Chittagonian language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Chittagonian চাটগাঁইয়া বুলি Chaţgãia Buli |
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| Spoken in: | Bangladesh, Myanmar | |
| Region: | Eastern South Asia | |
| Total speakers: | 14 million | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indic (Indo-Aryan) Magadhi Prakrit Apabhramsa Avahattha Bengali-Assamese Chittagonian |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | cit | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | — | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Chittagonian (চাটগাঁইয়া বুলি Chaţgãia Buli) is an Indo-European language spoken by the people of Chittagong in Bangladesh and in much of the southeast of the country. It is closely related to Bangla, but is normally considered by linguists to be a separate language and not a dialect of Bangla, as the two are not inherently mutually intelligible. It is estimated to have 14 million speakers, in Bangladesh as well as by expatriate and second generation Chittagonian Bengalis in the United Kingdom and other countries.
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[edit] Classification
Chittagonian is a member of the Bengali-Assamese sub-branch of the Eastern group of Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of the wider and more vast Indo-European language family. Its sister languages include Sylheti (Silôţi), Bengali (Bangla), Assamese (Ôxômiya), the Bihari languages, and also less directly all other Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi. Like other Indo-Aryan languages, it is derived from Sanskrit, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European.
[edit] Geographic distribution
Chittagonian is spoken in Southeastern Bangladesh throughout Chittagong Division but mainly in Chittagong District and Cox's Bazar District . It has an estimated number of around 14 million speakers in Bangladesh, and also in countries where many Chittagonians have migrated. It has no official status and is not taught at any level in schools. It is regarded by many Bangladeshis, including most Chittagonians, to be a crude form of Bangla, as all educated Chittagonians are schooled in Bangla.
Essentially, Chittagonian has no standard form and is rather a continuum of different dialects, varying with location from north to south and also by religion between Muslims (professed by most Chittagonians) and Hindus. Variation between Muslims and Hindus is strictly in terms of vocabulary, whereas by location, grammar is varied as well as vocabulary. The Rohingyas are a community of ethnically Bengali Muslims who spoke the Muslim dialect of Chittagonian Bengali and migrated to Arakan centuries ago.
[edit] Sounds/Phonology
[edit] Fricatives
Chittagonian is distinguished from Bangla by its large inventory of fricatives, which often correspond to stops in Bangla. For example, the Chittagonian voiceless velar fricative [x] (like the Arabic "kh" or German "ch") in [xabar] corresponds to the Bangla voiceless aspirated velar stop [kʰ], and the Chittagonian voiceless labiodental fricative [f] corresponds to the Bangla voiceless aspirated bilabial stop [pʰ]. Some of these pronunciations are used in eastern dialects of Bangla as well.
[edit] Nasal vowels
Nasalization of vowels is contrastive in Chittagonian, as with other Eastern Indic languages. A word can change its meaning solely by changing an oral vowel into a nasal vowel, as in ar "and" vs. ãr "my". Below are examples of Chittagonian phrases that include nasal vowels.
How are you: -Tũi ken aso?
I am fine: -Ãi gom asi.
Where are you: -Tũi honde?
What's your name: -Tõar nam ki?
My name is Abul: -Ãr nam Abul.
I miss you: -Tõar lai ãr fed furer?
I love you: -Ãi tõare valobasi.
[edit] Grammar
Chittagonian grammar is similar to that of Bangla, with significant variations in inflectional morphology (prefixes, suffixes, particles, etc.), and some variation in word order.
Like related languages of the eastern Subcontinent, Chittagonian is a head-final language, with Subject-Object-Verb basic word order. Like Assamese (Ôxômiya) but unlike Bengali (Bangla), Chittagonian has preverbal negation. This means that the negative particle will precede the verb in Chittagonian, where the corresponding Bangla version would have a negative particle following the verb.
[edit] Vocabulary/Lexis
Most of the vocabulary of Chittagonian, like Bangla is derived from Sanskrit. It also, like Bengali, includes a significant number of imported words from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, as well as, to a lesser extent, Portuguese. In addition, English words are widely used in spoken Chittagonian, just as it is in almost all other Indian languages, as a result of the legacy of the British Empire. Although much of the vocabulary of Chittagonian Bengali is the same as standard Bangla, there are several distinguishing features. The contribution of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words to Chittagonian Bengali is far greater than that to standard. This is due to the fact that Chittagong was a port city that was open to traders from Arabia, Persia and Turkey since ancient times, naturally absorbing their words. This is also meant that Chittagonians were amongst the first to convert to Islam and consequently, as Muslims, they were further influenced by Arabic, Persian, and Turkish vocabulary, as these were the languages spoken by the Muslims of the time, especially the traders. Among Europeans, the Portuguese colonists were amongst the first to reach Bengal, and Chittagong as a port city, was for a time under the administration of the Portuguese. This has meant that there is a larger proportion of Portuguese loanwords in the usage of Chittagonian speakers than that of standard Bengali speakers.
[edit] Writing system
Chittagonian is an unwritten language. Most literate Chittagonians read and write in Bengali using the Bengali script. In the past, Chittagonian has been written in the Arabic script. The Rohingya dialect of Chittagonian is sometimes written using the Roman alphabet, in a variant known as Rohingyalish. Rohingya, too, was once written with the Arabic alphabet.
