Sylheti language
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| Sylheti | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | India, Bangladesh |
| Region: | Asia |
| Total speakers: | 5,100,000 |
| Ranking: | See [1] (http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html) |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | |
| Regulated by: | not regulated |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | inc |
| ISO 639-2(B) | |
| SIL | SYL |
Sylheti is the language of Sylhet, the North Eastern province of Bangladesh and a few southern districts of Assam. It is also spoken by a significant population in the other north-eastern states of India. It is similar enough to Bengali to be considered a dialect, but is probably better seen as a separate language. Indeed it was formerly written in its own script, Sylheti Nagari, similar in style to Devanagari but significantly simpler. Now it is almost invariably written in Bengali script.
Sylheti is distinguished by a tendency to slur aspirated sounds and a vocabulary that is far more given to Arabic and Persian words than the 'standard' Bengali found in West Bengal. Sylheti is spoken by about 10% of Bangladeshis, but has affected the course of standard Bengali in the rest of the state.
External links
- UK-Based Group that collects and republishes Sylheti literature (http://www.sylheti.org.uk)
- Ethnologue entry (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SYL)
- A website to bring together sylhetis from all over the world (http://www.sylheti.com)
- Silchar, the capital of sylhetis in India (http://www.silchar.com)