are i, e, a, o and u; and, the consonants are p(b), ph, t(d), th, k(g), k, m, n, s(z), f, h, ts, I, r, j and w. If /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ occur as simple onset and simple coda, then they lose their voicedness and are realised as /p/, /t/, /k/ and /s/ respectively. Their voiced counterparts occur in intervocalic positions. And, to represent this kind of complementary distribution both 'b' and 'p', 'd' and 't', 'g' and 'k', 's' and 'z' are used in the writing system of the language. Anyway, depending on the length and the type of juncture between a base and an affix or postpositional word or between two syllables, the voicing feature of a stop changes; e.g., huldi ben very yellowish (/b/ in ben is [+voiced] in word initial position), {-tuk.e) 'till' (the coda /k/ in the first syllable /tuk/ of the suffix is [-voiced] in word medial position).
The Central Institute of Indian Languages was established on 17 July 1969 with a primary objective to fulfil the Government of India's resolution that envisaged a set of concrete measures for the development of Major Indian languages. The Institute is also charged with the responsibility of conducting research on all the minor and lesser-known as well as endangered languages of the country to bring out grammars, dictionaries, style manuals, standardised writing and reading instructions, language pedagogy materials and language technology tools for such languages.
In order to implement the Institute's goal of developing the major Indian Languages and bring them into our teaching and research scheme mainly meant for the school teachers, the Institute has set up seven Regional Language Centres in the various linguistic regions of the country to help and meet the demand for trained teachers. This was thought in order to implement the three language formula and the assurances given to linguistic minorities. These Centres are charged with the responsibilities of developing need based materials and methods of teaching Indian languages as second/foreign languages, train secondary school teachers in languages other than their mother tongues with a view to providing more language choice to young students in secondary schools and thus heighten the awareness of the diversity which goes into the building of the mosaic of Indian Culture through their activities such as inter language translations, original writing in another language, etc.
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