Everything about Sylheti Language totally explained
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, 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's 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 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,
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.
(External Link
) There are over 10,000,000
(External Link) speakers of the language throughout the globe, including 8,000,000 speakers in Bangladesh.
(External Link)
Phonology
Writing system
There isn't an official way of writing in Sylheti.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sylheti Language'.
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