Sylheti language

Sylheti language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Sylheti
ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ছিলটি
The word Silôṭi ('Sylheti') in Sylheti Nagari script
Pronunciation	[silɔʈi]
Native to	Bangladesh, India
Region	Sylhet Division, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur
Ethnicity	Sylheti people
Native speakers	11 million (2007)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Eastern Bengali–Assamese Sylheti
Writing system	Sylheti Nagari, Eastern Nagari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	syl
Glottolog	sylh1242[2]
Linguasphere	59-AAF-ui
Sylheti speakers within South Asia

Sylheti (ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ Silôṭi) is either a Eastern Indo-Aryan language or a nonstandard dialect of Bengali, primarily spoken in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh and in the Barak Valley of the Indian state of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of the Indian states of Meghalaya, Tripura, and Manipur.^[3]

Status

The status of Sylheti is hotly disputed with some considering it a dialect of Bengali, while others consider it a separate language.^[4] There are significant differences in grammar and pronunciation as well as a lack of mutual intelligibility between the two varieties. There are greater differences between Sylheti and Bengali than between Sylheti and Assamese, which is recognised as a separate language.^[5] Most Sylhetis are at least bilingual to some degree, as Bengali is taught at all levels of education in Bangladesh. Sylhet was part of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa,^[6] and Sylheti shares many common features with Assamese, including having a larger set of fricatives than other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages. According to George Abraham Grierson,^[7] "The inflections also differ from those of regular Bengali, and in one or two instances assimilate to those of Assamese". Considering the unique linguistic properties such as phoneme inventory, allophony, and inflectional morphology in particular and lexicon in general, Sylheti is often regarded as a separate language (Grierson 1928, Chatterjee 1939, Gordon 2005). Indeed, it was formerly written using its own script, Sylheti Nagari, which, although largely replaced with the Bengali script in recent times, is beginning to experience a revival in use.

Sylheti shares at least 80% of its lexicon with Bengali.^[8]

Name of the language

Sylheti is the common English spelling of the language name after the accepted British spelling of the Sylhet District. The Standard Bengali spelling of the name Sylheti is সিলেটি (Sileṭi). The Sylheti spelling is ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ or ছিলটি (Silôṭi).

History

SAMPLE TEXT:
Front page of a Nagari book titled Halat-un-Nabi, written in the mid-19th century by Sadeq Ali of Sylhet

In ancient literature, Sylhet was referred as Shilahat and Shilahatta.^[9] In the 19th century, the British tea-planters in the area referred to the vernacular spoken in Surma and Barak Valleys as Sylheti language.^[10] In Assam, the language is still referred to as Sylheti.

During the British colonial period, a Sylheti student by the name of Munshi Abdul Karim studying in London, England, after completing his education, spent several years in London and learned the printing trade. After returning home, he designed a woodblock type for Sylheti Nagari and founded the Islamia Press in Sylhet Town in about 1870. Other Sylheti presses were established in Sunamganj, Shillong and Kolkata. These presses fell out of use during the early 1970s.^[11][12] Since then, the Sylotinagri alphabet has been used mainly by linguists and academics.^[13] It gradually became very unpopular.^[14][15]

The script includes 5 independent vowels, 5 dependent vowels attached to a consonant letter and 27 consonants. The Sylheti abugida differs from the Bengali alphabet as it is a form of Kaithi, a script that belongs to the main group of North Indian scripts of Bihar.^[16] The writing system's main use was to record religious poetry, described as a rich language and easy to learn.^[17]

Campaigns started to rise in London during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s to recognise Sylheti as a language in its own right. During the mid-1970s, when the first mother-tongue classes were established for Bangladeshis by community activists, the classes were given in standard Bengali rather than the Sylheti dialect which triggered the campaign. During the 1980s, a recognition campaign for Sylheti took place in the area of Spitalfields, East End of London. One of the main organisations was the Bangladeshis' Educational Needs in Tower Hamlets (usually known by its acronym as BENTH). However this organisation collapsed in 1985 and with its demise, the pro-Sylheti campaign in the borough lost impetus. Nonetheless, Sylheti remains very widespread as a domestic language in working-class as well as upper-class Sylheti households in the United Kingdom.^[18]

Sylheti variation from Standard Bengali

Tone

Sylheti is a tonal language. The Indo-Aryan languages are not generally recognized for tone. There are two way tonal contrasts in Sylheti: the emergence of high tone in the vowels following the loss of aspiration, and a low tone elsewhere.^[19]

• at (ꠀꠔ) 'intestine'
• át (ꠀ’ꠔ) 'hand'
• xali (ꠇꠣꠟꠤ) 'ink'
• xáli (ꠈꠣꠟꠤ) 'empty'
• guṛa (ꠉꠥꠠꠣ) 'powder'
• gúṛa (ꠊꠥꠠꠣ) 'horse'
• suri (ꠌꠥꠞꠤ) 'theft'
• súri (ꠍꠥꠞꠤ) 'knife'
• zal (ꠎꠣꠟ) 'net, web'
• zál (ꠏꠣꠟ) 'punjent'
• ṭik (ꠐꠤꠇ) 'tick'
• ṭík (ꠑꠤꠇ) 'correct'
• ḍal (ꠒꠣꠟ) 'branch'
• ḍál (ꠓꠣꠟ) 'shield'
• tal (ꠔꠣꠟ) 'palmyra, rhythm'
• tál (ꠕꠣꠟ) 'plate'
• dan (ꠖꠣꠘ) 'donation'
• dán (ꠗꠣꠘ) 'paddy'
• ful (ꠙꠥꠟ) 'bridge'
• fúl (ꠚꠥꠟ) 'flower'
• bala (ꠛꠣꠟꠣ) 'bangle'
• bála (ꠜꠣꠟꠣ) 'good, welfare'
• bat (ꠛꠣꠔ) 'arthritis'
• bát (ꠜꠣꠔ) 'rice'

Sylheti continues to have a long history of coexisting with other Tibeto-Burman languages such as various dialects of Kokborok, Reang which are tonal in nature. Even though there is no clear evidence of direct borrowing of lexical items from those tonal languages into Sylheti, there is still a possibility that the emergence of Sylheti tones is due to an areal feature as the indigenous speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages by and large use Sylheti as a common medium for interaction.

Phonology

Sylheti is distinguished by its tonal characteristics and a wide range of fricative consonants corresponding to aspirated consonants in closely related languages and dialects such as Bengali; a lack of the breathy voiced stops; word-final stress; and a relatively large set of loanwords from Assamese, Standard Bengali and other Bengali dialects. Sylheti has affected the course of Standard Bengali in the rest of the state.

A notable characteristic of spoken Sylheti is the correspondence of the /ʜ/ (hereafter transliterated x), pronounced as an Voiceless epiglottal fricative to the [ʃ], or "sh", of Bengali, e.g.

References

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Sylheti phrasebook.

Sylheti phrasebook travel guide from Wikivoyage

• UK-Based Group that collects and republishes Sylheti literature