Turung (Tibeto-Burman) is spoken by around 1,200 people in six villages in Assam, India. Turung historical chronicles indicate that the Turungs are descended from Tai speaking people who lived for a time among the Singphos, whose Tibeto-Burman language, closely related to Jinghpaw spoken in Burma, they then acquired. Since around 1800 they have lived near to and intermarried with Tai speaking Aitons. Today their language is mostly Singpho mixed with Tai.
This paper will concentrate on the situation of Turung language in the village of Balipathar, a cluster of communities speaking at least 12 languages, from at least four language families. The dominant language in Balipathar in Assamese, the official language of Assam state. Turung speakers in Balipathar display a high level of mixing with Assamese in their speech.
The threats to Turung language are considerable: marriage with members of other language communities, the use of Assamese and English in education and the tendency of many young people to move out of the villages to get work is leading to a gradual loss of the language and to a narrowing of its domains of use.
Vernacular education is a particular challenge in a place like Balipathar. With 12 languages spoken in the village area, vernacular education would require 12 separate programs, and the resources for this are not available.
One complication is that Balipathar is within the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District. If vernacular education were introduced in this part of Assam, it would likely be in Karbi language, which is not one of the 12 languages spoken in Balipathar.
A further complication for Turung is the lack of an agreed orthography for the language. There is ongoing discussion among the Turungs as to which of three scripts their orthography should be based on: Roman, Assamese or Tai. There are reasons to use each of the scripts. The related Jinghpaw language of Burma uses Roman script, and many people regard the Roman script as ‘more modern’ and thus more suitable. On the other hand Assamese script is understood by all and those Turungs who have written down songs or stories have usually done so using Assamese script. Tai script is favoured by those who associate themselves most strongly with their Tai heritage.
Another threat to the Turung language as it is spoken today comes from Jinghpaw, spoken by at least 500,000 people in Burma. Some Jinghpaw speakers from Burma maintain that Jinghpaw and Turung are one language and in an effort to promote this view, publications written in Burma have been circulated in the Turung villagers. No Turungs are able to make out the meaning of these articles, beyond a few words. Nevertheless, in the future, we may see an increasing convergence towards Jinghpaw standards.
Thus the following four languages significantly impact on Turung:
National/International Language English
State Language/ Lingua Franca Assamese
Local Language Karbi
Related Standardised Language Jinghpaw
This paper will explore the polylingual contact situation of Turung in Balipathar.
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