So, to start off the blog, the first language I've picked is Assamese. A language that isn't usually spoken much outside the North East, Assamese is natively spoken by around 15 million people, in the Indian state of Assam. It is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, deriving from the historical Magadhi Prakrit that modern Bengali, Oriya and other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages descend from. It also forms the base of Nagamese creole, since Naga tribes speak mutually unintelligible dialects, and required a common language, a lingua franca. It's also spoken as a second language by many tribes in Assam, who form around 12 % of the population of Assam.
Now, rather than talk about the language in depth, I'd like to focus on what I feel are the most interesting features of Assamese, things that set it totally apart from the standard forms of other Indo Aryan languages.
(To clarify, the examples used will be of standard Assamese, and the examples of other languages will be of their respective standard forms.)
Assamese, and Bengali, are unlike Hindi written Devanagari when it comes to orthography. Hindi has a very phonemic orthography, which means that there is a high correspondence with what is written and what is pronounced. There are a few exceptions of course, but for the most part it's phonemic. Assamese's spelling conventions, especially for larger, technical words, are based off the Sanskrit spelling, however the pronunciation varies greatly from the 'Indic' or Sanskritic standard pronunciations. I'll get back to that later.
However, a note: Since Assamese isn't written phonemically, it's a bit ambiguous which is the 'correct' pronunciation in daily speech, to non native speakers. What I mean is that, like in Hindi or Urdu, there is a formal, prestige pronunciation which might be the ideal in certain usages and contexts. Keep this in mind for the rest of the examples in this post.
The first feature, in which it shares with Bengali, is the loss of vowel length. There is no long or short vowel distinction in Assamese (or Bengali), but it is represented in the writing/orthography because the writing is based on the Sanskritic system and orthography. In contrast, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi etc still have phonemic vowel length. Also, the short or inherent a sound would be pronounced with a round 'o' sound that I will represent with ô. This would mean that names represented in transliteration reflecting the Sanskritic pronunciation like Kārtik, Ānand, Pūjā, Nīlam, would actually be pronounced as Kartik, Anônd, Puja, Nilôm in Assamese and Bengali.
Now to specifically focus on features of Assamese.
A specific feature Assamese unique to the language, that I find especially interesting, something very out of place by the standard (mainstream Indo Aryan and Dravidian) Indian languages, is the loss of distinction between dental and retroflex plosive consonants. The dentals are त,थ,द,ध,न, vs retroflex consonants, ट ,ठ ,ड ,ढ , ण in Devanagari. In Assamese, the counterparts for the two sets would be pronounced the same - as their dental versions. So, a hypothetical, made up word word that could be transliterated from its Sanskritic orthography as Ṭūḍhāda, would actually be pronounced Tudhadô in Assamese. Assuming the word existed, of course, but the phonological changes in the example still are valid.
Moving along to more consonants. To illustrate all of them at once, here's the sequence of standard Indic sounds (the ka kha ga gha sequence we were taught in school) compared to its Assamese version, using Assamese pronunciation.
The one on the left holds good for Hindi, Sanskrit, and even Dravidian languages like Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. Since it's the Sanskrit form, and all Indic scripts are derived from the Sanskrit form (even the Dravidian ones), it remains the standard. The one on the right, the native Assamese pronunciations, are highly divergent! For example, going by this chart, it would seem that cāī, or tea, would be pronounced sai in Assamese. And apparently, it is the case. Names in Sanskrit like Śaṅkar, Saṅgītā, Cāndinī, Śāradā, Jananī would be natively pronounced Xôṅkôr, Xôṅgita, Sandini, Xarôda, Zônôni going by this.
What exactly is this x sound? It sounds like a forceful h sound, from the back of the throat - like the ch in loch, or the stereotypical kh in Arabic (which is present in Urdu, too - khud, khwāb) or even the ch in German. It can even be a normal h in some positions of the letter. And oddly enough for Indic, they replace the usual 's/sh' sounds.
I can't think of any other Indic language with this feature, or even any divergence from the 's/sh' standard that those sounds represent in Sanskrit - at most you have the 'rural', 'uneducated' replacement of 'sh' with 's', but that's hardly divergence, rather a simplification of the existing sound. Hell, even 'Assam' is natively pronounced Ôxôm and the language and people, Ôxômiya. For those of us used to the Sanskritic pronunciations this can be very throwing off and strange.
C being pronounced as s makes for words like xôs, which would be sac in Hindi (truth), axa, which would be āśā (Hope) in Sanskrit/standard Indic, and dôx is ten, similar to das in Hindi. Using names as examples again, Jīvan, Jhārkhaṇḍ ,Cetan, Chavi would be Zivôn, Zharkhônd, Setôn, Shôbi. (Notice the lack of retroflex sounds in Zharkhônd!)
However, shifts of c, ch, j, jh are not actually rare - They also occur in Marathi, Konkani, and Nepali, which have a combined native speaking population of around 102 million people (loosely). The shift of 's/sh', however, is still pretty rare - AFAIK Assamese is the only language with it.
As a recap, here are more examples. Assamese on the left, and standard Indic equivalents on the right, and the meanings on the right.
Now, rather than talk about the language in depth, I'd like to focus on what I feel are the most interesting features of Assamese, things that set it totally apart from the standard forms of other Indo Aryan languages.
(To clarify, the examples used will be of standard Assamese, and the examples of other languages will be of their respective standard forms.)
