History and Origin of Santhali Language

Santhali language is mainly spoken by people who live near the areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in India. It is basically spoken by the tribal people of India. It is estimated that approximately 6 million people speak the Santhali language in the country. There is not a very regular distribution of people who speak the Santhali language. One can find some speakers of this language in states like Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura and West Bengal. The Santhali language originated from the Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari.

The alphabets of the language are known as Ol Chiki, though people are not very well versed in it. The literacy rate in Santali speaking regions is very low, just around 20-30%. The tribe that speaks this language is known as Santhal. One finds the greatest number of Santali speakers in Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. This language is actually a dialect of the Munda language. The tribe that speaks this language is quite backward as far as the standard of living is concerned. Most of them work in the coal mines or the steel factories in Asansol and Jamshedpur.

These days, though the language is not much in use, some educated Santhals use it to write books and other literary pieces. During the British rule, this language used to be written in the Roman script. But now, it is written in the Devanagari script. Due to its similarities with the Bengali language, many educated Santhali writers prefer writing it in Bengali because of its similarities in the use of phonetics. It is estimated that the Santali language is older than the Aryan languages.