Rabha language

Rabha
Rabha khurang/krou
ৰাভা
Native toIndia
RegionAssam, West Bengal,Meghalaya
Native speakers
139,986 (2011 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Maitori
  • Rongdani
  • Kocha
Assamese script, Bengali script, english
Language codes
ISO 639-3rah
Glottolograbh1238
ELPRabha
Map of where Rabha is spoken

Rabha is a Sino-Tibetan language of Northeast India. The two dialects, Maitori and Rongdani, are divergent enough to cause problems in communication. According to U.V. Joseph,[2] there are three dialects, viz. Rongdani or Rongdania, Maitori or Maitoria and Kocha (page ix). Joseph writes that "the Kocha dialect, spoken along the northern bank of the Brahmaputra, is highly divergent and is not intelligible to a Rongdani or Maitori speaker" (page ix). Joseph also writes that "[t]he dialect variations between Rongdani and Maitori, both of which are spoken on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, in the Goalpara district of Assam and belong to the northern slopes of Meghalaya, are minimal" (pages ix-x). He concludes the paragraph on dialectal variation with: "The Rongdani-Maitori dialectal differences become gradually more marked as one moves further west" (page x).

In 2007, U.V. Joseph published a grammar of Rabha with Brill in their series Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region.[3]

  1. ^ Rabha at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Joseph, U.V. 2000. Rabha–English dictionary khúrangnala. Guwahati: Don Boco Publications.
  3. ^ Joseph, U.V. 2007. Rabha. Leiden: Brill.