Documenting Garhwali - an endangered language from the Himalayas

[सुनील कुमार भट्ट]

Dear group members,
I have started a project of documenting Garhwali language and will be
going for a field trip in a month time. The project is supported by
the National University of Singapore where I work. I would like to ask
the world wide community of Garhwalis to take part in the project to
create a data base of Garhwali narratives, personal histories and oral
material in Garhwali language. Before I explain how you could take
part in the project here is a brief description of the project:

Documenting Garhwali - an endangered language from the Himalayas

Garhwali language is spoken in Garhwal region of Uttrakhand state.
Although not recognised as an official language in the 8th schedule of
the Indian constitution and mainly considered a dialect of Hindi, the
“Ethnologue” has Garhwali in its database as a language and given a
code to the language “ISO 639-3 gbm”. According to the UNESCO Atlas of
World’s Languages in Danger, Garhwali is put into the category of
“vulnerable language”. Because of lack of patronisation, not being in
the official domain, and ever increasing pressure of globalisation,
the health of the language is deteriorating, and number of speakers
has declined rapidly.
The long term ambitious project includes writing a short grammar
including the features that are unique to Garhwali, but not present in
standard Hindi, collection of folk literature; tales, songs and
aphorisms.
During my visits to Garhwal, I came across some linguistic issues with
the standardisation of Garhwali because of the various idioms of
Garhwali people speak in different regions. The use of Garhwali and
the description of its grammar, even the Srinagariya variety lacks
consistency and scholarly dimension. With the help of the language
consultants and local community I plan to make some sample recordings,
meet “Baddis” the folksingers of Garhwal and also go to remote areas
where folktale narrators are still keeping the tradition alive and
collect narratives, personal histories, performances of cultural
event.

Here is how you can take part in the project:
1. If you have in your family some elders who speak Garhwali, just
record them talking about their lives in Garhwal or about some events
such as their marriages or somebody else’s marriage, or some festival,
or funfairs (कंडार), that are regularly orgainsed in Garhwal. The
narration can be about anything such as “how life has changed since
they were young”, “when she (a lady) got married and had to adjust to
the new family in a new village” “how young generation losing the
touch with Garhwal”, “how first school was opened in their village” or
“how before roads they used to travel between villages”. Please make
sure that the recordings are in Garhwali, not in Hindi. The language
of the narration is equally important as the content. A recording in
Hindi would be of no use.
2. You can also bring two or more Garhwali speakers, elders or young,
sit together and initiate any conversation on any topic, but in
Garhwali and record them.
3. If you know anyone in Garhwal or Delhi, who you think can be a
help and worth recording, please let me know the whereabouts and
contact information of the person, alternatively you can introduce
them to me through email.
Once you have the recordings, you can digitalise and email me or we
can find some way to add them to the data base.
If you have any question about the project, please feel free to write
me.
Looking forward to having your responses,
Sunil
------
Dr. Sunil KUMAR-BHATT :: Hindi Language Programme :: Centre for
Language Studies :: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences :: National
University of Singapore :: 9 Arts Link, AS4/02-01, Singapore
117570 :: Office (+65) 6516 2468 :: Fax (+65) 6777 7736 :: Email:
cls...@nus.edu.sg :: http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/cls/

[Ram Prasad Bhatt]

Dear Dr. Bhatt,

thanks a lot for your message. Your project sounds wonderful. I myself
come from Garhwal (Tehri) and work on Garhwali Oral literature. Would
be great to know more about your projetc. May be there are
possibilites of cooperation.

With warm regards,
RP Bhatt

*****************************
Dr. Ram Prasad Bhatt
University of Hamburg
Asia-Africa-Institute
Dept. of Culture & History of India & Tibet
Alsterterrasse 1
20354 Hamburg, G E R M A N Y
-------------
Tel: 0049-4042838-3388 office
0049-4040196879 home
Fax: 0049-40-42838-6944
Email: Ram.Pras...@uni-hamburg.de
*******************************


Zitat von सुनील कुमार भट्ट <sunilku...@gmail.com>:

[AJINA ZHOU]

Thanks for the post.... I have found some things in garhwali which are absent in Hindi... Infact I feel garhwali Is very similar to nepali