A STUDY ON LANGUAGE CHANGE INFLUENCED BY ASSAMESE ON DEORI

Kaushik Deori, Sheetal Verma

Gauhati University

Deori belongs to the Bodo-Garo sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman language family. With a population
of 32,376 native speakers (2011 census), it is mainly spoken in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Out
of their four clans, only one namely the Dibongiyas, have retained Deori as their L1 while the rest of
the clans have shifted to Assamese.

This paper attempts at studying the various aspects in which the influence of the majority language
of the state of Assam i.e. Assamese, has effected and brought about changes (language change) in
Deori. These changes have occurred at phonetic and lexical level as well as affected the tonality of
the language. Take for instance the following examples:

Phonetic change

/tʃitu/ /situ/ ‘old (thing)’

The sound tʃ (pronounced as “cha”) is not a part of the Assamese phonology but it is a phoneme in
Deori. It is observed that speakers have now shifted to pronouncing the sound /tʃ/ as /s/ as in
/situ/ because it is closer to the Assamese phonology.

Lexical change

Deori: /sipire/ ‘door’

Assamese: /dʊaɹ/, /dɒɹza/

The native Deori term for Door is ‘sipire’, while the Assamese term is ‘duar’ or ‘dorja’. The Deori
term is no longer used even by the older generation of native speakers. They have now completely
shifted to using its corresponding Assamese term.

An attempt will also be made at observing the attitude of the native speakers of various age groups
towards the language and reasons triggering the language change.