VOICE OF NORTH EAST:ASSSAMESE

Assamese is one of the modern Indian languages spoken by the majority of the people of Assam, the northeastern state of India. It is the eastern most branch of the Indo-Aryan group of languages, which is a branch of the greater Indo-European language group. It serves almost as a lingua franca among the different tribes of Arunachal, Nagaland and other hill areas within the state. This language is spoken by ten million people in Assam, and by another ten million in the rest of the states of the northeast region. In Assam, it is spoken in the Brahmaputra valley districts extending from Lakhimpur in the East, to Goalpara bordering Bangladesh and West Bengal in the West. It is also the common speech in all the districts of Arunachal used by the people inhabiting the border areas to the plains.

     The Assamese language developed out of the Sanskrit language as early as in the seventh century A.D. Its direct ancestor however, is Magadhi Apabhramsa. According to Grierson,

                             “Magadhi was the principal dialect which corresponded to the Eastern

                             Prakrit…Each of the three descendants of Magadhi Apabhramsa,

                             Oriya, modern Bengali and Assamese, is equally directly connected

                             with the common immediate parent.”

                                                     (Linguistic Survey of India Vol I, Part I, pp 125-126)

The only indigenous Indo-Aryan language of the Assam valley, Assamese has been affected in vocabulary, phonetics, and structure by its close association with Tibeto Burman dialects in the region. Its grammar is noted for its highly inflected forms.