Season’s Greetings!

The year commences with another riveting issue of Vaak Manthan – Volume 10, Issue 1. Our e-journal invites submissions pertaining to anthropological and ethno-semantic approaches to demonstrate cognition, heritage and socio-cultural lives of the lesser-known communities. In the present issue the articles explore studies essentially from two language families – Indo-Aryan languages comprising of Kannauji, Punjabi, Kashika, and Kutchi, and Sino-Tibetan languages which consists of Pochuri and Chokri languages of Nagaland and Kokborok language of Tripura. There are articles pertaining to language attitude of Kutchi speakers and the scenario of multilingualism in India: Vision and challenges.

The deixis and emphatic particles have both linguistic and cognitive significance as these provide interesting facts about human communication. The first one deals with the Person, Temporal and Spatial deixis of Punjabi, and the second one with the emphatic particles in the Kashika variety of Bhojpuri language as spoken in Varanasi district.

There are two more articles alluding to descriptive linguistics. One draws on the various aspects of Kokborok language as spoken primarily in the northeastern state of Tripura. The other one is a detailed study of Pronominals of the Meluri variety of Pochuri language which is considered the lingua franca among the ten varieties of the Pochuri tribe in the Phek district of Nagaland. An article on Kannauji, a language spoken in the Kannauj region of Uttar Pradesh, which has retained archaic structures, indigenous terms and phrases from Braj and Awadhi, among many other languages, many of which are no longer used in Hindi. Tone is a significant domain of research in the Naga languages of Nagaland. Chokri, one of the varieties of Chakhesang tribe has four level tones and one contour tone. The authors do a quantitative analysis of the pitch properties and also lay out the syllable structure of the language.

A significant number of indigenous languages are on the verge of extinction because of the multilingual setting of the Indian societies. The younger generation speak Hindi, English and the dominant languages; the intergenerational transmission in many societies are weak or absent. Kutchi speaking Memons of Kerala from Alleppey and Fort Kochi show positive attitude towards their heritage language but prestige is attached to the dominant language, Malayalam. Moreover, there is a lack of commercial benefit in Kutchi compared to Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, etc. Linguistic intervention can help in the reclamation of the heritage language.

The visions and challenges of the National Education Policy 2020 promotes linguistic diversity particularly among marginalised and indigenous communities. The introduction of third language in the school curriculum is a significant step towards the reclamation of endangered languages. In the note section of this issue, as the Editor, I reflect on the intricacies of nomenclature and place names, hoping to provide our readers with fresh insights for their research.

An invited paper by Mosyel Syelsaangthyel Khaling, an independent Uipo native linguist and language activist, explores the rich system of demonstratives in the Uipo language, spoken by approximately 2,000 speakers in Tengnoupal district, Manipur.To celebrate the contributions of language activists, community leaders, and language workers, we have launched a special interview series. Our guest in this edition is Dr Surendra Aryan, a native speaker of Jaunsari and a dedicated language activist passionately working to preserve his culture.

An introduction to a dictionary of 13 languages of Uttarakhand, titled Jikkal Khamchi Udayali, edited by Prof. Uma Bhatt and Prof. Chandra Kala Rawat, is also included in this volume.