For Internaitonal Mother Language Day #imld2020, BBC reporter, Qasa Alom, came to see what we do during our lessons. (They visited our lessons during reading week so fewer learners in attendance.)
A little shout-out to our lessons near the end of the video (posted to facebook BBC Asian Network) !!!
In November 2019, InCommon, an organisation that ‘bring[s] people together, young and old, to find out what they have in common’ invited us to assist with their sessions held at Mosque Tower retirement housing, the home of elderly Bangladeshi women, during the visits from pupils from the local Kobi Nazrul primary school. The Bangladeshi elders were Sylheti speakers, some with very little English, while the school children spoke English as their dominant language, despite most being of Bangladeshi heritage, plus a few children from other backgrounds.
We helped to adapt InCommon’s intergenerational programmes material by making a Sylheti translation (written in Roman script with some Eastern Nagri script (but unfortunately there were technical problems with the Siloti/Syloti Nagri script and it couldn’t be rendered)) to help communication during the session between this group of elders and pupils.
Thank you InCommon for the opportunity to collaborate with you and build awareness of the Sylheti language!
With its lexical tone, and absence of historical aspiration, Sylheti has a distinct sound, unlike Bangla, that lends Sylheti music a unique rhythmicality (stress, intonation, and rhythm). Check it out!
Do you have any favorites?
Sylheti Fua – by Redz, featuring AshBoii (<– This video with lyrics!)
Shundori Furi Goh – by Redz, featuring AshBoii (<– This video with lyrics!)
— and such a banger that it’s already inspired a parody:
Londoni Furi Goh – by Kabul, featuring Im’dad
Roshoraj – by Redz, featuring Ashboii
Ekbar Daraw Bondhu – by Redz, featuring AshBoii & Sony Achiba
Ami Bangali / আমি বাঙালী – by Redz, featuring AUS
Amra Hokkol Sylheti – by Fokir Lal Miah (with many different videos)
— based on the more traditional Amra hokkol Syloti – by …
— and many regional spin-offs, like
Amra hokkol londoni (we are all londoni’s) – by …
আমরা হক্কল বিশ্বনাথি / Amra Hokkol Bishwanathi – by …
Aamra Hokkol Balaganji – by B-Boys
Amra Hokkol Beanibazari – by Prithom Chowdhury Anik
Amra Hokkol Goalabazari / আমরা হক্কল গোয়ালাবাজারি – by Arex Vai
Sylhety Thaba – by C-Let Sr101
Sylhety Beyain – by RA Mamun, featuring Rani Ali
Sylhety Explosion – by Pollob Bai
Proud Sylhety – by Pollob Vai, featuring Md Juwels & Sacz Shorif
আমরা সিলেটি / Amra Sylheti – by Rebel Delwar
দ্বিতীয় অধ্যায় (Ditiyo Oddhay) – by Faheem, B Monk & C-let
(old-school) Buccho ni Ba Baai – by Lal Miah
Natok – by Arin Dez
Koshto – by Arin Dez
Taratari – by Arin Dez
Worldwide Sylheti Cypher 2k17 – by Partho Bhai, Arin Dez, Fahim Chowdhury, Ovi, C-Let
Gari – by Iksy (A folk song with a modern New York twist)
Injoy – by Iksy (with a remix)
Bangla Medley – by Nish (on the London scene)
Mon Juraiya – by Bilal Shahid
Burkhawali Meye – by Kayo BT
Mon Churi (মন চুরি) – by Shabz
Tumar Nesha – by Arin Dez, featuring Fleep (from Assam!)
Tumi Korso Fagol – by Arin Dez
Fori / ফরী – by S N D S U H E L
Shundori Go – by Sacz Shorif, featuring Hasib Shah
Amra Sylheti Fua – by Afjol Hossen
মুই ভালা নায় [mui bala nae] – by Dr. Zahir Ochinpuri
ধুন্দুর মুন্দুর সিলটী গান [dundur mundur silhoTi gan] – by Dr. Zahir Ochinpuri
Shundori Foori – by Fuad Almuqtadir
Sylheti Bhaisab – by M. K. Anam & Abdus Salique (<– This video with translated lyrics!)
Amra Hokkol Sylheti / আমরা হক্কল ছিলটি – sung by Anamika Anu / অনামিকা অনু
ও ফুড়ি কউ আমারে ভালা ফাউনি [o fuRi xo amare bala fao ni] – by Ghuri / ঘুড়ি
Sylheti Eid Song / মজার সুরে আঞ্চলিক গান – sung by Junaid Azhari
and so many Hason Raza ‘covers’ …
and of course all the damail (1) (2) songs, sung and danced in circles mainly by women at weddings!
At the end of the academic year 2019, a group of pupils from two GCSE classes studying Bengali came to SOAS, and we were invited to present about the language plurality in ‘Bengal’, a region that has seen many diverse historical kingdoms and nations with various names, along with an overview on Sylheti language.
In addition to a Bengali/Bangla language session presented to the pupils by a SOAS Bengali teacher, we presented the pupils and their teachers with an original poem ‘Jujube Thief’ [boroi sur] composed by Hasnat Anwar. We presented the poem in transcription, using Roman script and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as well as in the Siloti/Syloti Nagri script and the Purbi (Bengali-Assamese) script.
Hasnat Anwar’s poem is performed in a Youtube video!
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We thank SOAS’ Languages Outreach – Widening Participation and Routes into Languages, for this opportunity to build awareness of the Sylheti language.
