| 释义 |
Malto, n.|ˈmæltəʊ|
[Native word = ‘language of the Maler’: see Maler n. and a.]
A Dravidian language spoken by the Maler people living in the Rajmahal hills of northern India. Also called Rajmahali. Also as adj.
1884E. Droese Introd. Malto Lang. p. i, Malto is the language of one of the aboriginal races of India who call themselves Maler i.e. men, and go among their Aryan neighbours by the name of Paharias (Hill people). 1906G. A. Grierson Ling. Survey India IV. 446 Malto is almost exclusively spoken in the Rajmahal Hills in the north-east of the Sonthal Parganas... Malto is the name used by the people themselves in order to denote their language. The word simply means ‘the language of the Maler’, and maler in Malto means ‘men’ and is the name the people apply to themselves... It is..probable that Malto like Malayāḷam is derived from the common Dravidian mala, mountain, so that the original meaning of ‘maler’ would be ‘hillmen’. Ibid. 447 Malto does not possess a literature of its own... The Malto language very closely agrees with Kuruḵẖ. 1938S. S. Sarkar Mālérs of Rajmahal Hills i. 18 The Mālérs speak Mālto. 1955T. Burrow Sanskrit Lang. viii. 387 The Dravidian languages Kurukh and Malto are preserved even now in Northern India, and may be regarded as islands surviving from a once extensive Dravidian territory. 1963L. P. Vidyarthi Maler iv. 57 The Maler..call themselves ‘Male’ in their native Malto language which means hill⁓man. 1972W. B. Lockwood Panorama Indo-European Lang. 224 Malto, the vernacular of 100,000 tribesmen, is found in the Rajmahal Hills. |