Amarkantak Conference Day 2

Dr  I Koreti speaks at the conference

 CGNet’s involvement with the people of central India has brought it to the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University for the third conference on Gondi language standardization. We will be keeping you updated as events progress here.

All of today participants have been arriving at the university in preparation for the Gondi Standardization conference and, after some last minute preparations (finding places to sleep, eat and setting up the seminar room, among others), Indira Gandhi National Tribal University is all set to host a hundred delegates from across six states.

The seminar room (with Shubhranshu)

Lunchtime

The official opening of the conference was held this afternoon. The address was chaired by Shubhranshu Choudhary – founder of CGNet and former journalist for, among others, the BBC and the Guardian – and we heard from a number of speakers who spoke about the project of Gondi standardization and the importance of Gondi cultural preservation in general. 

(l-r: Mesram Nagorao, Dr. S I Koreti, Hirasingh Markam, Prof. R H Sahu)

Dr. D V Prasad - he has been our contact at the University

 

Tomorrow the hard work begins of finishing the preliminary Gondi dictionary. The diversity of the Gondi language (it is spoken across a vast region of central India, and differs from region to region) makes it sometimes difficult for speakers from different places to understand each other. Even common words like ‘fire’ or ‘fence’ can vary across space. This dictionary should help with this by establishing a common form similar to that that in exists in other languages. In spite of many differences between the Bengali spoken in West Bengal and Bangladesh, for example, there is a single form of Bengali that can be used, for instance, by the BBC Bangla service. 

From the previous conferences we have assembled 1800 words. Before the next few days are out we hope to have agreed upon another 700 and to this end the conference will split into seven small groups (groups that will include as regionally diverse a selection of delegates as possible) and every group will deliberate over a hundred words each, comparing variations and agreeing on a final selection. 

This is how the dictionary gets compiled

 

This is important work – it is, after all, the first step in building what is at least an attempt at a pan-Gondi version of Gondi – and as such each word needs to be checked and rechecked. Tomorrow two further groups will sort through the previous words to double check them (and again, on Monday, the words settled on today will be checked themselves).

 At the end of the current conference, the dictionary will be published and, hopefully, will serve as a first step that will contribute to goals as serious as Gondi’s entry into the 8^th Schedule of the Indian Constitution (which guarantees it various levels of official recognition and acceptance) and a forthcoming All India Radio project (more on this to come).

One of the delegates introduces herself