Language of the Tangams

Language of the Tangams

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister released a book titled “Tangams: An Ethnolinguistic Study Of The Critically Endangered Group of Arunachal Pradesh” which has valuable data on endangered oral narratives like ritual songs, lamentation songs, lullabies and festival songs in Tangam language spoken by the Tangam community, which has reportedly 253 speakers left now.

About Tangam People:

The small community of Tangam people, living in the picturesque hamlet of Kugging in Upper Siang district’s Paindem circle, is not a part of the larger Adi tribe, minority communities or marginalised hill tribes of Arunachal Pradesh.

For long, the only account of the Tangams could be found in a book, “Tangams” (1975) where the community’s population was pegged at 2,000 spread across 25 villages.

Tangam is an important source of cultural identity among Tangam people, who believe their language is crucial to their survival as a distinctive ethnic community in the future.

Tangam is an oral language that belongs to the Tani group, under the greater Tibeto-Burman language family. It has been marked ‘critically endangered’ by the UNESCO World Atlas of Endangered Languages (2009).

Reasons for its Decline:

Low population: There are many reasons for the decline, but the most common one is the low population. Smaller languages are more vulnerable and extinction is directly proportional to population. If those small populations have already been forced to relocate due to the effect of globalization on their region, that further complicates matters.

Multilingualism: Multilingualism is the main reason why Tangams language has declined. Since these peoples live in small pockets, they are cut off from their roots. They have hardly any contact with other original Tangams speaking communities anymore to develop or retain intact idioms. As a result, several of the original words have been lost.

Less or No Use of Tangam: They rarely speak their own language now because their population is restricted to a single village. Moreover, they are relatively unknown even within the state so there was no possibility of its expansion.

Lack of Development and Infrastructure: The village lacks proper infrastructure in all basic sectors of education, health, drinking water facilities, road and electricity. Not a single person from the community has gone to a university.

Languages of Arunachal Pradesh

There has been no systematic, scientific or official survey on the number of languages in Arunachal Pradesh till recently. The estimate for any language is based on the subjective judgement of a few native speakers. This has led to sweeping statements regarding multilingualism which is fast becoming a clichéd metaphor in media reports about the state.

There are no official figures about the number of languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh. A rough figure according to experts and linguists across the state has been arrived at like 32 or 34. The reasons for this are many, but one is that since the state was cut off from the rest of India there was a period of time when there was little communication between Arunachal Pradesh and the rest of the country.

The languages of Arunachal Pradesh have been classified under the Sino-Tibetan language family and more specifically under the Tibeto-Burman and Tai group of languages, such as Lolo-Burmish, Bodhic, Sal, Tani, Mishmi, Hruissh and Tai.

The education system introduced Devanagari, Assamese and Roman scripts for most tribal languages but new scripts such as Tani Lipi and Wancho Script have been developed by native scholars as well.

According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, more than 26 languages of Arunachal Pradesh have been identified as endangered with the degrees ranging from ‘unsafe’, ‘definitely endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’.