First and foremost, the author owes her gratitude to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIS), Kolkata for the opportunity to make proposal for research. The availability of this kind of funding solely for research purposes was totally unknown to her. The officials of MAKAIAS and scholars from Assam organized meetings at Guwahati which proved to be an eye opener and helpful in guiding researchers, and, in a way, compelling the beneficiaries to complete the research within the stipulated time.
The author recalls the time of submission of the findings, when she was advised not only to compile the vocabulary and samples of sentences, but also to study the variety linguistically. Years later, she studied and qualified herself in Linguistics, and felt more confident in dealing with the subject. But for MAKAIAS, the author might never have taken up this 'endangered' tongue for study at all.
Yet, the author lacked experience in writing and designing the study of a language. The study needed a proper organization.
This gap was filled by the expertise of Prof. Robbins Burling, Professor of Linguistics, Michigan University. Prof. Burling was no stranger to the author and to the A'chik language, for, as a student of anthropology, he had done during the 1950s research leading to Ph. D. on the Archik community concentrating on the Rengsangre village in West Garo Hills. A byproduct of his research was A Garo Grammar, the first book on A'chik grammar written using the principles of Linguistics.
The Ruga language was, until recently, spoken in and around the village of Rugapara in the south-central Garo Hills. Ruga was closely related to Atong, to Rabha, and to the Koch languages, and it therefore counts as a member of the "Koch" subgroup of Boro-Garo. This, in turn, belongs to the vast Tibeto-Burman language family.
The Ruga speaking area was entirely surrounded by villages where Garo was spoken, and the Ruga language, by itself, would not allow Ruga speakers to communicate with anyone who did not live in their own Ruga-speaking village. For many decades most Ruga speakers have needed to learn Garo, in addition to Ruga, in order to speak with their neighbours. Twenty years ago, a Ruga woman told me that her parents spoke Ruga better than Garo but that she, and others of her age, spoke Garo better than they spoke Ruga. She told me that her own children and other members of her children's generation could understand Ruga, but they did not speak it themselves. No one today speaks Ruga as their best language and it may be that no one today speaks the language at all.
Linguists, by which I mean scholars who study the nature of language, grieve over every language that is lost. Individual speakers have good reason to shift to a more widely spoken language than the language of their parents and grand parents, but every time a language is lost, something about the rich diversity of human behaviour and, indeed, something important about the human experience, is lost forever. I have heard Ruga spoken and I have spoken with Ruga speakers, and I mourn the loss of the language. Once a language is gone, there is no way to bring it back.
This research work on the Ruga language began as a research project to the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, from 1998 to 2001. The author chose the topic because it was on the verge of extinction; very few speakers, if any, could be found even at that time. The Ruga speaking group has been an integral part of the A'chik society since the ancient past; in the chapter titled 'Habrao Dinga' Jobang D. Marak, documenting the Achik oral tradition of their history writes that Kotchu Ruga Gawe (Nomil) 'Kotchu Ruga young women' came to help the women who were supporting their men in the prolonged fight with the Raja Behari aro Bijni, that is, the zamindars of Cooch Behar and Bijni at Habra or Habraghat around the present Krishnai town of Goalpara Distetict, Assam.
The language of Archik Mande (autonym) popularly known as Garo (exonym) language has been classified by G. A. Grierson in his Linguistic Survey of India as belonging to the Bodo group descended from the Tibeto-Burman of the Tibeto-Chinese family. Others in the Bodo group include Boro-Kachari, Rabha, Mech, Koch, Dimasa, Chutya, Tiwa and Kokborok. Among the varieties of Archik language he gives samples of A'we which became the standard language, the dialect of Kamrup District of Assam, A'beng, Atong or Kochu, the dialects of Cooch Behar and of Jalpaiguri. He provides a comparative vocabulary with short sentences of the Bodo group including Ruga.
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