Hajong language
| Hajong | |
|---|---|
| Hajong Bhasa | |
| Native to | India, Bangladesh |
| Region | Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal |
|
Native speakers
|
63,000 (2001 census) 8,000 in Bangladesh (no date) |
|
Mixed
|
|
| Assamese script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | hajo1238 |
Hajong, originally a Tibeto-Burman language, is now considered an Indo-Aryan language with Tibeto-Burman roots. It is spoken by more than 175,000 ethnic Hajongs in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal in India and the Mymensingh District in Bangladesh. It is written in the Assamese script and the Latin script. It has many Sanskrit loan words. The Hajongs originally spoke a Tibeto-Burman language, but it was largely mixed with Assamese and Bengali.
The language spoken by the Hajong people now may be considered an Indo-Aryan language, this is due to language shift from a Tibeto-Burman language. Old Hajong or Khati Hajong may have been related to Garo or Bodo languages.
The Hajong Language varies within the clans because of regional variations. There are five notable clans of the Hajong people.
The Hajong language is written using both the Latin and the Assamese scripts. Although both of these scripts are in use in India, the Hajongs in Bangladesh expect to use the Bengali script since most education is in Bengali medium. Often, for writing Hajong, the Assamese script is used. In each script, there is one added unique symbol for the close, back, unrounded vowel /ɯ/. In Latin script, it is written with "â" or simply uh. In Bengali script with "অৗ" or "কৗ" when it is syllable final.
Hajong has 23 consonant phonemes, 8 vowel phonemes, and 2 approximants which have some characteristics of consonants namely /w/ and /j/ which act as diphthongs. The vowel phonemes are /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /æ/, /o/, /ǒ/ and /ɯ/ (close, back, unrounded). Unlike other indo-Aryan languages, Hajong language has only one 'i' and 'u'. It is somewhat ambiguous whether the final vowel is a phoneme or an allophone of [a] in the environment of other close vowels. The extra vowel /ɯ/ is not present in other Indo-Aryan languages, but is typical for the Tibeto-Burman family. The phonology of Hajong includes some vowel harmony and the devoicing of final consonants.For separating syllables the apostrophe sign (') or hyphen (-) is used.
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