|  Language
Dooars in Jalpaiguri is a land of diverse
ethnic communities. Being a home to different tribal communities
and immigrant people from neighbouring states and countries
Jalpaiguri Dooars has a number of distinct languages and Dialects.
Bengali is the most widely spoken language
in the region and is the official language in the state. The
maximum number of people mainly in the towns and cities uses
Bengali. The second important language in Dooars is Rajbansi,
which is basically a dialect of Bengali spoken by the most of
the rural people in North Bengal plains. The dialect is locally
known as Bahe. Before adopting the bahe language the Rajbansi
people used to speak Koch- a language of Boro group of Tibeto-Burman
family of language. The Koch language is still a majore language
of the rural people of Coochbihar.
 The
overall linguistic picture of Dooars part of North Bengal is
that the aboriginal people in the region like Meches, Coches
and Ravas largely speak the language of Boro group of Tibeto-Burman
family. However, all these languages are distinctive and have
their individual identities. The Toto tribe speak a language
of Himalayan group of Tibeto-Burman family.
With the Hinduization of the Coches a large
numbers of former Bodo speakers began to speak Bengali and developed
distinct Bengali dialect. With the opening of tea gardens from
the middle of the ninetieth century, a large number of Dravidian
speaking Oraon and Austric speaking Mundas and Santhals started
migrating into Dooars area and settled there. Apart from speaking
their own language among themselves, for inter-caste communication
they developed a dialect called Sadri or Madesia, which is a
mixture of Hindi and Bengali. In course of time this dialect
became a significant mother tongue of tribal people in the teagardens. |
