Assistant professor in Linguistics-Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Lambadi is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lambada community, which is essentially script-less, and is bound to be expressed in the scripts of host languages like Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, etc. In the proposed study we intend to understand the language attitudes of youths of the Lambadi community towards their mother-tongue with respect to dominating language «Telugu». Many linguists have established the fact that the language loss occurs predominantly when young people start to adopt a new language which can lead to behavioural consequences like prejudices towards their own language causing inhibitions in social interaction with the people of their own community [1].The youth in this study is defined as young people belonging to the age group of 20–30 years of either gender. The study is to be performed among the young people of Lambada community who have migrated from their Home-town of Nalgonda district to a metropolitan like Hyderabad. The study hypothesizes that there exists a certain change in the attitudes of the youth towards their mother tongue as they come in contact with the dominating language Telugu.
Objective: the aim of this article is to understand the level of change in attitudes among urban Lambada youths and its consequences on their mother tongue.
Research materials: the article is a qualitative approach with the methodology adopted is in depth interviews including probes like- «perception on the adequacy of Lambadi language use in the context of Hyderabad», «Relevancy of Lambadi language in gaining employment», «religious sentiments attached towards the Lambadi», «Stigma related to usage of Lambadi language among Telugu language speakers» etc.
Results and novelty of the research: the study is expected to understanding of an interesting phenomenon of Language attitude change among Lambadi speakers eventually leading to indentify methods to curb its repercussions on Lambadi language. Dravidian languages are majorly spoken in south India and to which Telugu language belongs and Finno-Ugric languages in this context. The present study would also contribute to the further understanding of such genetic relationship which has also established in Linguistics.
Key words: linguistic attitude of young people, Telugu, Lambadi language.
For citation: Kishore Vadthya Language-attitudes of Lambada youth in a language contact situation between Telugu and Lambadi languages // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2018; 8(4): 792–797.