The making of a language

We take the language that we speak, write and read so much for granted. But if we sit and think for some time, one cannot help but wonder how human race arrived at these alphabets, sounds, annotations and languages. It is really mystical – the way we speak and communicate.

Thus it comes as a great learning to know that Banwang Losu, who belongs to the Wancho tribe that resides in the Patkai hills of Arunachal Pradesh’s Longding district has developed a completely new  script from scratch.

The Wancho, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the eastern part of Arunachal Pradesh, and parts of Assam, Nagaland and Myanmar. But it had no script of its own and was written in Roman script, which caused a lot of confusion when pronounced and spoken.

Beginning in 2001, Losu began collecting all the sounds in Wancho, based on his own knowledge of the language as well as numerous conversations with village elders. By 2012, he made a list of alphabets and today, the Wancho  script has 44 letters: 15 vowels and 29 consonants. In the last three years, many government schools in Arunachal Pradesh teach it as a subject.

It is indeed very heart warming to see a new generation lad taking so much effort to keep the age-old language alive and relevant.