Asur language

Asuri
Native to India
Ethnicity Asur
Native speakers
 7,000 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 asr
Glottolog asur1254[2]

Asuri is a minor Munda language of India. It is a member of the Austro-Asiatic family, spoken by the Asur people.[3] Asuri has many Dravidian loanwords due to contact with Kurukh.[4]

Ethnologue states that Birjia is a dialect of Asuri, but also that there is a related language Birjia; it is not clear if these refer to the same thing. However, Anderson (2008:195), based on Prasad (1961:314), suggests that Birjia (Binjhia) may be an Indo-Aryan language, although the Birjia are an ethnic subgroup of the Asuri tribe, along with the Asur proper and the Agariya.

Majhwar is unclassified, but based on location and other clues, it may turn out to be a dialect of Asuri. If so, its 35,000 speakers (reported in 1995, out of an ethnic group of 175,000) would make it the most populous form of Asuri.

Asuri is considered to be an endangered language.[5] One important reason for its distinction as endangered is due to a lack of any written form of the language. It exists only as a spoken language.[6] There are a total of 31 phonemes in Asuri, made up of twenty-six "segmental" and five "supra-segmental" phonemes.[7] Of the former, there are twenty-one consonants and five vowels.[8]

Geographical distribution

Ethnologue lists the following districts and states where Asuri is spoken.

References

  1. ↑ Asuri at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Asuri". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Chaudhuri, Sarit Kumar & Chaudhuri, Sucheta Sen (2005). Primitive Tribes in Contemporary India: Concept, Ethnography and Demography, Volume 1, pp.50-59. Mittal Publications. ISBN 8183240267
  4. ↑ Prasad, Narmadeshwar (1961). Land and People of Tribal Bihar, p.305. Bihar Tribal Research Institute, Government of Bihar
  5. ↑ Baskaran, S. Ganesh (2015). Phonemes of Asuri, pp. 60-61. Language In India.
  6. ↑ Baskaran, S. Ganesh (2015). Phonemes of Asuri, pp. 60-61. Language In India.
  7. ↑ Baskaran, S. Ganesh (2015). Phonemes of Asuri, pp. 62. Language In India.
  8. ↑ Baskaran, S. Ganesh (2015). Phonemes of Asuri, pp. 62. Language In India.
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