Sylheti language

language
name=Sylheti
nativename=সিলটী Silôţi
states=flagicon|Bangladesh Bangladesh flagicon|India India flagicon|United Kingdom United Kingdom flagicon|UAE UAE (and other Gulf States flagicon|United States United States
speakers=10,300,000
rank=78
familycolor=Indo-European
fam2=Indo-Iranian
fam3=Indo-Aryan
fam4=Eastern Group
fam5=Bengali-Assamese
script=Sylheti Nagari, Bengali script
iso2=inc|iso3=syl

Sylheti (native name সিলটী "Silôţi"; Bengali name সিলেটী "Sileţi") is the language of Sylhet, the north-eastern region of Bangladesh, and also spoken in parts of the North-East Indian states of Assam (the Barak valley) and Tripura (the North Tripura district). It is also spoken by a significant population in the other north-eastern states of India and amongst the large expatriate communities in the United Kingdom, United States, and countries of the Gulf States.

Sylheti is often either considered a dialect of Bengali (Bangla) or an Assamese dialect due to many similarities between the languages, and also often considered a separate language due to significant differences between them all and lack of mutual intelligibility. Given that Sylhet was part of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa, [Edward Gait, History of Assam, p274"] the language has many common features with Assamese, including the existence of a larger set of fricatives than other East Indic languages. According to Grierson, [George Grierson, Language Survey of India, Vol II, Pt 1, p224] "The inflections also differ from those of regular Bengali, and in one or two instances assimilate to those of Assamese". Indeed it was formerly written in its own script, Sylheti Nagari, similar in style to Kaithi but with differences, though nowadays it is almost invariably written in Bengali script. [cite web |url=http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page2.html |title=Sylheti Literature | publisher=Sylheti Translation And Research |accessdate=2007-04-24]

Sylheti is distinguished by a wide range of fricative sounds (which correspond to aspirated stops in closely-related languages such as Bengali), the lack of breathy voiced stops seen in many other Indic languages, word-final stress, and a relatively large set of loanwords from Arabic, Hindi and Persian. Sylheti is spoken by about 10 percent of Bangladeshis, but has affected the course of standard Bengali in the rest of the state.

History

Geographical distribution

Sylheti is the language of the Surma river valley region bordering what are today the nations of Bangladesh and India. Sylheti is spoken throughout Sylhet Division in Bangladesh (comprising the districts of Sylhet, Habiganj, Maulvi Bazar and Sunamganj). It is also spoken across the border in the Barak Valley region of Assam in India. The Sylheti Bangladeshi diaspora community in the United Kingdom also speaks Sylheti, where about 95% of the people speak the dialect (estimated at 268,000 speakers), mostly concentrated in the east London boroughs. Many of these Sylhetis arrived in the UK since the 1960s and 70s. [ [http://www3.hants.gov.uk/education/ema/ema-advice/ema-advice-lcr/ema-advice-lcr-bengali.htm Hampshire School] ] There are over 10,000,000 [ [http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page2.html Sylheti] ] speakers of the language throughout the globe, including 8,000,000 speakers in Bangladesh.

Phonology

Writing system

The Sylheti language is written in the Sylheti Nagri script [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/syloti.htm] . Sylhet has a rich heritage of literature in the Sylheti Nagri script going back at least 200 years. [http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page2.html] . The Sylheti Nagri script includes 5 independent vowels, 5 dependent vowels attached to a consonent letter and 27 consonants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylheti_Nagari] . The Sylheti Nagri alphabet differs from the Bengali alphabet as it was derived from the Kaithi script of Bihar. [http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page2.html] .

Up to 1970's, the Sylheti Nagri script [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/syloti.htm] was used to write the Sylheti language. The government of the newly formed Bangladesh discouraged it’s use in favour of the Bengali alphabet. Efforts to establish Sylheti as a modern language were vigorously opposed by the political and cultural dominance by successive Bangladeshi governments. [http://www.munayemmayenin.co.uk/AllAbouiLanguageSchools.htm]

References

External links

* [http://www.sylheti.org.uk UK-Based Group that collects and republishes Sylheti literature]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=syl Ethnologue entry]