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Munda
Geographic distribution	India, Bangladesh
Linguistic classification	Austroasiatic Munda
Subdivisions	Kherwari (North) Korku (North) Kharia–Juang, Khonda Koraput (Remo, Savara)
ISO 639-2 / 5	mun
Glottolog	mund1335[1]
Distribution of Munda language speakers in India

The Munda languages are a language family spoken by about nine million people in central and eastern India and Bangladesh. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, which means they are related to languages such as Mon and Khmer languages and Vietnamese, as well as minority languages in Thailand and Laos and the minority Mangic languages of South China.^[2] The origins of the Munda languages are not known, but they predate the other languages of eastern India. Ho, Mundari, and Santali are notable languages of this group.^[3][4]

The family is generally divided into two branches: North Munda, spoken in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Odisha, and South Munda, spoken in central Odisha and along the border between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.^[5][6]

North Munda, of which Santali is the most widely spoken, is the larger group; its languages are spoken by about ninety percent of Munda speakers. After Santali, the Mundari and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by Korku and Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small, isolated groups of people and are poorly known.

Characteristics of the Munda languages include three grammatical numbers (singular, dual and plural), two genders (animate and inanimate), a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns and the use of suffixes or auxiliaries to indicate tense. The Munda languages are also polysynthetic and agglutinating.^[7]

In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent except in the middle of a word. Other than in Korku, whose syllables show a distinction between high and low tone, accent is predictable in the Munda languages.

Origin

Most linguists, like Paul Sidwell (2018), suggest that the proto-Munda language probably split from Austroasiatic somewhere in what is today southern China or Southeast Asia and arrived in eastern India about 4000-3500 years ago after Indo-Aryan migration to Odisha. ^[8]

Classification

Munda consists of five uncontroversial branches. However, their interrelationship is debated.

Diffloth (1974)

The bipartite Diffloth (1974) classification is widely cited:

• North Munda
  
  
  
  • Korku
  
  
  • Kherwarian
    
    
    
    • Kherwari branch: Bijori, Koraku
      
    
    
    • Mundari branch: Mundari, Bhumij, Asuri, Koda, Ho, Birhor, Kol, Turi
      
    
    
    • Santali branch: Santali, Mahali
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• South Munda
  
  
  
  • Kharia–Juang: Kharia, Juang
    
  
  
  • Koraput Munda
    
    
    
    • Remo branch: Gata (Gta), Bondo (Remo), Bodo Gadaba (Gutob)
    
    
    • Savara branch [Sora–Juray–Gorum] : Parengi (Gorum), Sora (Savara), Juray, Lodhi
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Diffloth (2005)

Diffloth (2005) retains Koraput (rejected by Anderson, below) but abandons South Munda and places Kharia–Juang with the northern languages:

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Munda	Koraput    Remo     Savara      Core   Munda    Kharia–Juang    North   Munda    Korku     Kherwarian

Anderson (1999)

Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows.^[9]

• North Munda
  
  
  
  • Korku
  
  
  • Kherwarian
    
    
    
    • Santali
    
    
    • Mundari
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• South Munda (3 branches)
  
  
  
  • Kharia–Juang
    
    
    
    • Juang
    
    
    • Kharia
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Sora–Gorum
    
    
    
    • Sora
    
    
    • Gorum
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Gutob–Remo–Gtaʔ
    
    
    
    • Gutob–Remo
      
      
      
      • Gutob
      
      
      • Remo
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • 
      Gta’
      
      
      
      • Plains Gtaʔ
      
      
      • Hill Gtaʔ
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

However, in 2001, Anderson split Juang and Kharia apart from the Juang-Kharia branch and also excluded Gtaʔ from his former Gutob–Remo–Gtaʔ branch. Thus, his 2001 proposal includes 5 branches for South Munda.

Anderson (2001)

Anderson (2001) follows Diffloth (1974) apart from rejecting the validity of Koraput. He proposes instead, on the basis of morphological comparisons, that Proto-South Munda split directly into Diffloth's three daughter groups, Kharia–Juang, Sora–Gorum (Savara), and Gutob–Remo–Gtaʼ (Remo).^[10]

His South Munda branch contains the following five branches, while the North Munda branch is the same as those of Diffloth (1974) and Anderson (1999).

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Sora–Gorum   Juang ↔ Kharia ↔ Gutob–Remo ↔ Gtaʔ

• 
  Note: "↔" = shares certain innovative isoglosses (structural, lexical). In Austronesian and Papuan linguistics, this has been called a "linkage" by Malcolm Ross.

Sidwell (2015)

Paul Sidwell (2015:197)^[11] considers Munda to consists of 6 coordinate branches, and does not accept South Munda as a unified subgroup.

