KOZHIKODE: At a time when the tribal dialects are fast vanishing with the onslaught of modern culture and language, the effort is on to bring out a dictionary of five major tribal languages of Wayanad, which has no script, font or any written form. Though there were many efforts in the past from many scholars to bring out a comprehensive dictionary of tribal dialects, all of them failed due to inaccessibility to remote tribal hamlets.
This time the initiative is from the tribal world itself. Kandamala Ramachandran from the Kuruma tribe is on a mission for the last five years to bring a comprehensive dictionary with all the spoken words of Kuruma, Adiya, Paniya, Kattunayikka and Oorali tribal clans of Wayanad. Mr Ramachandran said the work would be completed within few months.
"The words are arranged as they are in the Malayalam dictionary (sabdatharavali). For each Malayalam word the identical words of each tribal clan would be given," he told DC. "Though started about ten years back for the last five years I have had some real tough effort."
Mr Ramachandran set out on this mission when he realised that in the coming years many of the words used in oral tribal dialects would be vanished due to overexposure of youngsters to the outer world. "Hope it would help the coming generations to know how once the members of the community spoke in their own dialect," he added. The dictionary is expected to have more than 2,000 pages.
