Santhali becomes India’s first tribal language to get a Wikipedia edition in its native script

Santhali has become the first Indian tribal language to get a Wikipedia edition in its native script. It is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austroasiatic languages & presently has content of about 70,000 words. The Santhali Wikipedia edition received approval from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Language Committee on June 28, 2018 and finally, the Santali Wikipedia site was launched on 2nd August 2018. According to the 2001 census, Santhali is written in Ol Chiki script & is spoken by 6.4 million people in India only. Its speakers live mostly in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Assam. The language is also spoken in Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. As per the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India, Santali is a recognized regional language of India. Wikipedia is available in nearly 300 languages globally as of August 2018.