Toto is listed as a critically endangered language by UNESCO, with perhaps 1,000 speakers.[2] However, most families in the community speak Toto at home. Most children learn Toto at home, although they use Bengali in school.
Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) set out to conduct a study on language of the Toto tribe, whose population has dwindled to 1,536, they did not realize that the language is more endangered than the tribe itself. Researchers as well the members of the Toto community admit that the language is under threat and the influence of other languages, particularly Nepali and Bengali, is increasing day by day.[3]
Toto consists of 25 segmental phonemes, of which 19 are consonants and six are vowels. The phonemes of this language are as follows:
Vowels: there are six vowel phonemes in the Toto language. They can be classified horizontally into three as front unrounded, central unrounded and back rounded vowels and vertically as close, close-mid, open-mid and open.
The following minimal pairs establish the phonetics status of the vowel:
/i/~/u/
/Jiya/ 'rat'
/Juya/ 'bird'
/i/~/e/
/iŋ/ 'brother in-law'
/eŋ/ 'ginger'
/ciwa/ 'tear'
/cewa/ 'cut' (cloth)
/i/~/a/
/guJi/ 'owl'
/guJa/ 'pocket'
/nico/ 'fire'
/naco/ 'two'
/e/~/o/
/je/ 'grass'
/jo/ 'breast'
/e/~/a/
/lepa/ 'brain'
/lapa/ 'jungle betel leaf'
/kewa/ 'birth'
/kawa/ 'sound'
There are eight diphthongs realized in Toto. These are /ei/, /ai/, /oi/, /ui/, /əi/, /eu/, /au/ and /ou/. Diphthong /ui/ occurs in all positions, /eu/ occurs initial and medial positions, /ai/, /oi/, /əi/, and /ei/ occur medial and final positions. While /ou/ and /au/ occur only in the medial positions.[1]
Furthermore, with regard to consonants, Toto has an inventory of ten obstruents, eight of which are contrastive in voicing. Toto also distinguishes the voiceless obstruents /t/ and /p/ with its aspirated equivalents /tʰ/ and /pʰ/, respectively. [1]
An alphabetic script developed for the language by community elder and author, Dhaniram Toto, was published in 2015, and has seen limited but increasing use in literature, education, and computing; most significantly, the Toto alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 2021. Prior to the publication of this script, Dhaniram Toto and other members of the community (whose literacy rate as per sample survey carried out in 2003 was just 33.64 per cent) penned books and poems in the Bengali script.[3]
Grierson, George A. (1909). Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. III, Part 1, Tibeto-Burman family. General introduction. Specimens of the Tibetan dialects, the Himalayan dialects and the North Assam group. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
Perumalsamy P (2016) "Toto Language" in Linguistic Survey of India West Bengal Volume I by Office of the Registrar General India: New Delhi pp 628-702 https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/data/LSI
van Driem, G., & Bronkhorst, J. (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language (pp. 559–760). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Pub.
van Driem, G. (2007). South Asia and Middle East. In C. Moseley (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages (pp. 289–348). London and New York: Routledge.
van Driem, George. 1995. The Ṭoṭo language of the Bhutanese duars. Paper presented at ICSTLL 28.