Assamese, and Bengali, are unlike Hindi written Devanagari when it comes to orthography. Hindi has a very phonemic orthography, which means that there is a high correspondence with what is written and what is pronounced. There are a few exceptions of course, but for the most part it's phonemic. Assamese's spelling conventions, especially for larger, technical words, are based off the Sanskrit spelling, however the pronunciation varies greatly from the 'Indic' or Sanskritic standard pronunciations. I'll get back to that later.
However, a note: Since Assamese isn't written phonemically, it's a bit ambiguous which is the 'correct' pronunciation in daily speech, to non native speakers. What I mean is that, like in Hindi or Urdu, there is a formal, prestige pronunciation which might be the ideal in certain usages and contexts. Keep this in mind for the rest of the examples in this post.
The first feature, in which it shares with Bengali, is the loss of vowel length. There is no long or short vowel distinction in Assamese (or Bengali), but it is represented in the writing/orthography because the writing is based on the Sanskritic system and orthography. In contrast, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi etc still have phonemic vowel length. Also, the short or inherent a sound would be pronounced with a round 'o' sound that I will represent with ô. This would mean that names represented in transliteration reflecting the Sanskritic pronunciation like Kārtik, Ānand, Pūjā, Nīlam, would actually be pronounced as Kartik, Anônd, Puja, Nilôm in Assamese and Bengali.
Now to specifically focus on features of Assamese.
A specific feature Assamese unique to the language, that I find especially interesting, something very out of place by the standard (mainstream Indo Aryan and Dravidian) Indian languages, is the loss of distinction between dental and retroflex plosive consonants. The dentals are त,थ,द,ध,न, vs retroflex consonants, ट ,ठ ,ड ,ढ , ण in Devanagari. In Assamese, the counterparts for the two sets would be pronounced the same - as their dental versions. So, a hypothetical, made up word word that could be transliterated from its Sanskritic orthography as Ṭūḍhāda, would actually be pronounced Tudhadô in Assamese. Assuming the word existed, of course, but the phonological changes in the example still are valid.
Moving along to more consonants. To illustrate all of them at once, here's the sequence of standard Indic sounds (the ka kha ga gha sequence we were taught in school) compared to its Assamese version, using Assamese pronunciation.
ka kha ga gha ṅa / kô khô gô ghô ṅô
ca cha ja jha ña / sô shô zô zhô jô
ṭa
ṭha
ḍa
ḍha
ṇa / tô thô dô dhô nô
ta tha da dha na / tô thô dô dhô nô
pa pha ba bha ma / pô phô bô bhô mô
ya ra la va / zô rô lô wô-bô
śa
ṣa sa ha / xô xô xô hô
The one on the left holds good for Hindi, Sanskrit, and even Dravidian languages like Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. Since it's the Sanskrit form, and all Indic scripts are derived from the Sanskrit form (even the Dravidian ones), it remains the standard. The one on the right, the native Assamese pronunciations, are highly divergent! For example, going by this chart, it would seem that cāī, or tea, would be pronounced sai in Assamese. And apparently, it is the case. Names in Sanskrit like Śaṅkar, Saṅgītā, Cāndinī, Śāradā, Jananī would be natively pronounced Xôṅkôr, Xôṅgita, Sandini, Xarôda, Zônôni going by this.
What exactly is this x sound? It sounds like a forceful h sound, from the back of the throat - like the ch in loch, or the stereotypical kh in Arabic (which is present in Urdu, too - khud, khwāb) or even the ch in German. It can even be a normal h in some positions of the letter. And oddly enough for Indic, they replace the usual 's/sh' sounds.
I can't think of any other Indic language with this feature, or even any divergence from the 's/sh' standard that those sounds represent in Sanskrit - at most you have the 'rural', 'uneducated' replacement of 'sh' with 's', but that's hardly divergence, rather a simplification of the existing sound. Hell, even 'Assam' is natively pronounced Ôxôm and the language and people, Ôxômiya. For those of us used to the Sanskritic pronunciations this can be very throwing off and strange.
C being pronounced as s makes for words like xôs, which would be sac in Hindi (truth), axa, which would be āśā (Hope) in Sanskrit/standard Indic, and dôx is ten, similar to das in Hindi. Using names as examples again, Jīvan, Jhārkhaṇḍ ,Cetan, Chavi would be Zivôn, Zharkhônd, Setôn, Shôbi. (Notice the lack of retroflex sounds in Zharkhônd!)
However, shifts of c, ch, j, jh are not actually rare - They also occur in Marathi, Konkani, and Nepali, which have a combined native speaking population of around 102 million people (loosely). The shift of 's/sh', however, is still pretty rare - AFAIK Assamese is the only language with it.
As a recap, here are more examples. Assamese on the left, and standard Indic equivalents on the right, and the meanings on the right.
Xôbhô - Sabha (Assembly)
Bhaxa -Bhāṣā (Language)
Xat - Sāt (Hindi, 7)
Xôbdô - Śabda, Śabd (Word)
Purux - Puruṣ (Male person)
Dex - Deś (Country)
Xombar - Somvār (Monday)
To be continued in future parts...
Tools used :
http://www.virtualvinodh.com/aksharamukha
Sources :
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/handouts/nagamese/nagamese.htm
http://www.assam.org/node/2335
http://www.iitg.ernet.in/rcilts/pdf/assamese.pdf
http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/moral1997north.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://www.omniglot.com/
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