The TANGAM is a little-known community within the larger Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh and resides in the hamlet of Kugging in Upper Siang district’s Paindem circle. It is the Critically Endangered Group of Arunachal Pradesh. “Language loss is the reason for cultural erosion,” Now there are only 253 speakers left concentrated in one small hamlet of Arunachal Pradesh.
Tangams were now concentrated in only one village (Kugging), with 253 reported speakers
As per the UNESCO World Atlas of Endangered Languages (2009), Tangam — an oral language that belongs to the Tani group, under the greater Tibeto-Burman language family — is marked ‘critically endangered.
Reason for language erosion
Kugging is surrounded by a number of villages inhabited by Adi subgroups such as Shimong, Minyongs, as well as the Buddhist tribal community of Khambas, among others. To communicate with their neighbors over the years, the Tangams have become multilingual, speaking not just Tangam, but other tongues such as Shimong, Khamba and Hindi. “They rarely speak their own language now since their population is restricted to a single village.
Other languages in Arunanchal Pradesh
The languages of Arunachal Pradesh have been classified under the Sino-Tibetan language family, and more specifically under the Tibeto-Burman and Tai group of languages, such as Lolo-Burmish, Bodhic, Sal, Tani, Mishmi, Hruissh and Tai.
While the education system has introduced Devanagari, Assamese, and Roman scripts for most tribal languages, new scripts such as Tani Lipi and Wancho Script have been developed by native scholars.
Why are the languages at risk?
The diversity of languages has led various communities to depend on English, Assamese, and a colloquial variety of Hindi called Arunachale Hindi as the link languages. Many believe this shift has led to loss of native languages of the tribal communities.
“Even the numerically larger tribes like Nyishi, , Mishmi, Tangsa ,Galo, etc. whose population exceed the ten thousand mark are also not safe from endangerment. “The classification implies that the younger generation of these tribes especially in the urban areas have mostly discarded the use of their mother tongue”
Tangam case
The Tangam case is especially worrying because their population is so low. “Another critically endangered language is Meyor but they are better off than Tangam because they at least have a population of 1,000 odd people,” said Dabi, “So while almost all languages of Arunachal Pradesh are endangered, smaller languages are more vulnerable, and extinction is directly proportional to population.”
Tangam language is more vulnerable to extinction
Over the years, smaller groups — like Tangam — have become multilingual and learn several languages as a survival tool. “Our studies on Meyor show a major language shift from mother tongue to neighbouring languages like Miju Mishmi, Hindi etc,” said Lomdak, “While smaller groups have been successful in retaining their knowledge systems and language to an extent despite facing acute hardships related to health, economic and illiteracy, elders worry about the decreasing competency of younger members in speaking their languages and their tendency to dismiss their own languages.
