#sylheti

Shitalpati (Bengali: শীতল পাটি) is a mat woven from cane or murta plants, originally from the Sylhet region of Bangladesh. The murta plant (Schumannianthus dichotomus) grows around water bodies in Sylhet. The main bearers and practitioners are weavers living mostly in the low-lying villages in the greater Sylhet region of Bangladesh, but there are also pockets of Shital Pati weavers in Barisal, Tangail, Comilla, Noakhali, Chittagong and other areas of the country. After the partition of Bengal, Shitalpati weaving was kept alive among Sylheti refugees in India, and eventually Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri became prominent centres.

Shitalpati is usually rectangular in shape which can be rolled up to put away. When spread on the floor or bed, its upper surface appears glossy and smooth while the inner surface is rough. The people all over Bangladesh use it as a sitting mat, bedspread or praying mat. Although made of flat, thin strips of green cane, its natural look is brown in finished form. The weaving pattern gives it a texture akin to a jigsaw puzzle. The weavers are known as patial or patikaar (meaning 'mat-maker'). Sometimes the cane strips are woven in a way so as to create motifs of birds, animals, flowers and leaves or other symmetric patterns.

listen here: (x)

poet: traditional

language: bengali (sylheti)

painting: traditional

Suhaag chaand-bawdoni dhoni naaso to deki!

Beloved, moon-faced, the wealthy one [in love] dance, let's see!

Jemni naase naagor Kaanaai temni naase Rai,

Just like the city-boy Kanai [Krishna] dances, just like that dances Rai [Radha],

Ekbar naasiya bhulaao to deki naagor Kaanaai!

Dance once and hypnotise the city boy Kanai, let's see!

Ego naasoin baala shundoriye pindawn baala re/net-e,

[See] The beautiful woman [baala] dances, wearing a bangle [baala]/cotton saree [net] herself,

Dayko heliya duliya pawre shundi-jali'r bet!

Look, she is bending and swinging like the supple cane grass!

Are naasite haath-ero baashi raakhe Shyam-o-Raai,

To dance with Rai, Shyam [Krishna] sets down his flute,

Aare saaridike saaiya Rai ei baashi ti lukaay!

Note: I'm not a linguist, I can only speak through my experience with people from these regions. And I'm talking about the accent not dialect. Alsoooo accents can vary from individual to individual.

Standard Bangla/how I think it should be pronounced: আমার তোমার উপর বিশ্বাস শেষ হয়ে গেছে (Āmār tomār upor biśśās śeṣ ho'e gæche)

Medinipuria: আমার তোমার উপর বিস্সাস সেস হয়ে গেছে (āmār tomār upor bissās ses ho'e gæche).

Kolkatan: আমার তোমার উপর বিশ্বাশ শেশ হয়ে গেছে (āmār tomār upor biśśāś śeś ho'e gæche)

Dhakaiya: আমার তোমার উপর বিশ্বাশ শেশ হয়ে গেসে (āmār tomār upor biśśāś śeś ho'e gæse)

Some general trends:

Speakers from Medinipur region will tend to double the consonants if there is a half 'r' or reph after it. পরতে becomes পত্তে, করতে becomes কত্তে, কর্তা becomes কত্তা. All 's' sounds are pronounced s. No sh, i.e স শ and ষ are all pronounced like স (s). More usage of ô sound than o.

Speakers from Kolkata too sometimes tend to double consonants. All s sounds are pronounced sh. স শ and ষ are pronounced শ (ś).

Speakers from Eastern and East-Central part of Bengal/Bangladesh and adjoining regions tend to pronounce ছ (ch) as স (s). করছে becomes করসে. Also ও (o) is sometimes pronounced like উ (u). The s sounds are all generally pronounced like শ (ś), much like Kolkatans. I've also noticed জ (j) being pronounced as জ় (z).

Sylheti (ছিলটি)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 10 million

Spoken in: Bangladesh, India

Script: Sylheti, 35 letters/Bengali-Assamese, 36 letters

Grammatical cases: 4

Linguistic typology: fusional, SOV

Language family: Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Eastern, Bengali-Assamese

Number of dialects: 2 main groups

History

16th century - the Sylheti alphabet starts being used

1870 - a Sylheti printing press is designed

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the Sylheti script:

These are the letters that make up the Bengali-Assamese script: অ আ ই ঈ উ ঊ এ ও ক খ গ ঘ ঙ চ ছ জ ঝ ট ঠ ড ড় ঢ ত থ দ ধ ন প ফ ব ভ ম র ল স হ.

There are two tones: high and level. The former is sometimes marked using an apostrophe and signals the loss of aspiration.

Grammar

Nouns have two genders (animate and inanimate), two numbers (singular and plural), and four cases (nominative, objective, genitive, and locative). Only definite nouns are inflected for number.

Personal pronouns have different forms according to honor: very familiar, familiar, and polite. Adjectives do not inflect for case, gender, or number and are placed before the noun.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, aspect, person, and honor. There are different types of negation depending on the kind of verb and the tense.

Dialects

@ohshelearns brought up a good point on an ask I answered recently so I wanted to address it real quick for new followers so you aren’t misguided.

A lot of people claim the ethnicity “Bengali” and say the language they speak is Bangla when it turns out that isn’t the case, which is a symptom of a pretty complicated issue when you get into the ethnic and linguistic politics of the Bengal region. It’s not that people are lying about who they are —it’s more that ethnic titles have been muddled by a view that supports the idea that Bengali is the single unifying ethnicity/language of Bengal, while all others are just variations of Bengali or are inferior; this kind of rhetoric was especially popular surrounding the birth of Bangladesh when people sought identity and unity within the newly founded nation. Sentiments of the time are as young as the country and are still common today. In any case, it’s a heavy, complex issue that I don’t completely know the true depth of so I highly recommend doing the research if seems like something that may affect you or your family.

In the case of the UK, for example, the overwhelming majority of people who identify as Bengali are ethnically Sylheti, with their home language being Sylheti, which is argued by some to be a mere dialect of Bangla. It’s often referred to as Sylheti-Bangla for a number of reasons, including its similarity to Bangla, commonly being written in the Bengali script (despite having its own script, which has been largely abandoned), Bangla being considered a “prestige language” in Bengal, the fact outsiders are more likely to have heard of Bangla but not Sylheti, etc. --all of which contribute to the erasure of Sylheti as an independent language in favor of Bangla’s dominance. That being said, a lot of Sylheti speakers do know Bangla but it might not be the language they use at home.

There are a lot of other minority languages and wildly different dialects that reside in Bengal that are often confused for standard Bengali. @ohshelearns’s point is that if you are trying to pursue an education in Bangla to speak to your family at home, it would be helpful to you to double check what it is that your family actually speaks because the issue of what is “Bangla” is a little blurry and confusing at times. Some dialects vary a lot and you’ll run into a lot of obstacles, but it’ll be easier to navigate if you’re aware they’re there and you can check with your family. Other “dialects” may actually be entirely independent languages and learning Bangla is not going to help you learn much about your home language.

I never got around to ‘answering’ this, but this is the word I got from Sylheti Language Preservation for reblogging their post.

I love it! :O