Academician's word book to help tribal kids learn their language

An English professor of NIT-Rourkela Seemita Mohanty has come out with a multilingual picture word book in six tribal languages for first generation tribal learners in Sundargarh. She tells Prasanjeet Sarkar how it would help the children learn the basics in their language

- Prasanjeet Sarkar

It is no secret that the use of Odia and Hindi has been impacting the mother tongue learning of tribal children in Sundargarh. A Rourkela-based academician Seemita Mohanty has been trying to undo this damage.

Seemita, an English professor in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at NIT-Rourkela, with the help of research scholar K Viswanath, has conceptualized and prepared a multilingual picture word book in six tribal languages for first-generation tribal learners in Rourkela.

The languages are Sadri, Ho, Santali, Munda, Khadia and Oraon, alongside Odia, Hindi and English. The book, Asapadhiba Ama Bhasa, contains 376 commonly used words with the same meaning in the six tribal languages. The idea, she says, is to equip the first-generation tribal learners with words from the tribal context along with their meaning in Odia, Hindi and English.