India launches Al app to protect and promote its tribal languages

Many at risk of being lost amid shift towards dominant tongues for economic purposes

- Debarshi Dasgupta India Correspondent

Sarna tribespeople at a rally in Jharkhand in December 2023 demanding revocation of special protections for tribal Christians. Adi Vaani's creators hope the platform makes it easier for tribal communities to access government services. Another key goal is cultural preservation. PHOTO: JANJATI SURAKSHA MANCH

(JANJATI SURAKSHA MANCH)

For more than a decade, Mr Sugdu Potai taught Gondi at a government primary school in central India.

But over the past year, the 50-year-old's command of the Dravidian language, spoken by around three million people across various parts of India, has been put to the test.

Mr Potai has had to translate complex Hindi sentences and find Gondi equivalents for words such as "discipline" and "setup", which are now more commonly expressed by Gondi speakers in Hindi.

With no exhaustive dictionary on hand, he had to dig deep into his memory and even ask community elders for the Gondi equivalents of such words.

"It was challenging and very different from teaching children," said Mr Potai.

His efforts are part of a groundbreaking government initiative to use artificial intelligence (AI) to protect and promote India's tribal languages - many of which risk being wiped out by dominant languages while also helping tribal language speakers better connect to the wider online world.

India is one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries, with over 2,800 languages and dialects. Yet, it has lost about 250 languages since 1961.

Experts fear that as many as 400 most of them spoken by marginalised and tribal groups could vanish within several decades.