Centre for Endangered Languages and Mother Tongue Studies (CELMTS)

About the Centre

Everywhere, in virtually everyone’s speech, there are alarming signs that people are mortgaging their mother tongue(s). Given the complexity of interrelationship and situations of life, it is both crucial and exigent that an effective and sustained archival effort is initiated to organize the recovery, research, collection and collation, recording and presentation of the wealth of our mother tongue(s) of posterity. If some measures are not taken immediately the state of Mother Tongue(s) will become pitiable.

Scholars predict that out of approximately 6500 languages spoken in the world today, half of these are at the risk of disappearing by the end of this century. There are 196 endangered languages in India accordingly to the UNESCO report and it is the highest in any single country in the world.

Hence, the University of Hyderabad established the Centre for Endangered Languages and Mother Tongue Studies (in 2010) to take up the task of recovery, collection and collation, preservation and recording, translation and study of texts from the mother tongues threatened with extinction.

Prof. Panchanan Mohanty was the Head of the centre between 2010-2019. Curently,
Prof. Pammi Pavan Kumar is functioning as Head of the centre.