WELCOME TO SYLHETI LANGUAGE
Sylheti is my mother tongue. Sylheti is our mother tongue.
Love Sylhet? Learn the Sylheti language. Join us to save our Sylheti language, culture, heritage and identity. ꠀꠃꠇ꠆ꠇꠣ ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ꠛꠣꠌꠣꠁ⁕ আইন ছিলোটি বাচাই।
Welcome to Sylheti Language, a home for every Sylheti voice. This is where our language and heritage are not dismissed or silenced but celebrated, protected and reclaimed. A language is more than words. It carries memory, emotion, wisdom and a shared sense of belonging. When we lose a language, we lose a part of our soul, our history and our way of seeing the world. Here, we believe that Sylheti deserves not only to survive but to flourish with dignity, recognition and pride.
Language is a Human Right
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, as affirmed in Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our language, like every other, belongs within this same world of equality and justice. Every person should have the freedom to learn, speak and express themselves in their own language without fear or shame. Recognition of Sylheti is not a privilege to be granted but a fundamental human right that must be upheld and protected.
UNESCO and the Threat to Languages
According to UNESCO, forty per cent of the world’s population has no access to education or resources in a language they speak or understand. Every two weeks, another language disappears from the world. When a language fades, its stories, songs and wisdom vanish with it. Generations lose the knowledge of who they are and where they came from. Roots unravel and identity becomes fragile. Sylheti, spoken by an estimated twenty million people across Bangladesh, India and the global diaspora, faces the same danger. Despite its millions of speakers, it remains one of the most marginalised and misunderstood languages in South Asia, often excluded from education, media and public recognition.
Why We Need to Save Sylheti
Sylheti is our mother tongue. It carries the sound of our ancestors, the rhythm of our prayers, and the laughter of our children. It is the voice of our ethnicity, the mirror of our culture and the living link to our history. Through Sylheti, we inherit the stories of our land, our faith, our songs and our struggles. Yet for generations, this language and its people have been pushed aside, labelled a dialect and denied their rightful place in schools, government and media. This is not mere misunderstanding but a deep form of cultural discrimination that erodes dignity and identity. When a Sylheti child is corrected or shamed for speaking their own language, a piece of our collective soul disappears. Each rejection of Sylheti is a rejection of who we are. If we do not act now, the next generation will inherit only fragments of memory instead of a living, breathing culture that once defined us.
Stop Cultural Genocide – Let Sylheti Culture Be Sylheti
The United Nations defines any deliberate act committed with intent to destroy a language as a clear breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The erasure of Sylheti from public life is not accidental. It is the result of years of policy, prejudice and neglect. As Fabian Hamilton MP stated in the UK Parliament on 1 March 2022, the disappearance of a language is an assault on human identity itself. Writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o warned, “Take away our language and we will forget who we are.”
To lose Sylheti would be to lose ourselves.
Languages with Shared Roots Are Still Recognised as Distinct
Around the world, languages with common origins are treated with respect. French and Italian both descend from Latin, yet no one calls one a dialect of the other. Hindi and Urdu share grammar and vocabulary but are recognised as separate languages. Assamese uses the same script as Bengali but retains full recognition of its individuality. Why, then, is Sylheti denied the same status? The answer lies not in linguistics but in politics. It is time to correct this injustice and restore truth to the record.
Sylheti Language and Syloti Nagri Script Never Bengali
Centuries before colonial frontiers divided the subcontinent and long before modern nations were born, the people of Sylhet spoke Sylheti. Historical traditions tell us that the last Hindu ruler, Gour Govinda, addressed his subjects in this native tongue. When Hazrat Shah Jalal and his companions arrived in the fourteenth century bringing Islam to the region, they preached in Sylheti so that ordinary people could understand. From the rhythms of daily life to the spread of faith, Sylheti was the living language of the land. There is no historical evidence of any other language being spoken in Sylhet except Sylheti itself. As far as records show, Sylheti has always been the language of the Sylheti people. Borders changed, kingdoms changed, kings and rulers came and went, but the language remained the same. In the past 10 to 20 years, more Bengali has appeared in Sylhet city, but before that, Sylheti was always the spoken language of the region.
The Sylheti people developed their own writing system, the Syloti Nagri script, specifically designed to capture the tones and sounds that no other script could express. From at least the fifteenth century, it was used to write poetry, religious texts and daily correspondence. It stood apart from both Eastern Nagri and Devanagari. Eastern Nagri later evolved into the Bengali and Assamese scripts, while Syloti Nagri remained uniquely Sylheti. Its very existence proves that Sylheti is not a dialect but a complete and independent language.
Stop Silencing Sylheti Children
No child should ever be punished for speaking the language of their grandparents. Yet across our homes, schools and communities, Sylheti children are scolded for using their mother tongue. Parents, fearing social stigma, often switch to Bengali believing it to be a sign of education or progress. This is wrong. Teaching Bengali as an additional language is fine, but it must never replace our own. Let every child grow up hearing the words their grandparents once spoke with pride and affection. Let them sound Sylheti, not ashamed, but strong.v
How You Can Help
The best help anyone can offer is to learn, teach and speak Sylheti. Use it in conversation, at home, in schools and online. Read it, write it and pass it on. Support the campaign for recognition by signing our petition, sharing our message and raising awareness. Help us create better learning materials and resources. Contribute, donate and organise locally. Start a class, hold a reading circle, or simply teach a friend one new word each day. Every voice matters, and every action brings our language closer to safety.
Sylheti is my mother tongue. Sylheti is our mother tongue.
It is not a dialect. It is our identity, our strength and our inheritance. Speak it with pride, teach it with love, and let the world hear it again. Together we can ensure that Sylheti lives, thrives and endures for generations to come.
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