Malto is a language belonging to the northern branch of the Dravidian language family. Malto speakers are located on the Rajmahal hills of eastern India. Their geographical location has isolated them from the rest of the language family. They are surrounded by speakers of Santali, which belongs to the Munda branch of the Austro Asiatic language family and both are dominated by Hindi speakers, an Indo Aryan group. This close contact and frequent interaction in the recent times, with speakers of Santali and Hindi has led to a situation of contact and convergence. A key factor for this phenomenon is the minority status of Malto speakers, which forces them to interact with the dominant groups in all areas of modern life.

Earlier studies on the Indian linguistic area right from Emeneau (1956) to Reddy (2005) have mainly examined the linguistic facts on the basis of resemblances between two given language families and argued for the reasons behind such a phenomenon. Hardly has there been any significant study that has spoken about the levels of contact and convergence when more than two language families are involved. Malto poses as an interesting case study in this context.