Sunday, February 23, 2014

Cabinet approved Odia as Classical Language


Union Cabinet on 20 February 2014 gave its nod for classifying Odia, the official language of Odisha as a classical language to give impetus to scholarships in the language. Odia is the first language from the Indo-Aryan linguistic group to be billed in the list of classical language. The proposal to give Odia a status of classical language was moved by the Culture Ministry.

Odia being one of the oldest languages has been declared as classical language because of the demands and also because it has no resemblance to Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and Sanskrit. Odia is the sixth language to become the classical language of the country.Other languages that have been declared as the classical languages are Tamil in 2004, Sanskrit in 2005, Telugu in 2008, Kannada in 2008 and Malayalam in 2013 of which four are Dravidian languages.


Other five Indian languages that have been declared as the classical languages of which four are Dravidian languages:
• Tamil was classified in 2004 
• Sanskrit was classified in 2005 
• Telugu was classified in 2008 
• Kannada was classified in 2008
• Malayalam was classified in 2013

The five international languages of the world that has been classified as the classical language are Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek and Latin.

Background:

Once any language is declared as a classical language then it gets a financial assistance to set-up a centre for excellence for the study of the language and also opens up an avenue for two major awards for scholars of eminence. 

This declaration also brings the facility to request the University Grants Commission for creation of a certain number of professional chairs for classical languages for scholars of eminence in the language at least in Central Universities. 

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