Sylheti

Sylheti or Syloti (ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ or ছিলটী Silôṭi) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, primarily spoken in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh, Northern part of Tripura, India and Barak Valley region of southern Assam, India.

Sylheti is often either considered a dialect of Bengali as well as a separate language due to significant differences between them all and lack of mutual intelligibility. On its own right, it is accepted as a separate language, however it has not been given an official status by the Government of Bangladesh. There is much debate to whether it should be recognized, for example there is greater differences of Sylheti to Bengali, than Assamese to Bengali, which is recognised as separate. Most Sylhetis are at least bilingual to some degree, as they are taught Bengali at all levels of education in Bangladesh. Sylhet was part of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa, and Sylheti has many common features with Assamese, including the existence of a larger set of fricatives than other East Indo-Aryan languages. According to George Abraham Grierson, "The inflections also differ from those of regular Bengali, and in one or two instances assimilate to those of Assamese". Indeed it was formerly written in its own script, Sylheti Nagari, similar in style to Kaithi but with differences, though nowadays it is almost invariably written in Bengali script. Though there is an incomplete mutual intelligibility, it shares a high proportion of vocabulary with Bengali at least 80% overlap.