A project aimed at documenting the language of my community.
Gahaḷā (/gɔhɔɭ̆a/; Bengali: গহলা, Odia: ଗହଳା, Devanagari: गहळा, Ol Chiki: ᱜᱚᱦᱚᱲᱟ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Indian districts of East Singhbhum, Mayurbhanj, Jhargram and Paschim Medinipur. The focal point of the language is the town of Baharagora, located 6-7 km from the Jharkhand-Odisha-West Bengal tripoint.
It is not an official language of India and is widely considered a dialect of either Bengali or Odia. It is most probably a creole arising due to contact between Bengali, Hindi, Odia and the local Austroasiatic Munda languages.
Due to lack of official recognition and linguistic records, the language has no official name. The sole paper I found on the language calls it Bahraagi, based on Baharagora. I have chosen the name Gahaḷā since it’s the most popular endonym of the community I belong to. Although mostly used to refer to the people themselves, it is also often used to refer to the language the people speak. Gahaḷā is actually the adjectival form of gahaḷa (crowd), referring to the “crowding” of various peoples that led to this culture.
All the consonants and vowels of Gahaḷā are derived from the collective Bengali/Hindi/Odia phonology. A unique quirk, however, is the relatively extensive usage of nasalisation, so much so that a popular name for Gahaḷā is Ṭã-ṭā̃, onomatopoically referring to the many first-person-singular verbs ending in ṭã.
| Bilabial | Dento-Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ŋ | ||
| Voiceless Stop | p | t | ʈ | tʃ | k | |
| Aspirated Stop | pʰ | tʰ | ʈʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | |
| Voiced Stop | b | d | ɖ | dʒ | g | |
| Murmured Stop | bʱ | dʱ | ɖʱ | dʒʱ | ɡʱ | |
| Voiceless Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Voiced Fricative | ɦ | |||||
| Voiced Flap | ɾ | ɽ | ||||
| Murmured Flap | ɽʱ | |||||
| Lateral Flap | ɭ̆ | |||||
| Approximant | w | l | ɭ | j |
The most conspicuous consonant shift is /l/→/n/, especially in words shared with Bengali/Hindi/Odia that start with /l/. This shift is also present, albeit to a lesser extent, in the border dialects of Odia and Bengali. For example:
| English | Bengali | Hindi | Odia | Gahala |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| people | lok | log | loka | nok |
| (i) feel | lāgche | lag rahā hai | lāguchi | nāgete |
| cloth | kāpoṛ | kapṛā | lugā | nugā |
As in Odia, the 3 Indic sibilants – alveolar /s/, postalveolar /ʃ/ and retroflex /ʂ/ – have merged into a single sibilant /s/. Also, the palatal nasal /ɲ/ has shifted to /g/.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Close-Mid | e | o |
| Open-Mid | ɛ | ɔ |
| Open | a | ɒ |
For transliteration in the Latin script, I have mostly followed a combination of International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) and ISO 15919. As evidenced by the few duplicates, I have assigned only one grapheme to each allophonic pair, since a difference in pronunciation won’t change meaning in such a case.
I have offered 2 variants: one based on diacritics which is easier to read, and one based on cases which is easier to type.
In the diacritical variant, I have also assigned a unique grapheme <ṅ> to the velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ instead of the more popular <ng> because /n/ and /g/ do not always merge in Gahaḷā and merger can change meaning; for instance dān-gā (the alms) and dāṅā (disorder).
Nasalization in the diacritical variant is represented with a tilde on top of the nasalized vowel. Compare gā (sing) and gā̃ (village). The same in the case-sensitive variant is represented with a caret after the nasalized vowel. Compare gA (sing) and gA^ (village).