In a small village near the Indian border in Sreemangal, that fear is becoming painfully real. For the past six months, Samra Saura—believed to be in his 90s—has been gravely ill. He can no longer walk without assistance. Speaking even a few words leaves him breathless. Most of the time, he simply stares in silence.

When this correspondent visited Saura Palli in Rajghat Union on Monday, the frail elder whispered only a few words in his native tongue: “If I die, the language will die. Please take initiative to save my mother tongue before I die. My identity lives in this language.”

According to community members, Samra Saura is the last person in Bangladesh who could fluently and accurately speak the Saura language.

Alkumar Saura, 56, described him as a one-man army for their mother tongue. “Even though he understood other languages spoken in the tea gardens, he would always speak Saura. The younger ones sometimes laughed at his pronunciation, but they also tried to repeat words after him. Because of him, we tried.”

Today, no one else in the community can speak the language fluently. Those above 70 remember fragments—a few scattered words. But full sentences, conversations, stories—those lived almost entirely with Samra.

“For 15 to 20 years, people came, took interviews, and recorded his voice. We thought something would happen,” Alkumar added. “However, nothing happened. Slowly, our mother tongue is disappearing before our eyes.”

The Saura language—an Austro-Asiatic language—is also spoken in parts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Bihar in India. It has a written form and even primary-level textbooks in parts of India.

In Bangladesh, however, the situation is starkly different.

The International Mother Language Institute has identified Saura as one of 14 endangered languages in the country. Only around 120 Saura families remain nationwide. In Saura village, located about 200 yards from the Indian border near Sreemangal Upazila of Moulvibazar, just 22 families live.

Most work as tea garden labourers. None has access to higher education. There is no institutional system for preserving or teaching their language.

Seventy-year-old Sridhar Saura said they have repeatedly appealed to the government to protect their mother tongue. Yet nothing has been done.

Within families, Bengali, Odia, and Sadri have largely replaced Saura. “Many people confuse our language with Odia or call it a jungle language,” said 72-year-old Umila Saura. “So, we speak Bengali. When we speak Saura, people look down on us.”

Language shift has accelerated among children.

Santana Saura said, “We heard a few words from Grandpa, but we cannot speak properly. At school everyone speaks Bengali, so we also speak Bengali.”

Another child, Sahan Saura, admitted that classmates often laugh when they try to speak Saura. “They say it is slang. So we feel ashamed.”

Nipa Saura added, “When Grandpa speaks it, we do not understand everything. If someone explained it to us, we would be more interested.”

Their words reflect a pattern experts describe as a breakdown in intergenerational transmission—often the final stage before language extinction.

Researcher Porimol Baraik pointed out that the International Mother Language Institute Act (2010) emphasises the preservation of all ethnic languages and the development of written forms. However, he said implementation remains weak.

“Although NGOs work on improving the socio-economic conditions of small ethnic groups, language preservation is often neglected,” he added, calling for stronger state intervention.

Samar M. Soren, Indigenous Language Technology Specialist, Head of the Language Resource Hub (LRH), and Global Taskforce Member of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL), UNESCO, said: “The Saura language in Bangladesh, also known as Savara and spoken by the Savara people mainly in the tea gardens of Sylhet and Moulvibazar, is in serious danger of disappearing. Ethnologue calls it Sora, but it is also referred to as Saura.”

The International Mother Language Institute (IMLI) classifies it among the endangered languages of the country, with a very small number of speakers remaining, mostly older members of the community. Intergenerational transmission has become extremely weak, as younger generations are not learning or using it regularly, largely due to the influence of dominant languages like Bengali and the small size of the community itself.

The language has almost no presence in digital spaces, media, or education, with very limited literacy materials and scripts (though it has its own Sorang Sompeng script, Bengali is more commonly used for writing in Bangladesh) and no official government recognition or support. Community interest in and prestige for Saura have declined over time, making it harder to pass on. Along with the Saura language, valuable traditional knowledge such as folklore, rituals, songs, stories, and local cultural practices is at high risk of being lost forever.

Without urgent efforts in documentation, revitalisation programmes, community involvement, and institutional backing, Saura faces a very real chance of vanishing completely in the coming years. “We need to act now to help preserve this important part of Bangladesh’s linguistic and cultural diversity,” he added.

AFM Zakaria, professor of anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, echoed the concern.

“A language survives through family-based practice,” he said. “When one generation does not or cannot teach it to the next, extinction becomes inevitable. Sometimes languages are not lost by force, but through social pressure and inferiority. That is a silent form of cultural violence.”

He stressed the urgent need to collect audio and video documentation from last speakers like Samra Saura.

Sixty-year-old Jamini Saura said only two elders once spoke the language fluently. One passed away years ago. The other now struggles even to speak.

“It seems that when he dies, our language will die with him,” she said quietly.

If that happens, it will not simply mark the loss of a language. It will mark the disappearance of songs, wedding rituals like Sunkara, oral histories, and an entire worldview shaped over generations.

An anthropologist said it would raise an uncomfortable question: if a language dies with one person, is it merely a personal tragedy—or a collective failure?

Mintu Deshwara is a journalist at The Daily Star.

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