They have recognized our efforts before, promoting one of our first animated videos.
For easier and wider access, our publications, the ‘Boy who cried tiger’ storybook and the 2015 Sylheti language lessons booklet, are now available on the SOAS Digital Collections site, where you can also find open-access resources on many other languages!
As a new year of study and research begins, we’ve taken account of accomplishments to date: animated and subtitled videos of Sylheti stories, Sylheti dictionary app, Sylheti lessons booklet, hosting an academic conference that was a culmination of students’ work on Sylheti, crowdfunding and an illustrated storybook in multiple scripts, etc. See slides below.
In the near future, look for the forthcoming publication of the academic conference proceedings.
Future plans include expanding the dictionary app with more words, sound, and images, as well as editing and publishing the expanded Sylheti lessons book, time and funding permitting…
Last week Dr. Sheena Shah and the SOAS students in her Language support and revitalisation class visited the Surma Community Centre and talked to Sylheti language consultants Faruk, Farhana, and Nadia (along with Nadia’s six-month-old).
From a very informative Q&A session we gained insight on the intergenerational dynamics in the Sylheti community in the UK, and what it has meant for our consultants to work on the Sylheti language with us. We also got some feedback on the storybook – how it is seen as a future heirloom when in 200-300 years Sylheti will have ‘disappeared because of development’, and how it has inspired conversations about life back in Sylhet, like how the farmer in the story ‘Bundle of sticks [singlar aTa]’ should have ’12 sons and 13 grandsons in order to grow sugarcane’, back when farmers were self-sufficient and only had to purchase kerosene and cooking oil, and often not even cooking oil if they also grew mustard seed to make mustard seed oil. Sounds like an updated/expanded storybook may be in the future…
After the talk, we all stayed at the Surma Centre and had a delicious curry lunch.
Thank you Faruk, Farhana, and Nadia!
Join us at:
SOAS University of London –
Russell Square (tube station) –
London WC1H 0XG
Register at soasunion.org
Facebook page
SOAS Sylheti Language Society
SOAS Sylheti Project:
Facebook group &
YouTube channel
For more information, contact: Marie_Thaut@soas.ac.uk
For lesson dates, times and locations, check out our Facebook page.
GOALS: To discuss the grammar of the *Sylheti language, developing lessons and teaching materials by pratice teaching to other members of the society. Members are encouraged to each eventually teach (or co-teach) at least one lesson (but attendance to just learn and experience the Sylheti language is fine). This provides the opportunity to learn the Sylheti language and gain language teaching skills.
HISTORY: After an invitation from the director of the Surma Centre, Camden, during Endangered Languages Week presentations at SOAS in 2012, the SOAS Sylheti Project was founded by Dr Candide Simard. Since 2012, SOAS linguistics students have participated in this extracurricular project to document Sylheti spoken by users of the Surma Centre. The SOAS Fieldmethods course has also worked with a Sylheti speaker to document Sylheti grammar. Besides other sub-projects, the SOAS Sylheti Project has compiled a dictionary for an app, published a storybook in Sylheti, and held an academic conference, proceedings to be published shortly.
In order to involve Sylheti-speaking SOAS students (and Sylheti-speaking Londoners), the Sylheti Language Society was created. This Language Society hopes to be a collaborative teaching and learning experience to give a different analytic forum to Sylheti to be discussed as a language, not ‘improper Bengali’ (as it’s called in most Bengali language courses where in London 6-8 out of 10 students are Sylheti origin). Teaching Sylheti is also an experience to put on a C.V. which may lead to translation/interpretation work here in the U.K.
*Sylheti is an Indo-Aryan language with Tibeto-Burman influences, spoken by a minority in north-east Bangladesh and south Assam, where it is often considered to be a mere ‘dialect’ of Bengali, or ‘slang’. However, it is a language, with 200,000-400,000 speakers in the UK, who, for lack of documentation and teaching materials among other reasons, simply call it ‘Bengali’.
From a local event to a global scale.
In 1999 UNESCO proclaimed 21 February to be International Mother Language Day (IMLD), sometimes also called International Mother Tongue Day, to raise awareness of linguistic rights and to promote the maintenance, preservation and protection of all languages. UNESCO chose this date in recognition of what happened in East Pakistan in 1952 and is today commemorated in Bangladesh as Language Martyrs’ Day.
So for some Sylheti speakers with ties to Bangladesh, this day has double significance.
images thanks to Mukter Ahmed
And let us also remember that while we largely accept that discrimination based on such things as a person’s ethnicity, race, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability or national origin is reprehensible, too often discriminaiton based on a person’s language and accent is deemed acceptable. A person’s language is as dear to their identity as all the other aspects.
Article 13 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.
2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that this right is protected and also to ensure that indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.
translated by Mukter Ahmed
And, we’ve made available a new digital version of the storybook, an ebook in only Nagri with no other scripts: storybook-Nagri_only.
Some comments are coming in! Please add yours.
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“…its great! … love the quality of the pictures and the transcription reads very well.“ – a Sylheti-speaking Londoner interested in learning to read Siloti Nagri (14 Feb. 2018)
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A Londoner father told us that his 24-year-old, medical student son who never learned Bengali could read the stories and enjoyed them! (20 Dec. 2017)
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The Youtuber ‘She Learns’ reviews the storybook at 4:00. (11 April 2019)
“I love this book. It’s very pleasing to look at. And it’s very entertaining, very useful, especially for practicing the Nagri reading.”
