Language gets a new face

Champa, a teenager, is happy that her spoken language has now got a script. A Bagatha tribal from the Araku Valley of Visakhapatnam district, she said a paper chart containing the script was presented to her husband, and that she will now spend some time learning it.

Champa has Prasanna Sree, senior professor in the Department of English in Andhra University, to thank for designing it. The professor has been working on the project for 19 years.

There are about 35 tribal groups spread over different regions in Andhra Pradesh. Out of them, 16 to 19 groups inhabit the hill regions of the Eastern Ghats.

Professor Sree picked 10 major tribes such as the Bagathas, the Gadhabas, the Jathapus, the Valmikis, the Kolams, the Porjas, the Koyas, the Konda-Doras, the Kotias and the Gonds, and designed distinctive and individual scripts for them.

On the process, she said, “Matru Matra is my style of devising a character for a language. Matru means maternal; Matra means alphabet or a letter. Each script designed by me is separate and with a distinct style.”

Full report here Hindu