Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India

Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India

News: The Government of India has initiated a Scheme known as “Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India” (SPPEL) informed the Minister of Culture and Tourism.

About SPPEL
• The Scheme was instituted by Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2013.The sole objective of the Scheme is to document and archive the country’s languages that have become endangered or likely to be endangered in the near future.
• The scheme is monitored by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) located in Mysuru, Karnataka.
• The CIIL has collaborated with various universities and institutes across India for this mission.
• University Grants Commission (UGC) is also providing financial assistance for the creation of centres for endangered languages at Central and State Universities.
• At the moment, the languages which are spoken by less than 10,000 speakers or languages that are not been linguistically studied earlier are considered endangered language.
• Presently, 117 languages have been listed for the documentation.Documentation in the form of grammar, dictionary and ethno-linguistic profiles of about 500 lesser known languages are estimated to be accomplished in the coming years.