Santhali

Santhali (ISO 639-3: sat, Glottocode: sant1410) belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language family, specifically classified within the North Munda subgroup of the Munda branch.

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 7,368,192 speakers of Santhali in India.

Distribution in India

Santhali is primarily spoken in the eastern states of India. Its major concentrations are in: * Jharkhand (predominantly in the Santhal Pargana division) * West Bengal * Odisha * Bihar

Minority speaker communities are also found in Assam and Tripura.

Major Grammatical Features

• Phonology: Santhali features a complex phonological inventory including a contrast between voiced, voiceless, aspirated, and unaspirated stops, alongside a distinctive series of retroflex consonants. A defining characteristic of its sound system is the presence of "checked" or glottalized, unreleased stops ($[p']$, $[t']$, $[c']$, $[k']$) in syllable-final positions. Vowel harmony is also widely observed.
• Morphology: The language is highly agglutinative. Nouns are inflected for three grammatical numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and are categorized by animacy (animate vs. inanimate) rather than grammatical gender. Pronouns feature a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural ("we including you" vs. "we excluding you").
• Syntax: Santhali generally exhibits a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. Its verbal morphology is exceptionally complex; verbs are inflected to agree with both the subject and the object (direct and indirect) through a highly intricate system of pronominal clitics, tense, aspect, and mood markers.

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Santali language (Alternative search: Santhali language on Wikipedia)