The Dimasas and their language

The Dimasas are known as ‘sons of the great river’ i.e., the word ‘di’ means ‘water’, ‘ma’ means ‘big’ and ‘sa’ means ‘sons’. The language of the Dimasas is known as ‘Grau Dima’ or ‘Magrau’ (mother tongue). This tribe migrated from the Himalayas and came to the Brahmaputra river valley via the Gangetic Plains and made it their land (Thaosen 2007: 4). The Dimasas are mainly concentrated in some parts of Nagaon, Cachar and Karbi Anglong, the entire North Cachar Hills and in and around Dimapur in Nagaland. According to 2001 Census, the Dimasa speakers are approximately 65,000 in N.C. Hills and 40,000 in Karbi Anglong in Assam.

The Dimasas belong to the Bodo-Garo group within the Bodo- Jingpho-Konyak branch of Tibeto-Burman (Lewis 2009). The Dimasas are multilingual. The Dimasas of North Cachar Hills speak Haflong Hindi which is the lingua franca for the various ethnic tribes of the region. Those from Cachar plains use Bengali which is the majority language there, and those of Karbi Anglong and Nagaon use Assamese for communication. Dimasas in Nagaland speak in Nagamese with speakers of other languages.

The dialects of Dimasa are Hasao, Hawar, Dembra, Dijuwa, Humri, Semsa and Walgong. Hasao, spoken in North Cachar Hills district of Assam, has been adopted as the standard dialect by Dimasa Literary Society in its meeting held on the 9 March, 2004 at Haflong.