Deori is spoken in Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Tinsukia, Jorhat districts of Assam. Ethnologue states that Deori may constitute its own subgroup under Bodo-Garo. The Deuri language is the easternmost member of the Boro-Garo group of languages. Although The Deuri community could be broadly divided into four main groups, viz: Dibongia, Tenga pania, Patorgoyan and Borgoyan, it is robustly used only among the Dibongya, the only subgroup that has retained the language.
The Dibongias are also bilinguals with equal command over Assamese as well. The 2001 census reports that there are about 28,000 people who have some knowledge of Deori although there may be only a few households where Deori is actually spoken (van Driem 2007). The name Deuri is of Indo-Aryan origin meaning belonging to the house of priests (Kakati 1941). The Deuri priests used to conduct the sacrificial ceremonies during the reign of the Ahom kings.
Deori has been classified as a 'definitely endangered' language by the UNESCO. The loss of a language, most of the time, happens because the speakers stop speaking the language. Often such a turnaround happens because of economic and social gains in learning a dominant language. In such a process, the native language is used less and less and in fewer social and economic situations than would be required for the sustenance of the language in all domains of life. While language loss becomes imminent in this situation, this also leads to the incorporation of various linguistic features of the languages that the indigenous language is in contact with.
Deori speakers who are always obligatorily bilingual may integrate the properties of other languages in the vicinity. In this project, we propose to investigate how Deori has undergone change and the extent of variation that exists in the language in the context of the sociological profile of different groups of speakers. Using the recorded material and the sociolinguistic questionnaires, we will pursue the following objectives: