Garo Hills · Northeast Hill Massif

Dialect and oral traditions

Garo, called A·chik by its speakers, is Tibeto-Burman, of the Bodo–Garo branch — the same group as Boro, Rabha, Koch, Tiwa, Deori and Kokborok. That places it in a completely different language family from Khasi and Pnar immediately to the east, which are Austroasiatic. Two unrelated stocks meeting inside one small state, with no gradual transition and no intermediate variety between them, is the defining linguistic fact of these hills: the seam is a seam, not a slope. A·chik was fixed in Roman script by American Baptist missionaries in the nineteenth century, using the A·we dialect of the north-east as the basis for the written standard, while Ambeng in the west has the largest number of speakers — the same mismatch between the written standard and the demographic centre that Khasi has. In Bangladesh the language has also been written in Bengali script.

Speech varieties

Ambeng (A·beng)Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Bodo–Garo

The western dialect, with the largest number of speakers, and the variety heard around Tura.

Speakers: Around 10 lakh Garo speakers were returned in the 2011 Census across India

A·weSino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Bodo–Garo

The north-eastern dialect that the missionaries took as the basis for written Garo, which is why the standard language is not the one most speakers grew up with.

Matchi–Dual and ChisakSino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Bodo–Garo

Central and eastern varieties, spoken through the Simsang catchment.

Gara–GanchingSino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Bodo–Garo

The southern varieties of the foothill belt, running down towards the plain.

Atong and RugaSino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Bodo–Garo

Spoken in the south and south-east and divergent enough that linguists generally treat them as separate languages rather than as Garo dialects, though their speakers are counted as Garo.

MegamAustroasiatic, Khasic

The community on the eastern seam is counted among the Garo and follows Garo social organisation, but its speech is usually classified with the Khasic languages. It is the single point where the two language families of these hills actually touch, and the reason the boundary between them is a community rather than a line.

Indigenous terminology

Term	Meaning
A·chik and A·song	A·chik is what Garos call themselves — hill people, as against the plains. A·song is the land. "Garo" is an outsiders' name, and both are in ordinary use.
A·king	The block of village land held by a clan — the fundamental unit of Garo land tenure. It is owned in the female line and administered on the clan's behalf by the nokma, and jhum plots within it are allotted to households rather than owned by them.
Chatchi and machong	Chatchi are the great exogamous divisions — Sangma, Marak, Momin, Areng and Shira. Machong are the matrilineal clans within them, named for animals, plants or places, and marriage inside a machong is forbidden.
Mahari	The working lineage — the group of close matrilineal kin who actually decide things. It is the body that approves a marriage, settles a dispute and appoints an heiress, and it is where the maternal uncles carry weight.
Nokna	The daughter designated by her parents, with the mahari's agreement, to inherit the ancestral house and land and to stay in it. Note the difference from the Khasi system next door, where the rule fixes on the youngest daughter automatically — here it is a designation, and it can fall on a daughter who is not the youngest.
Nokrom	The husband of the nokna, who moves into his parents-in-law's household rather than setting up his own and becomes its future head. Marriage here relocates the man, not the woman.
Nokma	The head of the household and, at village level, of the a·king — the office through which the clan's land is administered. He holds it through his wife, in whose line the land actually rests, and the pairing is sometimes named together as nokma and nokmechik.
Chra	The maternal uncle. He is guardian and adviser to his sister's children and a voice in the mahari, which means a Garo man's formal authority sits in the household he was born into rather than the one he married into — the same structural arrangement as the Khasi u kni.
A·kim	The obligation that binds two clans after a marriage. If a spouse dies, the surviving partner may be expected to be matched again within the deceased's machong, so that the alliance between the two lineages continues rather than lapsing with the individual.
Nokpante	The bachelors' dormitory — a raised communal house, historically at the centre of a village, where boys moved at around the age of adolescence and learned crafts, drumming, wrestling and village discipline before marriage. It was also the village's guardhouse and workshop. Almost none remain in use.
A·ba	The jhum plot. A hillside is cut in the dry months, dried, burned, cropped with rice, millet, chilli, ginger, cotton and gourds together for a season or two, and then left fallow. Households work each other's plots in turn, which is why the farming calendar and the song calendar are the same calendar.
Kalchi	The alkali leached from ash, and by extension the cooking method built on it. Kappa is a dish made with it.
Nakham	Smoke-dried fish, and the base of the region's defining broth, nakham bitchi.
Chu and chubitchi	Rice beer. It is poured out for the ancestors before anyone drinks, offered to every guest, and central enough to Garo occasion that it now holds a geographical indication.
Songsarek	The indigenous Garo religion, with Tatara-Rabuga as creator and Misi Saljong as the deity of sun and harvest to whom Wangala is addressed. Most Garos are now Christian, and Songsarek practice survives in a minority of villages and in deliberate revival.
Wangala	The harvest thanksgiving that closes the agricultural year — the occasion the drums, the dances, the chu and the nokma's ceremonial role all exist for.

Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Garo Hills. (16)