Sylheti Language is an individual organisation that advocates for wider recognition of the Sylheti language and the required teaching of Sylhet in primary schools in the Sylhet division.  

To fulfil our primary goals, we intend to organise and promote online petitions.

“Our goals include, online and offline campaigning; organising online and offline Sylheti language promotion events; providing excellent Sylheti language learning materials; raising awareness about Sylheti; and preserving and promoting Sylhet’s literary history also. “ 

 Sylheti is an Indo-Aryan language that is spoken by up to 11 million people worldwide, and it is on the verge of disappearing especially in Bangladesh and some parts of India (where it is being recognised as a part of the Bengali language).  

This is happening due to many complex situations like political, psychological, economic, untouched by the media coverage for some reasons, etc. that have been made, unfortunately.

WHO ARE WE?

Sylheti Language is a pressure group that is dedicated to raising awareness about the dying language Sylheti and campaigning to save it by advocating for the introduction of formal language learning in Sylhet Division Schools.  

We would like to make Sylheti Language taught in Sylhet, Bangladesh, and some parts of India. It will be much better if we will be able to give it a wider reach in some other parts of the world also.

WHAT WE DO

We produce easy-to-learn materials that break down complex information into simple bits to aid the campaign.  

We help Sylheti society with learning and education.  

We aim to eliminate ignorance and promote knowledge of the Sylheti language through our campaign for greater recognition of Sylheti in the school curriculum by petitioning authorities to introduce it as a core language subject.  

ABOUT SYLHETI

As per the available standard facts:  

The Sylheti belongs to the eastern Indo-Aryan languages that evolved from Magadhi Prakrit.  

Its Muslim conquest comes into the picture around the 13th century. Due to the migratory move of Indians and Arabs that happened after the Muslim conquest of Sylhet that happened in 1303, the language was greatly influenced by the Sylheti language and it derived a large number of words from Persian Arabic.  

Around the 14th century, the Sylheti-Nagri alphabet was developed by a Muslim saint, Shahjalal, and his 360 companions.  

After spending 7 years in Europe learning the printing trade, an Islamic scholar developed the word block for the Sylheti-Nagri alphabet and Islamic press in Sylhet town in the year 1870. Shortly after, a few Sylheti presses were established. In 1970, they fell out of use and since then Sylheti-Nagri scripts haven’t been used by many people except linguists and Academies.  

Named after the town Sylhet, Sylheti is a minority-spoken Indo-Aryan language with some Tibeto-Burman elements that are commonly mistaken for a Bengali “dialect” in north-eastern Bangladesh and south Assam, India.   

Sylheti is also known as Sylheti, Sylheti Bangla, Sileti, Siloti, Syloti, and Syloty.  

It is spoken by an estimated number of two hundred thousand people in the United Kingdom and Sylheti has more vitality than Bengali in the United Kingdom.  

Most linguists consider it as an independent language, but many native speakers see it as a diglossia vernacular of Bengali. Some set of people considers it a corrupt form.  

Ignorance is one of the greatest forces against the Sylheti language, and despite it being spoken by millions of people, it often mistakes as a mere dialect of the Bengali language, with which it shares some of its vocabularies.  

Shortly after India Pakistan division, the original Sylheti script that’s also known as the “Sylheti Nagari” was made to be almost extinct and as time went on, Sylheti was reduced to being a dialect of the Bengali language.   

Sylheti was also influenced by Assamese when it was separated from Bengal and became a part of the Assam province in 1874.  

The Sylheti language and Bengali have some similarities but are also different. Due to being closely related, most speakers are now bilingual and are fluent in both Sylheti and Bengali.  

However, it is a language with hundreds of thousands of speakers in the UK who, for a variety of reasons, including a lack of documentation and instructional materials, racism, and stigma simply refer to it as “Bengali.”  

According to history, Surma and Burak river basins are the geographical locations that correspond the most to the cultural area where the Sylheti language was historically spoken. Surma and Barka make up the “Greater Sylhet”.