Assamese language


Assamese, also Asamiya, is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It is the easternmost Indo-European language, spoken by over 14 million speakers, and serves as a lingua franca in the region.
Nefamese is an Assamese-based pidgin used in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in Nagaland. The Kamtapuri language of Rangpur division of Bangladesh and Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts of India are linguistically closer to Assamese, though the speakers identify with the Bengali culture and the literary language. In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century.
Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Assamese evolved at least before 7th century CE from the middle Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit, which developed from dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Vedic Sanskrit.
Its sister languages include Angika, Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Chakma, Chittagonian, Hajong, Rajbangsi, Maithili, Rohingya and Sylheti. It is written in the Assamese alphabet, an abugida system, from left to right, with many typographic ligatures.

History

Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though the exact nature of its origin and growth is not clear yet. It is generally believed that Assamese and the Kamatapuri lects derive from the Kamarupi dialect of Eastern Magadhi Prakrit that kept to the north of the Ganges; though some authors contest a close connection of Assamese with Magadhi Prakrit. Assamese developed from Indo-Aryan settlements of Kamarupa—in urban centers and along the Brahmaputra river surrounded by Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic communities. Kakati's assertion that Assamese has an Austroasiatic substrate is generally accepted — which suggests that when the Indo-Aryan centers formed in the 4th-5th centuries CE, there were substantial Austroasiatic speakers that later accepted the Indo-Aryan vernacular. The Indo-Aryan vernacular in Kamarupa had differentiated itself from the original vernacular by the 7th-century, before it did in Bengal or Orissa, as observed by Xuanzang the Chinese traveler. These changes were likely due to non-Indo-Aryan speakers adopting the language. The evidence of the newly differentiated vernacular is found in the Prakritisms present in the Sanskrit of the Kamarupa inscriptions from which eventually Assamese emerged.
The earliest forms of Assamese in literature are found in the ninth-century Buddhist verses called Charyapada, and in 12-14th century works of Ramai Pundit, Boru Chandidas, Sukur Mamud, Durllava Mullik and Bhavani Das. In these works, Assamese features coexist with features from other Modern Indian Languages.
A fully distinguished literary form appeared first in the 13th-century — in the courts of the Kamata kingdom, where Hema Sarasvati created the poem Prahrāda Carita. In the 14th-century, Madhava Kandali translated the Ramayana into Assamese in the court of Mahamanikya, a Bodo-Kachari king from central Assam. From the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, songs – Borgeets, dramas – Ankiya Naat and the first prose writings were composed. The literary language moved to the court of the Ahom kingdom in the seventeenth century, where it became the state language. This period saw the widespread development of standardised prose in Buranjis, infused with Arabic and Persian elements.
According to, this included "the colloquial prose of religious biographies, the archaic prose of magical charms, the conventional prose of utilitarian literature on medicine, astrology, arithmetic, dance and music, and above all the standardised prose of the Buranjis. The literary language, having become infused with the eastern idiom, became the standard literary form in the nineteenth century, when the British adopted it for state purposes. As the political and commercial center shifted to Guwahati after the mid-twentieth century, the literary form moved away from the eastern variety to take its current form.

Geographical distribution

Assamese is native to Brahmaputra Valley consisting of western and eastern Assam. It is also spoken in states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Presence of Assamese script can be found in Rakhine state of present Myanmar. Pashupati temple in Nepal also have inscription in Assamese showing its influence and prosperity in the past. There are also significant Assamese-speaking diaspora worldwide.

Official status

Assamese is the official language of Assam, and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India. The Assam Secretariat functions in Assamese.

Phonology

The Assamese phonemic inventory consists of eight vowels, ten diphthongs, and twenty-three consonants.

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters in Assamese include thirty-three pure consonant letters in the Assamese alphabet. Each letter represents a single sound with an inherent vowel, the short vowel.
The first twenty-five consonants letters are called sparxa barna. These sparxa barnas are again divided into five bargas. Therefore, these twenty-five letters are also called "bargia barna".

Alveolar stops

The Assamese phoneme inventory is unique in the Indic group of languages in its lack of a dental-retroflex distinction among the coronal stops as well as the lack of postalveolar affricates and fricatives. Historically, the dental and retroflex series merged into alveolar stops. This makes Assamese resemble non-Indic languages of Northeast India. The only other language to have fronted retroflex stops into alveolars is the closely related eastern dialects of Bengali. Note that is normally realised as or as a retroflex approximant.

