Kalto language
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| Kalto | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | India | |
| Region | Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra | |
| Total speakers | 2000 | |
| Language family | language isolate
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | – | |
| ISO 639-3 | nll | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Kalto (also known as Nihali or Nahali) is a language isolate spoken in west-central India (in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra) by around 2,000 people (in 1991) out of an ethnic population of 5,000. The language has many loans from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Munda languages, but much of its vocabulary cannot be related to other language families.
Kuiper (1962) was the first to suggest that it is unrelated to any other Indian language, but its vocabulary has been heavily influenced by neighboring languages, with 60–70% borrowed, from Munda Korku (25%), Dravidian, and Indo-European Marathi. In Victorian times the Kalto (then known disparagingly as "Nahals" or "Nihals") were among the most notorious of the wild jungle tribes that lived by plunder. Just after 1800 an Arab princeling of the Moghul empire led a punitive expedition against them that destroyed their tribal independence (Kuiper op. cit., pp 243-247). Their tribal area is just south of the Tapti River, around the village of Tembi in Nimar district of Central Provinces during British Raj, now in Madhya Pradesh (Kuiper op.cit., p.243).
Kalto is possibly related to another near-extinct remnant of the Indian linguistic sub-stratum, namely Kusunda, spoken in central Nepal. Further hypotheses involve possible connections to the Andamanese languages and the controversial Indo-Pacific phylum. In addition, some scholars, including Michael Witzel of Harvard, have suggested, quoting Shafer and Kuiper, a possible relationship to Ainu.
[edit] References
- Kuiper, F. B. J. "Nahali: A Comparative Study". Med. Kon. Ned. Akad. Wetenschappen 1962, 25(5): 239-352. Noord-Hollandsche, Amsterdam.
[edit] External links
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