Information from: “Topics in Ho morphophonology and morphosyntax” . Anna Pucilowski (2013)
At risk
20 percent certain, based on the evidence available
~1,000,000
The number of speakers of Ho is estimated at around 1 million (from the 2001 census of India).
DATE OF INFO
2001
OTHER LANGUAGES USED BY THE COMMUNITY
Hindi; Odia; English;
LANGUAGE CONTEXT COMMENTS
"All educated Ho speakers, as well as many less well educated speakers, are at least bilingual with Hindi, and in Orissa with Oriya. Schooling is generally conducted in Hindi in Jharkhand. As the most widely spoken national language, Hindi carries a lot of prestige and there is pressure on children to learn Hindi from a young age. Additionally, English is taught at all educational levels in many places. The result of this multilingualism is a lot of borrowing and code-switching between Ho and other regional languages, but especially Hindi."
Scripts (Writing system)
Warang Chiti
Competing Orthographies
Devanagari; Odia; Roman;
More on Orthography
"Ho can be written in a Hindi-based Devanagari and Ho speakers in Orissa can also use the Oriya (Indo-Aryan) script to write Ho. There is also considerable support, especially among Ho speakers in Mayurbhanj, Orissa, for the Warang Chiti script that was devised by pandit Lako Bodra in the 1950s (Anderson et al. 2008:196). Warang Chiti is particular to the Ho language and was devised to be maximally different from Roman and Devanagari scripts... Although most Hos I met were proud that their language has a separate script, there is an opposing view that it is not necessary."
PLACES
India
LOCATION DESCRIPTION
"Spoken in the East Singhbum district of Jharkhand and the Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts of the state of Orissa, India."