Sylheti language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sylheti সিলটী Silôţi |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Bangladesh, India, Middle East, United States & United Kingdom | |
| Total speakers: | 10,300,000 | |
| Ranking: | 78 | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Eastern Group Bengali-Assamese Sylheti |
|
| Writing system: | Sylheti Nagari, Bengali script | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | inc | |
| ISO 639-3: | syl | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
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, Canada, and the Middle East.
Sylheti is often either considered a dialect of Bengali (Bangla) or an Assamese language due to many similarities between the languages, and also often considered a separate language due to significant differences between them all. Given that Sylhet was part of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa,[1] 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,[2] "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.[3]
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.
Contents |
[edit] History
 |
Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
[edit] 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, Moulvi Bazaar & Sunamganj). It is also spoken across the border in the Cachar region of Assam in India. The Sylheti Bangladeshi diaspora community in the United Kingdom also speaks Sylheti as the language of preference and services are provided to cater to their needs.[1] There are over 10,000,000 [2] speakers of the language throughout the globe, including 8,000,000 speakers in Bangladesh. [3]
[edit] Phonology
|
|
Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
[edit] Writing system
|
|
Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
There is not an official way of writing in Sylheti.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
| ɮ | This Indo-European languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