Munda

• North Munda
  
  
  
  • Korku
  
  
  • 
    Santali, Mundari
    
  
  
  
  


• 
  Sora–Gorum
  


• Juang


• Kharia


• 
  Gutob–Remo
  


• Gta’

Distribution

Language Name	Number of speakers	Location
Korku	727,100	Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra
Birjia	25,000	Jharkhand, West Bengal
Korwa	28,400	Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh
Mundari (inc. Bhumij dialect)	1,100,000	Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Assam, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal
Asur	7,000	Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
Koda	47,300	Bangladesh
Ho	1,400,000	Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh
Birhor	2,000	Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal
Santali	7,400,000	West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar
Mahali	33,000	Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal
Turi	2,000	Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal
Kharia	298,000	Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand
Juang	30,400	Odisha
Gta’	3,000	Odisha
Bonda	9,000	Odisha
Gutob	8,000	Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Gorum		Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Sora	410,000	Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Juray	801,000	Odisha
Lodhi	25,000	Odisha, West Bengal

Reconstruction

The following Proto-Munda lexical proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340-363).^[12] Two asterisks are given to denote the tentative, preliminary state of the proto-language reconstruction.

Gloss	Proto-Munda
belly	**(sə)laɟ
big	**məraŋ
to bite	**kaˀp
black	**kE(n)dE
blood	**məjam
bone	**ɟaːˀŋ
to burn (vt.)	**gEˀp
claw/nail	**rəmAj
cloud	**tərIˀp
cold	**raŋ
die (of a person)	**gOˀj
dog	**sOˀt
to drink (water)	**uˀt, **uˀk
dry (adj./stat.)	**(ə)sAr
ear	**lutur, **luˀt
earth/soil	**ʔOte
to eat	**ɟOm
egg	**(ə)tAˀp
eye	**maˀt
fat/grease/oil	**sunum
feather	**bəlEˀt
fire	**səŋal
fish (n.)	**ka, **kadO(ŋ)
fly (v.)	**pEr
foot	**ɟəːˀŋ
give	**ʔam
hair (of head)	**suˀk
hand	**tiːˀ
to hear/listen	**ajɔm
heart, liver	**(gə)rE, **ʔim
horn	**dəraŋ
I	**(n)iɲ
to kill	**(bə)ɡOˀɟ
leaf	**Olaːˀ
to lie (down)	**gətiˀc
long	**ɟəlƏŋ
louse (head)	**siːˀ
man/husband, person/human	**kOrOˀ
meat/flesh	**ɟəlU(Uˀ)
moon	**harkE, **aŋaj
mountain/hill	**bəru(uˀ)
mouth	**təmOˀt
name	**ɲUm
neck	**kO, **gOˀk
new	**təmI
night	**(m)ədiˀp
nose	**muːˀ
not	**əˀt
one	**mOOˀj
rain	**gəma
red	**ɟəŋAˀt
road, path	**kOrA
root (of a tree)	**rEˀt
sand	**kEˀt
see	**(n)El
sit	**kO
skin	**usal
sleep	**gətiˀc
smoke (n.)	**mOˀk
to speak, say	**sun, **gam, **kaj
to stand	**tənaŋ, **tƏŋgə
stone	**bərƏl, **sərEŋ
sun	**siŋi(iˀ)
tail	**pata
thigh	**buluuˀ
that (dist.)	**han
this (prox.)	**En
thou/you	**(n)Am
tongue	**laːˀŋ
tooth	**gənE
tree	**ɟiːˀ
two	**baːˀr
to walk, go	**sEn
to weave	**ta(aˀ)ɲ
water	**daːˀk
woman/wife	**selA, **kəni
yellow	**saŋsaŋ

See also

• Nihali language


• Munda peoples

References

Notes

General references

• Diffloth, Gérard. 1974. "Austro-Asiatic Languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. pp 480–484.


• Diffloth, Gérard. 2005. "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology to the homeland of Austro-Asiatic". In: Sagart, Laurent, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (eds.). The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. RoutledgeCurzon. pp 79–82.

Further reading

• 
  Gregory D S Anderson, ed. (2008). Munda Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. 3. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32890-X.
  


• 
  Anderson, Gregory D S (2007). The Munda verb: typological perspectives. Trends in linguistics. 174. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-018965-0.
  


• 
  Donegan, Patricia; David Stampe (2002). South-East Asian Features in the Munda Languages: Evidence for the Analytic-to-Synthetic Drift of Munda. In Patrick Chew, ed., Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Special Session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian Linguistics, in honor of Prof. James A. Matisoff. 111-129. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
  


• 
  Śarmā, Devīdatta (2003). Munda: sub-stratum of Tibeto-Himalayan languages. Studies in Tibeto-Himalayan languages. 7. New Delhi: Mittal Publications. ISBN 81-7099-860-3.
  


• 
  Newberry, J (2000). North Munda hieroglyphics. Victoria BC CA: J Newberry.
  


• 
  Varma, Siddheshwar (1978). Munda and Dravidian languages: a linguistic analysis. Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Vishva Bandhu Institute of Sanskrit and Indological Studies, Panjab University. OCLC 25852225.
  

External links

• 
  SEAlang Munda Languages Project
  
  • SEAlang Munda Etymological Dictionary
  
  


• 
  Munda Dictionaries Project (Kiel, Peterson)


• Donegan & Stampe Munda site


• Munda languages at Living Tongues


• bibliography


• The Ho language webpage by K. David Harrison, Swarthmore College


• 
  http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)


• 
  http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-66EE-3@view Munda languages in RWAAI Digital Archive