University of Hyderabad (UoH) Professor Discovers Two Indian Languages

A Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), Panchanan Mohanty, is being widely appreciated for his discovery of two Indian languages, which are not known to the outer world till date. His discovery was a part of several activities undertaken by Centre of Endangered Languages and Mother Tongue Studies at UoH.

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The following are the two Indian languages discovered by Professor Panchanan Mohanty: -

• Walmiki, a language that is being spoken in Koraput, located in the state of Odisha. The language is also spoken in the bordering districts of Andhra Pradesh. According to Professor Mohanty, the language is an isolate, and it does not belong to any particular family of languages.
• Malhar , a language that is being spoken in an isolated and remote hamlet, located 165 km from Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha. According to Professor Mohanty, there are only 75 speakers who speak Malhar language. All the people located in this hamlet including children are very fluent in this language.

Professor Mohanty collected the data related to languages and did a preliminary analysis. He also published a paper based on his findings, and the paper was presented in the proceedings of the 20 ^th Annual Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, the United Kingdom (UK).

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At present, Professor Mohanty and his team are busy in finding out if there are any other speakers of Malhar language in the nearby places of the hamlet. The team will document these languages before they get extinct due to various reasons.