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Santhali
Santali language is mainly spoken by
people who live near the areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in India.
It is basically spoken by the tribal people of India. It is estimated
that approximately 6 million people speak the Santhali language in the
country. There is not a very regular distribution of people who speak
the Santhali language. One can find some speakers of this language in
states like Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura and West Bengal.
The Santhali language originated from the Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho
and Mundari.
The alphabets of the language are known as Ol Chiki, though people are
not very well versed in it. The literacy rate in Santali speaking
regions is very low, just around 20-30%. The tribe that speaks this
language is known as Santhal. One finds the greatest number of Santali
speakers in Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. This language is actually a
dialect of the Munda language. The tribe that speaks this language is
quite backward as far as the standard of living is concerned. Most of
them work in the coal mines or the steel factories in Asansol and
Jamshedpur.
These days, though the language is not much in use, some educated
Santhals use it to write books and other literary pieces. During the
British rule, this language used to be written in the Roman script. But
now, it is written in the Devanagari script. Due to its similarities
with the Bengali language, many educated Santhali writers prefer writing
it in Bengali because of its similarities in the use of phonetics. It is
estimated that the Santali language is older than the Aryan languages.