9 can talk to none in their mother tongue in Gujarat!

AHMEDABAD: Even as loquacious people talk nineteen to the dozen, there is a handful of linguistic minority in Gujarat that can talk to none as they are the only ones speaking their mother tongue here.

Data pertaining to languages spoken across India as per 2011 Census released recently has revealed that there are nine languages in the state that are spoken by a person each.

Interestingly, this variety in Gujarat's culture is a gift mainly from the North-Eastern states. Accordingly, there is only one man found in Gujarat who speaks in Gangte, the dialect spoken by 16,542 mainly in Manipur.

Like him, there are five more men in the state. Each of these men speaks Halam, a language mainly spoken in Tripura and Assam; Karbi or Mikir language of Assam; Lepcha dialect of Sikkim; Mogh of Tripura and Shina dialect mainly spoken in Jammu & Kashmir.

The state is also home to three women who speak in Maram language of Manipur, Savara of Odisha and West Bengal, and Tangkhul of Nagaland.

There are five languages spoken in Gujarat only by two persons, who are more fortunate as compared to the nine. These include Hmar of Tripura and Assam which is spoken in Gujarat by two women, and Adi language of Nagaland and Tripura that is spoken by two men. Apart from them, Ao language of Nagaland, Khond of Odisha and Tangsa of Arunachal Pradesh fall in this category.

Professor Ganesh Devy, who is documenting vanishing dialects, said, "If there is a person in the state who cannot express himself in his/her mother tongue, it is a very unfortunate situation. We have seen so many languages getting extinct. Such migration can be detrimental to the language because he/she tends to stop using the language thereby aiding fast extinction of dialects."