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Bijaya Rai Bantawa has been learning Lungkhim, his native language, these days.

The Language Commission is running a 45-day class at his village of Kerabari in Suryodaya Municipality, Ilam, to preserve the dying language that belongs to the local Lungkhim Rai tribe.

Bijaya, 56, gets up early in the morning, finishes household works, and heads to the class, which takes place from 8 to 10 am.

“Being a Lungkhim Rai, I was interested in learning my mother tongue. Hopefully I will be able to say a thing or two in it after completing the language course,” says Bijaya.

According to Janga Bahadur Rai, chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, 30 people, including women, youths and elderly, are attending the class. He says Lungkhim language fell into near obscurity as their elders stopped using it.

“I come from the Lungkhim tribe and I know Bantawa Rai language. But I don’t speak my mother tongue,” says Janga Bahadur, who is also attending the class.

Durgaman Rai, local Lungkhim community leader, says it is unfortunate that their native language has reached a point of near extinction. “We had forgotten how to speak our tongue. So here we are learning the Lungkhim words used in everyday conversation,” he says. 

Thirty-two year old Ganga Bahadur Rai feels grateful to the Language Commission for organizing the class. He feels his native language is not dying after all. “Our elders didn’t speak the language. We are learning now,” says Ganga Bahadur.

He hopes to teach the language to young members of the community.

The role of the language instructor is being assumed by Arun Rai, a 58-year-old retired police officer. He says parents and siblings used to speak Lungkhim in their household, unlike other families in the community.

“I spoke the language from my childhood. My father and two siblings can also speak Lungkhim but since they don’t know how to read and write, the Language Commission picked me as the language instructor,” he says.

Besides Lungkhim tribe members, people from other Rai tribes like Sampang and Newahang are also attending the class.

“Some people from the neighboring Rong Rural Municipality are also learning. They plan to conduct a similar class in their area,” says Arun.

He expects at least 40 percent of his students to be able to speak Lungkhim tongue by the end of the class.

The current class is composed of 30 days of writing and 15 days of speaking lessons. The lesson-plan was designed by linguist Dr Taramani Rai with the assistance of the class instructor, Arun.

“The essential aspects of language learning are listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this course, however, our focus is more on listening and reading since this class is aimed at those who can already read and write Nepali,” says Dr Taramani.

Janga Bahadur, the chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, is pleased with the progress.

“The use of our language was limited to only five families and it was only being used during tribal rituals.  The class has at least helped people reconnect with the language spoken by their ancestors,” he says. “Those who didn’t know a single word of Lungkhim are able to formulate simple sentences because of the class.”

Encouraged by the interest shown by young people, the Lungkhim Rai Society plans to spread the language to every Lungkhim household of Ilam.

Dr Taramani says raising the number of speakers is the most effective way of reviving an endangered language.

“When we conducted a survey on Lungkhim speakers some five years ago, we found only one family in Ilam spoke the language. So we decided to start this language revival process from Ilam itself,” he says.

The Lungkhim Rai Society estimates that there are around 100 Lungkhim Rai households in Suryodaya Municipality of Ilam.

“Some more families from the tribe could be scattered in other parts of the district. According to our estimates, the population of Lungkhim Rais in the country could be upward of 10,000, ” says Janga Bahadur.