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Designing a Linguistic Profile of Khortha: A Less-Resourced Language Spoken in the
State of Jharkhand, India
Atul Aman1, Niladri Sekhar Dash1, Jayashree Chakraborty2
Linguistic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata1
Dept. of HSS, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur2
atul.aman1@gmail.com / ns_dash@yahoo.com / shree@hss.iitkgp.ernet.in
Abstract
The present paper highlights a detailed account of the linguistic profile of the language ‘Khortha’.
Khortha is a less resourced language spoken at fifteen districts in the state of Jharkhand, India (Ohdar
2012). The present paper aims at exhibiting various linguistic and precisely sociolinguistic characteristics
of the language, viz. etymological significance, present status, demographic identity, the earlier studies,
the socio-economic status, the scope or usage at different set-ups as well as the speech variations present
within the state of Jharkhand. The study of the linguistic system has been carried out on the basis of
earlier research works (Ohdar 2012, Dangi 2012) and on some empirical linguistic field surveys
conducted by us at Giridih, Ramgarh, Bokaro, Ormanjhi, Chas, Hazaribagh, Bokaro Thermal, Parasnath
and other adjoining areas in Jharkhand (Dash and Aman 2015). The field studies involved language
attitude surveys and linguistic data elicitation in order to analyse the linguistic situation of Khortha
within the state of Jharkhand.
Keywords (05 words)
Khortha, Indo-Aryan, Field-Survey, Speech Varieties, Literature, Demography