Voiceless velar fricative

Assamese and Sylheti are unusual among Eastern Indo-Aryan languages for the presence of the and a uvular pronunciations, depending on the speaker and speech register), historically the MIA sibilant has lenited to and . The derivation of the velar fricative from the coronal sibilant is evident in the name of the language in Assamese; some Assamese prefer to write or instead of or to reflect the sound change. The voiceless velar fricative is absent in the West Goalpariya dialects though it is found in lesser extent in East Goalpariya and Kamrupi, otherwise used extensively further east. The change of to and then to has been attributed to Tibeto-Burman influence by Dr. Chatterjee.

Velar nasal

Assamese, Odia, and Bengali, in contrast to other Indo-Aryan languages, use the velar nasal extensively. In many languages, while the velar nasal is commonly restricted to preceding velar sounds, in Assamese it can occur intervocalically. This is another feature it shares with other languages of Northeast India, though in Assamese the velar nasal never occurs word-initially.

Vowel inventory

Eastern Indic languages like Assamese, Bengali, Sylheti, and Odia do not have a vowel length distinction, but have a wide set of back rounded vowels. In the case of Assamese, there are four back rounded vowels that contrast phonemically, as demonstrated by the minimal set: কলা kôla , ক'লা kola , কোলা kûla , and কুলা kula . The near-close near-back rounded vowel is unique in this branch of the language family. But in lower Assam, ও is pronounced same as অ' which is also correct. কোলা kola মোৰ mor
Vowel harmony
Assamese has vowel harmony. The vowels and cause the preceding mid vowels and the high back vowels to change to and and respectively. Assamese is one of the few languages spoken in India which exhibit a systematic process of vowel harmony

Writing system

Modern Assamese uses the Assamese script, and in the medieval times, the script came in three varieties: Bamuniya, Garhgaya, Kaitheli/Lakhari, which developed from the Kamarupi script. It very closely resembles the Mithilakshar script of the Maithili language, as well as the Bengali script. There is a strong literary tradition from early times. Examples can be seen in edicts, land grants and copper plates of medieval kings. Assam had its own manuscript writing system on the bark of the saanchi tree in which religious texts and chronicles were written, as opposed to the pan-Indian system of Palm leaf manuscript writing. The present-day spellings in Assamese are not necessarily phonetic. Hemkosh, the second Assamese dictionary, introduced spellings based on Sanskrit, which are now the standard.
In the early 1970s, it was agreed upon that the Roman script was to be the standard writing system for Nagamese Creole.

Morphology and grammar

The Assamese language has the following characteristic morphological features:
Verbs in Assamese are negated by adding before the verb, with picking up the initial vowel of the verb. For example:
Assamese has a large collection of classifiers, which are used extensively for different kinds of objects, acquired from the Sino-Tibetan languages. A few examples of the most extensive and elaborate use of classifiers are given below:
ClassifierReferentExamples
males manuh-zɔn
females manuh-zɔni, sɔrai-zɔni
honorifickobi-zɔna, gʊxai-zɔna
males and females manuh-ɡɔɹaki, rastrɔpɔti-gɔɹaki
inanimate objects or males of animals and men manuh-tʊ, gɔɹu-tʊ
inanimate objects or infantskesua-ti
for counting numeralse-ta, du-ta
flat square or rectangular objects, big or small, long or short
terrain like rivers and mountains
small objects
group of people, cattle; also for rain; cyclone
breeze
objects that are thin, flat, wide or narrow.
flowers
objects that are solid
mass nouns
bundles of objects
smaller bundles of objects
broomlike objects
wick-like objects
with earthen lamp or old style kerosene lamp used in Assam
objects like trees and shrubs
paper and leaf-like objects
uncountable mass nouns and pronouns
inanimate flexible/stiff or oblong objects; humans

In Assamese, classifiers are generally used in the numeral + classifier + noun or the noun + numeral + classifier forms.

Nominalization

Most verbs can be converted into nouns by the addition of the suffix. For example, can be converted to .

