Bangla vs Sylheti: Between two hearts

Bengali, or Bangla, the language that dominates over a considerable area of land on the western side of India is definitely a multi-faced phenomenon; though a language that comes under the same umbrella, but it’s forms do vary and that too up to a considerable extent. Sylheti is one of the many languages that’s often considered a language different from Bengali, the reason behind being it’s a language though mutually intelligible with neighboring dialects of Bengali, a native speaker of Standard Bengali would hardly understand them. An example would clarify the situation further: what is Baritey dakaat porechey (bandits broke into the house) in Bangla becomes  ‘aarnit dahait hoirsey in Sylheti (the dialect of Sylhet district of Bangladesh). And that makes many consider Sylheti as a different language altogether and much less a form of Bangla. A clear case of metamorphosis, if we need to assign it a scientific term. The cause? A mix-match of the marginal dialects of pure Bangla with the neighboring forms.

Religion also has a part to play in it; since Hindus and followers of Islam differ a lot when it comes to using the language (and Bangladesh is a country predominantly Muslim), an extensive development of Bangla took place with plentiful influx of the Arabic, the Persian and the Turkish vocabulary. Thus, the impact increased well up to a degree in the language of the Muslim rural masses of East Bengal that they retained even after the partition in 1947. The difference can be largely noted in respect of certain words that refer to relatives, food, drinks and daily household items; for example, while Hindus use Sanskrit and Bangla words like Jol (water), Baba (father) etc, Muslims use Urdu and Arabic words like pani and abba. However, there exists a sharp contrast in regions like Jessore, where the dialect is more or less the same as in normal or native Bangla. But it must also be noted that the differentiation lies in the case of spoken Bangla only; written Bangla is more polished and sophisticated if compared to the standards maintained at West Bengal.

Till now we presented an overall idea of how the dialects differ; the following data is going to differentiate between the two on a technical basis.

It is mainly the affricates and the fricatives that mark the primary difference between the Sylheti dialect and standard Bangla; while Sylheti embraces fricatives contrary to the Kolkata dialect, the latter uses the same words in an affricated form. Though Assamese has the same influences, but it’s not as prominent as much as in Sylheti, which is the most extreme type.

For Sylheti translation by native translator contact www.indianscripts.com

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