Documentation of Puma, Nepal

Language	Puma
Depositor	Narayan Sharma
Affiliation	SOAS, University of London
Location	Nepal
Collection ID	0268
Grant ID	IGS0094
Funding Body
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/1305ebb4-64d1-40d4-aa4c-486b47b23e8d

 

Summary of the collection

Puma is a seriously endangered southern Kiranti language spoken mainly in the Khotang district of eastern Nepal. It is estimated that there are about 4000 Puma native speakers.

In order to contribute to the preservation of the Puma language, this collection contains video and audio files of their corresponding text files (Toolbox files). Some toolbox files have been glossed to show rich and complex system of verb morphology for in-depth analysis. This collection also includes ELAN files and dictionary.

 

Group represented

Puma (Southern Kiranti, Tibeto-Burman, Nepal)

Puma is an endangered southern Kiranti language spoken mainly by an ethnic group of the same name in Khotang district of eastern Nepal. Most Puma above 30 (about 25% of the population) still have some knowledge of the Puma language, but competence varies considerably. At the time of writing, it is estimated that there are about 4000 Puma native speakers and Puma people living in the core area claim that there are at least 10,000 Puma people. Puma was not even mentioned in literature until the 1980s; it was one of the discoveries of the Linguistic Survey of Nepal between 1981 and 1984. In terms of sub-grouping, Puma shows similar innovations with Chamling – Nepali (the national language) and Bantawa Rai as well as Chamling Rai are geographically adjacent languages.

 

Language information

The Puma language belongs to the Kiranti family of Tibeto-Burman, which includes more than thirty languages in East Nepal. Puma is rapidly being supplanted by Bantawa (one of the major Kiranti languages) and Nepali, the national lingua franca. Nevertheless, the language community still has a distinct culture with a rich oral tradition, maintained by a decreasing number of knowledgeable elders, priests, and shamans.

This language does not have a script and therefore has no written tradition. Puma is found to be a seriously endangered language because of lack of inter-generational language transmission, marginal number and old age of speakers, very scanty linguistic and ethnic studies, low economic and socio-economic status of the speakers, and gradual migration to urban areas and foreign countries for jobs or education. As it has no script, it is not used in domains such as education and mass media and is confined only to intra- and inter-household communications among Puma older speakers.

 

Special characteristics

Very complex and rich morphology, rich oral tradition, ritual song (Hopmacham).

 

Collection contents

This collection includes audio and video recordings of Puma speakers on different geners such as autobiography, description, narrative, folk tale, ritual, song, poem, and conversation. Most of them are transcribed and translated into Nepali and English which have been interlinearised and annotated to show complex morphological features of this language. This annotated corpus will be useful for comparative and typological study of Kiranti languages. The collection comprises over 130 audio files, 100 video files, 25 ELAN files, 35 toolbox glossed files, as well as number of images covering Puma people, culture, daily life, household, surrounding etc. Over 80 speakers aged between 20 and 95 were recorded for the collection, selecting both males and females from preliterate to highly educated backgrounds.

 

Collection history

This project aims to carry out in-depth analysis of morpho-syntax of the Puma language. Prior to this project, materials on the Puma language have also been collected by the Volkswagen DoBeS-funded-project Chintang and Puma Documentation Project (CPDP). ELDP-funded project bridged a gap of earlier project and collected new data for collection.

 

Other information

People were very positive and supportive towards this project, contributing and sharing their knowledge and heritage, and being so caring and hospitable during recording period.

Most Kiranti languages are severely endangered. If no steps are taken to analyse and promote them, they will no longer be used within one or two generations. This is not only an academic problem. One prominent factor is the one-nation-one-language policy of the Nepalese state in the past. With Nepali as the official language as well as the national lingua franca, speakers of other languages have to use their language less and Nepali more. It does not mean however, that they do not like to use their language. They do. During the depositor’s previous field visits, Puma expressed their willingness to revitalize their language if possible by teaching it to both youths and children. However the community neither has the expertise nor the resources to do so. The proposed research will help them achieve this. Other factors are migration, education, inter-caste marriage, and exposure to the outer world.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Users are requested to acknowledge as ‘Data collected and deposited by Narayan Sharma’, when citing any resources (audio and/or video and text etc.) from the collection.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Sharma, Narayan. 2013. Documentation of Puma, Nepal. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0002-8F60-4. Accessed on [insert date here].