Lone custodian makes digital archiving of critically endangered Khamyang language a reality in Assam

Khamyang, Tai Phake and Singpho languages have been digitized by Nanda Talukdar Foundation with the support of AASU and Jatiya Bidyalay Socio Economic Trust.

Guwahati: Bhogeswar Thomung is already 84 and his frail hands does not support him now to write properly. This made the Buddhist pathek (priest), a resident of Powaimukh village in eastern Assam's Tinsukia district worried about losing his mother tongue, Khamyang, a langauge already tagged by the UNESCO as critically endangered.

What was more worrying is that none other around can write in Khamyang as he is the only surviving person who can speak, read and write the language. The village has around 30 to 40 families belonging to Tai Khamyang community, a sub-group of Tai community of Southeast Asia, but all now use Assamese. "As people moved out for education or livelihoods, we lost our language," Thomung said here on Tuesday.

He was in Guwahati as part of a project for digitization of endangered Khamyang, Tai Phake and Singpho language. The project, undertaken by Nanda Talukdar Foundation, a non-profit organisation and sponsored by All Assam Students' Union, have finally digitized manuscripts, books and other documents (including audio recording) of the three languages in the past eight months (since May 2025).

The love for his mother tongue and the fear of losing it forever prompted Tomung join the initiative. "Once we used to run a school to teach our language. But it had to be shut."

The foundation is led by journalist Mrinal Talukdar while technical support is being provided by Anundoram Borooah Institute of Language, Art and Culture (ABILAC), Assam and Assam Jatiya Bidyalay Socio Economic Trust.

"As people of his community moved out or adopted inter-caste marriage, the language got lost. There were four to five people in the village till 2014 who could speak the language. But now Thomung is the only surviving person who can speak, read and write it. This digitization is a very significant development in the efforts to save the language," Palash Kumar Nath, chief advisor of the project and an assistant professor at ABILAC, Assam told DH.

The foundation said there are around 1,000 to 1,400 Tai Khamyang people in Tinsukia and neighbouring Sivasagar and Golaghat districts. The number of Tai Phake population is around 2,000 (in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh district) while the same of Singpho community is around 9,000 (mostly in Tinsukia).

Digitizing Assam

Under the Digital Archives of Endangered Language project, 12 manuscripts comprising 650 leaves (pages) and 250 curated photographs of Khamyang language have been digitized while the same for Tai Phake is 260 manuscripts comprising 19,950 leaves. This includes the classical text books of Ramayana and Mahabharata in Tai Phake language. Old books and 450 photographs of Singpho language has also been digitized.

"Strucural vocabulary based audio profile covering approximately 540 high frequency words and phrases have been recorded both in isolation and in sentence form," Talukdar said. "The audio archives have been prepared to support revival oriented learning and community access," he said.