A'Tong language
| Atong | |
|---|---|
| Native to | India, Bangladesh |
| Region | India, State of Meghalaya and adjacent areas in Bangladesh |
|
Native speakers
|
(undated figure of 10,000, 4,600 in India) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | aton1241 |
Atong is a Sino-Tibetan language related to Koch, Rabha, Bodo and Garo. It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India, southern Kamrup district in Assam, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The correct spelling "Atong" is based on the way the speakers themselves pronounce the name of their language. There is no glottal stop in the name and it is not a tonal language.
There is no current estimate of the number of speakers available; according to the Linguistic Survey of India, it was spoken by approximately 15,000 people in the 1920s. Because the Atong consider themselves, and are considered by the Garos to be a sub-tribe of the Garos; they are not counted as a separate ethnic or linguistic community by the Indian government.
Almost all Atong speakers are bilingual in Garo to a greater or lesser extent. Garo is seen as a more prestigious language. Because there is a Bible translation in Garo, but not in Atong, it is the language used in all churches and most Atong speakers are Christians. Garo is also the language of education in schools in the Atong-speaking area, although some schools provide education in English.
A reference grammar of the language has been published by Seino van Breugel. An Atong–English dictionary and a book of stories in Atong are published by and available at the Tura Book Room.
The phonemes of Atong are given in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) in Table 1. That table also presents how the phonemes are written in the Atong alphabet used for everyday writing by people who are not linguists. As we can see in the table, the glottal stop can be written with either a raised dot or an apostrophe. The raised dot ⟨•⟩ was used by missionaries to write the glottal stop in Garo when the writing system for that language was created in the 1800s. The apostrophe is an easier way to write the glottal stop, because it is available on all computer keyboards. The vowel phoneme /ə/ is written ⟨y⟩ in the orthography, as it is in Khasi and Welsh. It was the Welsh Presbyterians that developed the Khasi writing system and used the letter ⟨y⟩ to write the phoneme /ə/ in Khasi.
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