Chittagonian ( or ) or Chittagonian Bengali is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of the

Chittagong Division Chittagong Division (), officially Chattogram Division, is geographically the largest of the eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh. It covers the southeasternmost areas of the country, with a total area of and a population according to th ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

. Chittagonian and Standard Bengali are not inherently

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

, although it is considered by some as a nonstandard Bengali dialect. Chittagonian is also considered to be a separate language by some linguists. While Chittagonian is linguistically distinct, its speakers identify with Bengali culture and the Bengali language. It is mutually intelligible with the Rohingya language,

Chakma language Chakma (; autonym: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-European language family, whose speakers are known as the Chakma or the Daingnet people. It has 740,000 speakers, with 60% residing in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Banglade ...

and with a lesser extent to

Noakhailla Noakhali or Noakhalian, endonym ''Noakhailla'' (), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken by an estimated 7 million people, primarily in the Greater Noakhali region of Bangladesh, as well as in southern parts of Tripura in India. ...

. It is estimated (2006) that Chittagonian has 13 million speakers, principally in Bangladesh.

Classification

Chittagonian is a member of the Bengali-Assamese sub-branch of the Eastern group of

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

, a branch of the wider Indo-European language family. It is derived through an Eastern Middle Indo-Aryan from

Old Indo-Aryan The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Ba ...

, and ultimately from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

. grouped the dialects of Chittagong under ''Southeastern Bengali'', alongside the dialects of

Noakhali Noakhali District (), historically known as Bhulua (), is a Districts of Bangladesh, district in southeastern Bangladesh, located in Chattogram Division. It was established as a district in 1821, and officially named Noakhali in 1868. The distr ...

and Akyab. places Chittagonian in the eastern Vangiya group of

Magadhi Prakrit Magadhi Prakrit (''Māgadhī'') is of one of the three Dramatic Prakrits, the written languages of Ancient India following the decline of Pali. It was a vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan language, replacing earlier Vedic Sanskrit. History and over ...

and notes that all Bengali dialects were independent of each other and did not emanate from the literary Bengali called " sadhu bhasha". Among the different dialect groups of these eastern dialects, Chittagonian has phonetic and morphological properties that are not present in standard Bengali and other western dialects of Bengali.

Phonology

Consonants

* Approximants are only heard as allophones of vowels . * can have an allophone of . * can have a bilabial allophone of .

Vowels

* Nasalization occurs for seven vowels . * is heard as an allophone of .

Writing system

The

Bengali script The Bengali script or Bangla alphabet (, Romanization of Bengali, romanized: ''Bāṅlā bôrṇômālā'') is the standard writing system used to write the Bengali language, and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. ...

(''Bangla Lipi'') and

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

are used to write this language. Gboard for Android has added a Chittagongian Keyboard.

Bibliography

* *

References

External links

{{Languages of Bangladesh Languages of Bangladesh Eastern Indo-Aryan languages Subject–object–verb languages Articles citing Nationalencyklopedin Chittagong District Bengali dialects