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Sylheti language
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Sylheti (native name ????? Silôti; Bengali name ?????? Sileti) 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) and 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.
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Encyclopedia
Sylheti (native name ????? Silôti; Bengali name ?????? Sileti) 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) and 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, 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, "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.
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, Persian, Bengali and Assamese. Sylheti is spoken by about 10 percent of Bangladeshis, but has affected the course of standard Bengali in the rest of the state. A lot of people now consider Sylheti as its own language rather than a dialect of Bengali and Assamese.
History
Writing System
The Sylheti language is written in the Sylheti Nagri script. Sylhet has a rich heritage of literature in the Sylheti Nagri script going back at least 200 years. The Sylheti Nagri script includes 5 independent vowels, 5 dependent vowels attached to a consonent letter and 27 consonants. The Sylheti Nagri alphabet differs from the Bengali alphabet as it was derived from the Kaithi script of Bihar.
Up to 1970's, the Sylheti Nagari script was used to write the Sylheti language. The government of the newly formed Bangladesh discouraged its 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.
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. There are over 10,000,000 speakers of the language throughout the globe, including 8,000,000 speakers in Bangladesh. Outside Bangladesh or India, the largest communities in which Sylheti spoken are in the United Kingdom. Based on studies, over 95 percent of the British Bangladeshi community speak Sylheti (estimated to around 400,000 speakers), mostly concentrated in the east London boroughs, and a few in Oldham and many other cities. Many of these Sylhetis arrived in the UK since the 1960-70s.
Phonology
A very characteristic feature of Sylheti spoken language is the replacement of the "S" or "Sh" sound in many standard Bengali words e.g. "Shakun" (vulture); "Shakal" (everyone) by an "H" sound.
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