THE BODOS & BODO LANGUAGE, SCRIPT & MOVEMENT
Boro (बर'/बड़) , also Bodo, may be a Sino-Tibetan spoken primarily by the Boro people of Northeast India, Nepal and Bengal. it's official language of the Bodoland autonomous region and co-official language of the state of Assam in India. it's also one among twenty two languages listed within the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Since 1975 the language has been written using the Devanagari . it had been formerly written using Latin and Bengali-Assamese scripts. Some scholars have suggested that the language wont to have its own now lost script referred to as Deodhai.
History (in short)
As results of socio-political awakenings and movements launched by different Boro organisations since 1913, the language was introduced in 1963 as a medium of instruction within the primary schools in Boro dominated areas. Boros are officially identified as "Boro, Borokachari" scheduled tribe under the constitution of India. Today, the Boro language is a medium of instruction up to the secondary level and it's an associated official language within the state of Assam. Boro language and literature are offered as a post-graduate course the University of Guwahati since 1996. There are an outsized number of Boro books on poetry, drama, short stories, novels, biography, travelogues, children's literature, and literary criticism. Though there exists different dialects, the shape used around Kokrajhar district is taken into account standard.[citation needed]
Writing System and Script movement
It is reported that the Boro and therefore the Dimasa languages used a script called Deodhai that's not attested.The Latin script was used first to write down down the language, when a prayer book was published in 1843, then extensively employed by Endle beginning 1884 and in 1904, when the script was wont to teach children. the primary use of the Assamese/Bengali script occurred in 1915 (Boroni Fisa o Ayen) and therefore the first magazine, Bibar (1924-1940) was tri-lingual in Boro, Assamese and Bengali, with Boro written in Assamese/Bengali script. In 1952, the Bodo Sahitya Sabha decided to use the Assamese script exclusively for the language. In 1963 Boro was introduced in schools as a medium of instruction, during which Assamese script was used. Into the 1960s the Boro language was predominantly written in Assamese/Bengali script, though the Christian community continued to use Latin for Boro.
Boro Script movement:
With the Assamese Language movement in Assam peaking within the 1960s the Boro community felt threatened and decided to not use the Assamese script. After a series of proposals and expert committees, in 1970 the Bodo Sahitya Sabha reversed itself and unanimously decided to adopt the Latin script for the language in its 11th annual conference.The BSS submitted this demand to the Assam Government in 1971, which was rejected on the grounds that the Latin script was of foreign origin. This instigated a movement for the Latin script which became a neighborhood of the movement for a separate state, Udayachal, then led by the Plains Tribe Council of Assam (PTCA). during this context, the Boro leaders were advised by the Prime Minister Gandhi to settle on any Indian script aside from Latin. In defiance of the Assam Government, in April 1974 the BSS went ahead and published Bithorai, a Boro textbook, in Latin script and asked school teachers to follow it.
Retaliating against the unilateral decision, the Assam Government withheld grants to colleges using the Latin script. This triggered a phase of active movement that was joined by the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU) and therefore the PTCA. This led to a critical situation in November 1974 when fifteen volunteers of the movement died during a police firing, and lots of others were injured. Unable to resolve the difficulty , the Assam Government referred the interest the Union Government. within the discussion, the Union Government suggested Devanagari because the solution to the matter , which the BSS accepted within the Memorandum of Understanding in April 1975, and adopted later year within the Annual Conference. This ended the Boro Script Movement.
Final Acceptance Of Devnagori Script:
The Devanagari for Boro was an unexpected development and it had been not immediately accepted by the broader Boro community. The BSS did not implement the utilization of the Devanagari , and writers continued to use the Assamese/Bengali and Latin scripts. In 1982, ABSU included the demand of the Latin script in Boro schools in its charter of Demands. Following an expert committee report, constituted by BSS, the Bodoland Autonomous Council adopted a resolution to use Latin script in its territory, which the Assam Government too accepted.
Nevertheless, within the discussion with the Bodo Liberation Tigers, the Union Government demanded the implementation of the sooner agreement with the BSS on the utilization of the Devanagari if the Boro language was to be included within the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Following this, the ABSU and therefore the BSS agreed to use the Devanagari exclusively, and therefore the matter was finally settled.
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Phonology ::
The Boro language features a total of 30 phonemes: 6 vowels, 16 consonants, and eight diphthongs—with a robust prevalence of the high back unrounded vowel /ɯ/. The Boro language use tones to differentiate words. There
three different tones: high, medium and low. The difference between high and low tones is clear and quite common.