Bodo - Kokrajhar

• Language Family: Tibeto-Burman
• Subgroup: Bodo-Garo > Bodo
• ISO 639-3: brx
• Glottocode: bodo1269

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 1,482,929 speakers of the Bodo language in India. While this figure represents the total Bodo-speaking population across varieties, the specific "Bodo - Kokrajhar" variety represents the standard northern dialect.

Distribution in India

The Bodo-Kokrajhar variety is primarily spoken in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam, with the Kokrajhar district acting as its primary linguistic and cultural hub. Speakers are also distributed across adjacent districts of Assam, as well as bordering areas in the states of West Bengal, Meghalaya, and Nagaland.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Bodo is a tonal language, typically characterized by a contrast between two lexical tones (high and low). Its vowel inventory includes a distinctive high-back unrounded vowel /ɯ/. Consonants feature a contrast between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in word-initial positions.
• Morphology: The language is predominantly agglutinative and suffixing. Nouns are inflected for number, gender (for animate nouns), and case (including nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, and instrumental). Bodo employs a robust system of numeral classifiers that categorize nouns based on shape, size, and animacy.
• Syntax: The basic constituent word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Grammatical relations are marked postpositionally, and modifiers typically precede the head noun. Verbs are highly inflected for tense, aspect, mood, and transitivity/causation.

Further reading

• For general information on this language variety, visit the Wikipedia Search for Bodo - Kokrajhar language.