Bodo

Bodo (ISO 639-3: brx, Glottocode: bodo1269) belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family, specifically belonging to the Bodo-Garo subgroup of the Sal language group.

Speakers

According to the official 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 1.48 million native Bodo speakers.

Distribution in India

The principal concentration of Bodo speakers is in the state of Assam, particularly within the autonomous Bodoland Territorial Region. Smaller speech communities are also distributed across adjacent districts in the states of West Bengal, Meghalaya, and Nagaland.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Bodo is a tonal language, generally described as possessing two distinct lexical tones (high and low). Its consonant inventory features a contrast between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops, alongside the prominent use of the voiceless velar fricative /x/.
• Morphology: The language is predominantly agglutinative. Nouns are marked for grammatical cases—such as nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, and instrumental—via the suffixation of postpositional markers. Verbs exhibit complex inflectional morphology, carrying suffixes to denote tense, aspect, mood, causation, and negation.
• Syntax: Bodo regularly employs a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) default word order. It utilises postpositions rather than prepositions. While genitives and demonstratives typically precede the head noun, adjectives and numeral classifiers generally follow it.

Further reading

• Bodo language on Wikipedia