Grammatical cases

Assamese has 8 grammatical cases:
CasesSuffixExampleLiteral English translationNormal English translationNote
Absolutivenoneবাৰীত গৰু সোমাল।
Garden-LOC cattle-ABS enteredCattles entered into the garden.
Ergative-এ, -ই
গৰুৱে ঘাঁহ খায়।
Cattle-ERG grass-ACC eat-Cattles eat grass.The personal pronouns without a plural or other suffix are not marked.
Accusative-ক, −
১. শিয়ালটোৱে শহাটোক খেদি আছে।
২. তেওঁলোকে চোৰটো পুলিচক গতালে।
1. Jackal-the-ERG hare-the-ACC chasing exist-.
2. They thief-the-ACC police-ACC handover--.		1. The jackal is chasing the hare.
2. They handed over the thief to the police.
Genitive-ৰ
তাইৰ ঘৰ
she-GEN houseHer house
Dative-লৈ ; -ক
loi ; -		১. সি পঢ়াশালিলৈ গৈ আছে।
২. বাক চাবিটো দিয়া।
1. He school-DAT going exist-
2. Eldersister-DAT key-the-ACC give-.		1. He is going to school.
2. Give elder sister the key.
Terminative-লৈকে
loi
re
১. সি বহীখনত লিখিছে।
২. আইতা মঙলবাৰে আহিছিল।
1. He notebook-the-LOC write--.
2. Grandmother Tuesday-LOC come--.		1. He has written on the notebook.
2. Grandmother came on Tuesday.

Pronouns

m=male, f=female, n=neuter., *=the person or object is near., **=the person or object is far., v =very familiar, inferior, f=familiar, p=polite, e=ergative form.

Tense

With consonant ending verb likh and vowel ending verb kha.
StemLikh, Kha
GerundLikha, khüa
CausativeLikha, khua
ConjugativeLikhi, Khai & Kha
InfinitiveLikhibo, Khabo
GoalLikhiboloi, Khaboloi
TerminativeLikhiboloike, Khaboloike
AgentiveLikhüta ⁿᵖ/Likhüra ᵐⁱ/Likhüri ᶠⁱ, Khaüta ⁿᵖ/Khaüra ᵐⁱ/Khaüri ᶠⁱ
ConverbLikhüte, Khaüte
ProgressiveLikhüte likhüte, Khaüte khaüte
ReasonLikhat, Khüat
Likhilot, Khalot
ConditionalLikhile, Khale
PerfectiveLikhi, Khai
HabitualLikhi likhi, Khai khai

For different types of verbs.

Relationship suffixes

Dialects

Regional dialects

The language has quite a few regional variations. Banikanta Kakati identified two broad dialects which he named Eastern and Western dialects, of which the eastern dialect is homogeneous, and prevalent to the east of Guwahati, and the western dialect is heterogeneous. However, recent linguistic studies have identified four dialect groups listed below from east to west:

Samples

Collected from the book, Assamese – Its formation and development. The translations are of different versions of the English translations:

Non-regional dialects

Assamese does not have caste- or occupation-based dialects. In the nineteenth century, the Eastern dialect became the standard dialect because it witnessed more literary activity and it was more uniform from east of Guwahati to Sadiya, whereas the western dialects were more heterogeneous. Since the nineteenth century, the center of literary activity has shifted to Guwahati; as a result, the standard dialect has evolved considerably away from the largely rural Eastern dialects and has become more urban and acquired western dialectal elements. Most literary activity takes place in this dialect, and is often called the likhito-bhaxa, though regional dialects are often used in novels and other creative works.
In addition to the regional variants, sub-regional, community-based dialects are also prevalent, namely:
There is a growing and strong body of literature in this language. The first characteristics of this language are seen in the Charyapadas composed in between the eighth and twelfth centuries. The first examples emerged in writings of court poets in the fourteenth century, the finest example of which is Madhav Kandali's Saptakanda Ramayana. The popular ballad in the form of Ojapali is also regarded as well-crafted. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a flourishing of Vaishnavite literature, leading up to the emergence of modern forms of literature in the late nineteenth century.

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Assamese of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Assamese in Assamese alphabet
Assamese in Romanization system 1
Assamese in Romanization system 2
Assamese in the International Phonetic Alphabet
Gloss
Translation