Munda languages

Family of about 17 languages spoken in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal that together with Mon-Khmer comprises the Austroasiatic superfamily.

Munda languages are spoken by more than seven million people, all members of tribal groups living mainly in hilly and forested regions. Most significant are Santali, with more than four million speakers concentrated in northern Orissa, southern and eastern Bihar, northwestern Bengal, and the Nepal-Assam border; Ho, with about 750,000 speakers mainly in Bihar and Orissa; Mundari, with about 850,000 speakers scattered over northeastern India; and Korku, the westernmost Munda language, spoken by about 320,000 in southern Madhya Pradesh and northern Maharashtra. Munda languages differ from all other Austroasiatic languages in complexity of morphology and in having basic subject-object-verb rather than subject-verb-object word order.

* * *

      any of several Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 9,000,000 people (the Munda) in northern and central India. Some scholars divide the languages into two subfamilies: the North Munda (spoken in the Chota Nāgpur Plateau of Bihār, Bengal, and Orissa) including Korkū, Santhālī, Muṇḍārī, Bhumij, and Ho; and the South Munda (spoken in central Orissa and along the border between Andhra Pradesh and Orissa). The latter family is further split into Central Munda, including Khaṛiā and Juāṅg, and Korāput Munda, including Gutob, Remo, Sora (Savara), Juray, and Gorum. The classification of these languages is controversial.

      North Munda (of which Santhālī (Santali language) is the chief language) is the more important of the two groups; its languages are spoken by about nine-tenths of Munda speakers. After Santhālī, the Muṇḍārī and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by Korkū and Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small, isolated groups of people and are little known.

      Characteristics of the Munda languages include three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), two gender classes (animate and inanimate) for nouns, and the use of either suffixes or auxiliaries for indicating the tenses of verb forms. In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent, except in the middle of a word. Except in Korkū, where syllables show a distinction between high and low tone, accent is predictable in the Munda languages.

* * *