PUNE: In an attempt to save the threatened Madiya language, city-based German language expert Manjiri Paranjape has penned a text-book which is the first-of-its-kind book on the language till date.
A former professor of German language at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Paranjape along with her students Maithli Dekhane-Joshi, Rujuta Tilekar and Kristine Phrayas completed the book within a year.
Paranjape said, “It all started after Magsaysay award winner Dr Prakash Amte’s daughter-in-law Dr Anagha Amte, who too works for the tribals, told me we need to learn and understand the Madiya language. As this is the only language used to communicate with the Madiya tribe of Gadchorli district in Maharashtra and Bastar in Chhattisgarh.”
“Actually, I work for Lokbiradari and then we took up the project under it,” she said. “Though the language is spoken among a limited tribe, it is very rich in its grammar and tenses. The beauty of any language lies in its grammar and tenses used”, explained the linguist.
“Any language book has six levels termed as A-1, A-2 and so on. This book is of A1 and a little further,” said Paranjape, adding, “Anyone can pick up the book and read it. It is a very simple book and without any need for any translation to any language say Marathi, one can read and understand it.”
“The book has 10 chapters and after every five chapters we have given a test. At the end of the book we have given vocabulary with its meaning in Marathi and grammar, its rules and regulations and answer key of the two tests,” she said.
“The book has over 700 images. We completed the book in three months but we had taken the images from the Internet and thus the issue of copyright came up,” she said.
“So we had to redo the images and it took us six months,” she added.
“While the image re-doing project was going on, we revised the book with the help of students from this Madiya tribe. Manisha Maje, Kishore Verde, Sharada and Yamila from the tribe helped us to make the corrections,” she said.
“A group of young students including Sanket Joshi, Rubi Saptarshi and their team had a list of some 300 vocabulary words of Madiya. This came as a help for us while making the book,” she said.
Despite being a primitive language, Madiya is a very rich and complete language. The grammar sequence, use of words, tenses are very systematic and one can easily learn the language reading the text and through the pictures,” she said.
The book was published recently by Tribal Research Training Institute (TRTI). “We also have a audio clip with the book and the voice-over was given by the students of the Madiya tribe,” she said.
