Rabha
Rába katha
ৰাভা
Native toIndia
RegionAssam, West Bengal
Native speakers
139,986 (2011 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Maituri
  • Rongdani
Assamese script, Bengali script
Language codes
ISO 639-3rah
Glottolograbh1238
ELPRabha

Rabha is a Sino-Tibetan language of Northeast India. The two dialects, Maituri and Rongdani, are divergent enough to cause problems in communication. According to U.V. Joseph,[2] there are three dialects, viz. Róngdani or Róngdania, Mayturi or Mayturia and Songga or 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 Róngdani or Mayturi speaker" (page ix). Joseph also writes that "[t]he dialect variations between Róngdani and Mayturi, 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 Róngdani-Mayturi 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]

Geographical distribution

According to the Ethnologue, Rabha is spoken in the following areas of India.

See also

References

  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.


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