Munda

Munda is a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, distantly related to Mon, Khmer and Vietnamese, spoken by roughly 9 to 11 million people across the Chota Nagpur Plateau region of India, including Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, with smaller communities in Bangladesh and Nepal. It divides into North Munda and South Munda branches, and its largest member, Santali, has about 8 million speakers and is officially recognized in India; other members include Mundari, Ho, Korku, Kharia and Sora. Munda languages are historically also known as the Kolarian languages and are characterized by head-final clause structure, an inclusive/exclusive distinction in first-person plural pronouns, and rich systems of numeral classifiers and auxiliary verb constructions.