Sylheti language
Sylheti (Sylheti: ছিলটী/Bengali: সিলেটী) is an Indo-European language, primarily spoken in the Sylhet region of north east Bangladesh and Barak Valley region of south Assam. It has commonly been regarded as a dialect of Bengali, with which it shares a high proportion of vocabulary (Spratt and Spratt (1987) report 70% shared vocabulary, while Chalmers (1996) reports at least 80%). However, even words counted as the same (e.g. the Sylheti haf (“snake”) and aiz (“today”) vs. the corresponding Standard Bengali shap, aj) are pronounced differently as to make Sylhet not inherently intelligible with Bengali.
Up to the end of British rule and the Partition of India in 1947, the religious mix of the Sylhet region, then part of Assam, was approximately equally split between Hindus and Muslims, but since then the part of the Sylhet region remained in Bangladesh is now over 80% Muslim. Muslims speak a significantly different form of Sylheti to Hindus. Firstly, Muslims use a large proportion of words and phrases borrowed from Persian and Arabic, and secondly, pronunciation is often different such as the “k” which Muslims usually pronounce as a rough fricative but with Hindus is usually hard.
The Sylheti language is related to both Assamese and Bengali, but is distinct from both. Modern Sylheti appears to be identical to the language described by Grierson (1928) under the name “Bengali of Cachar” and listed as language number 548; Cachar was the name of the region of Assam bordering Sylhet District to the east, now referred to as the Barak Valley. Sylheti shares many features of rural East Bengali dialects generally, and retains many words and forms which in Standard Bengali are restricted to poetry or are obsolete.
Sylheti Nagari or Syloti Nagri (Silôṭi Nagôri) is the original script used for writing the Sylheti language. It is an almost extinct script, this is because the Sylheti Language itself was reduced to only dialect status after Bangladesh gained independence and because it did not make sense for a dialect to have its own script, its use was heavily discouraged. The government of the newly formed Bangladesh did so to promote a greater “Bengali” identity. This led to the informal adoption of the Eastern Nagari script also used for Bengali and Assamese. It is also known as Jalalabadi Nagri, Mosolmani Nagri, Ful Nagri etc.
In the 19th century, the British tea-planters in the area referred to the Sylheti language as Sylhettia.[3] In Assam, the language is still referred to as Srihattiya, the name used in ancient literature.[4] The Sylheti language was written in the Syloti Nagri script, which is not widely known.[5][6] Sylhet has a rich heritage of literature in the Syloti Nagri Script, (or just नागरी, Nāgrī, the name of its parent writing system) going back at least 6000 years. The Sylheti-Nagari Script is found in Kalika Puranas and in the time of Mahabharata,when Sylhet was a part of Bhagadatta’s Pragjyotishpur Kingdom.The script includes 5 independent vowels, 5 dependent vowels attached to a consonant letter and 27 consonants. The Syloti Nagri alphasyllabary differs from the Bengali alphabets as it is a form of Kaithi, a script (or family of scripts) which belongs to the main group of North Indian scripts of Bihar.[7] The writing system’s main use was to record religious poetry, described as a rich language and easy to learn.[8] In the 1860s, a Sylheti by the name of Moulvi Abdul Karim spent several years in Europe and learnt the printing trade. After returning home, he designed a woodblock type for the Syloti Nagri alphabet and founded the Islamia Press in Sylhet Town in about 1870. Other Sylheti presses were established in Sunamganj, Shillong and Calcutta. These presses fell out of use during the early 1970s. Since then the Syloti-Nagri alphabet has been used mainly by linguists and academics.[9] During the 1971 Liberation War, when all Syloti Nagri printing presses were destroyed, the writing system came to a halt. After Bangladesh gained independence, the government of the newly formed Bangladesh mandated Bengali studies and the use of the Bengali alphabets as a curriculum to be taught at all levels of education. Efforts to establish Sylheti as a modern language were vigorously opposed by political and cultural forces allied to successive Bangladeshi governments.[10]
Campaigns started to rise in London during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s to recognise Sylheti as a language on its own right. During the mid-1970s, when the first mother-tongue classes were established for Bangladeshis by a non-Sylheti, Nurul Islam, the classes were given in 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 organisation was the Bangladeshis’ Educational Needs in Tower Hamlets (BENTH). However this organisation collapesed in 1985 and ended the pro-Sylheti campaign in the borough. Nonetheless Sylheti remained dominant and the domestic language within the hamlet. This fact is being recognised by Tower Hamlets Council in the provision of local services in the community.[11]
Number of speakers
Sylheti, is spoken by almost all the peoples of Greater Sylhet (Surma Valley and Barak Valley),Shillong,(almost in East Khasi Hills,West Khasi Hills,Ri-Bhoi & Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya),Guwahati, Nagaoan, Sarupatar , Biswanath Charialli, and some parts of Kolkata(Garia,Jadavpur, Santoshpur,Lake Town & Birati areas) A proper linguistic survey has not been carried out, at least in recent times. Published figures are at best guesswork. The figures of 5 million given by Spratt and Spratt (1987) and 7 million by Chalmers (1996) refer to Sylhetis in Bangladesh only. Our own (STAR) rough estimate is 10 million, based partly on information from a number of Sylheti community leaders and writers:
- Sylhet Division of Bangladesh recorded 6.7 million in the 1991 census. Assuming a 2% per annum growth since then brings the population to 8.0 million in 2000, of whom, say, 7 million are Sylheti speakers.
- Assam, particularly the Barak Valley region around Karimganj and Silchar, may have another 2 million Sylheti speakers. Prior to 1947, Sylhet District then in the State of Assam consisted of five administrative sub-districts of which four make up the present-day Sylhet Division of Bangladesh, and the fifth, Karimganj, now falls inside Assam in India. The Barak Valley region experienced heavy immigration from Sylhet during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- The ‘diaspora’ has more than 1 million people: over 300,000 in the UK, possibly 500,000 in USA/Canada, 150,000 in the Middle East, 300,000 in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and over 150,000 in India.
Used to write:
Sylheti, an eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 10 million in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh and in parts of India. Sylheti is closely related to Bengali (Bangla) and most speakers are bilingual in Sylheti and Bengali.
Note
- The dvisvara sign can attach to consonants to form the diphthong /oi/ with the inherent vowel, or it can also combine with dependent or independent vowels to form other diphthongs. Those diphthongs can also be written with the independent vowel i.
Bengali alphabet for Sylheti
Latin alphabet for Sylheti
Information about the Sylheti scripts and pronunciation compiled or corrected by Wolfram Siegel
Links
Information about Syloti-Nagri alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylheti_Nagari
Syloti-Nagri fonts
http://www.sylheti.org.uk/page5.html
http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_SylotiNagri.html
Sylheti Translation and Research – a London-based research organisation dedicated to studying the folk literature of the Sylhet region of Bangladesh: http://www.sylheti.org.uk
Sylhet Nagri Texts Documentation Archive
http://www.compcon-asso.in/projects/sylhet/
http://www.compcon-asso.in/projects/sylhet/manuscripts/
Bengali and Sylheti Language Services
http://www.bengaliandsylheti.com
-Mridul Nandy ,Convenor of Sylheti Youth Welfare Association
sylhetiyouthwelfareassociation 