Most students of linguistics (and sociolinguistics) will be familiar with the term shibboleth or shibboleth test which refers to a word or phrase that is used to prove a speaker's membership to a particular group, usually along national or ethnic lines - members of the opposing group are identified by their different pronunciation of this word or phrase. Such tests have been used in times of war to determine 'friend from foe', and are still being used quite controversially by immigration departments to test people seeking refugee status, since its use assumes linguistic features must correlate with nationality or ethnicity.
At the NEILS conference I was told of two such shibboleths used in the NE India in recent times. In Assam, at the height of the 'Assam Agitation' nationalist movement from 1979 to 1985, people were often made to count from 1 to 7 to see if they were 'Assamese' or an illegal 'Bengali'. The idea is that in Assamese the number is 7 is pronounced [xat] with a velar fricative [x] (I reckon it's closer to a velar approximant), while in Bengali / Bangla the number is pronounced [sat] (a much more conservative pronunciation if one compares it to Hindi and Nepali [sat]). The instant the speaker said [sat], they were hit and taken away (or worse).
Another NEILS conference participant from Mizoram recounted a similar story from a time when the Mizoram government was trying to stymie illegal immigration from the Burmese side. From memory, it was members of the Ralte tribe moving into Mizoram from Burma. The test involved them saying the word for 'chicken'. The main difference between the dialects spoken on the Mizoram and on the Burmese sides was that one group said the word with a lateral sound [l] while the other used the rhotic [r].
Apparently there was a man who had crossed over and upon being told to say the word for 'chicken' (I assume someone pointed to the actual animal and asked him to say what it was), he asked the border guard if he could say the word for 'pig' instead.
At the NEILS conference I was told of two such shibboleths used in the NE India in recent times. In Assam, at the height of the 'Assam Agitation' nationalist movement from 1979 to 1985, people were often made to count from 1 to 7 to see if they were 'Assamese' or an illegal 'Bengali'. The idea is that in Assamese the number is 7 is pronounced [xat] with a velar fricative [x] (I reckon it's closer to a velar approximant), while in Bengali / Bangla the number is pronounced [sat] (a much more conservative pronunciation if one compares it to Hindi and Nepali [sat]). The instant the speaker said [sat], they were hit and taken away (or worse).
Another NEILS conference participant from Mizoram recounted a similar story from a time when the Mizoram government was trying to stymie illegal immigration from the Burmese side. From memory, it was members of the Ralte tribe moving into Mizoram from Burma. The test involved them saying the word for 'chicken'. The main difference between the dialects spoken on the Mizoram and on the Burmese sides was that one group said the word with a lateral sound [l] while the other used the rhotic [r].
Apparently there was a man who had crossed over and upon being told to say the word for 'chicken' (I assume someone pointed to the actual animal and asked him to say what it was), he asked the border guard if he could say the word for 'pig' instead.
