Sylheti Nagri
Sylheti Nagri, known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri, is an endangered writing system of the Brahmic family historically used in the Sylhet region, particularly for the Sylheti language and Bengali language. Manuscripts have also been found in Greater Mymensingh and Northeast India. It has influences from Bengali, Kaithi, Devanagari and Arabic scripts. Literature in the Sylheti Nagri script was mostly common amongst lower class Muslims that lived towards the east of the Sylhet region and has historically been mostly limited to writing puthis and signatures, having no presence in formal documentations. Although in recent times it has lost much ground to the Bengali script, Sylheti Nagri is supposedly beginning to be reintroduced.
Etymology and names
Sylhet Nagri is a compound of "Sylhet" and "nāgrī". Sylhet is the name of the region in which the script is primarily used. Nagri means "of or pertaining to an abode ". Hence, Sylhet Nagri denotes from the abode or city of Sylhet. In recent times, it has come to be known as Sylheti Nagri although this name was not used in the classical manuscripts such as Pohela Kitab by Muhammad Abdul Latif. Unicode name proposals were finalised as "Syloti Nagri". The second word is often misspelled "Nagari", possibly due to confusion by translators with "Devanagari".The script has been known by other names such as Jalalabadi Nagri after the name of Jalalabad, and Phul Nagri amongst others. Another popular term is Musalmani Nagri due to its prevalence amongst Muslims of eastern Bengal.
History
Origins
The specific origin of Sylheti Nagri is debated. Talib Husan by Ghulam Husan is the earliest known work. The general hypothesis, in particular among the general folk, is that the Muslims of Sylhet were the ones to invent it for the purpose of mass Islamic education. This is thought to have taken place during the 15th-century, when the Bengali Hindus led by Krishna Chaitanya, started a Sanskrit and Vaishnavist reawakening movement. The script was also used in Kishoreganj, Mymensingh and Netrakona in Bangladesh; and Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam in India.On the other hand, according to Ahmad Hasan Dani it was the Afghans living in Sylhet during the Afghan rule who invented the script, since some of Sylheti Nagri's letters resemble the symbols on Afghan coins, and there were a large number of Afghans living in Sylhet at that time. Other less-supported hypotheses are:
- The script was invented by immigrant Bhikkhus from neighbouring countries such as Nepal. ;
- The script could have been invented in the seventeenth—eighteenth century to facilitate the Muslim sepoys coming from the joint state of Bihar and other immigrant Muslims;
Usage
It has been asserted from scholarly writings that the script was used as far as Bankura, Barisal, Chittagong and Noakhali. From the description of Shreepadmanath Debsharma:
The script is thought to have spread to Chittagong and Barisal via river.
The Sylheti Nagri script was written in the Dobhashi dialect of the Bengali language. Like the rest of Muslim Bengal, Bengali Muslim poetry was written in a colloquial dialect of Bengali which came to be known as Dobhashi, and has had a major influence on the current Sylheti language. Manuscripts have been found of works such as Rag Namah by Fazil Nasim Muhammad, Shonabhaner Puthi by Abdul Karim and the earliest known work Talib Husan by Ghulam Husan.
The Munshi Sadeq Ali is considered to have been the greatest and most popular writer of the script. The script has also been used in the daily lives of the inhabitants of Sylhet apart from using in religious literature. Letters, receipts, and even official records has been written using this script. Apart from renowned literary works such as Halat-un-Nabi, Jongonama, Mahabbatnama or Noor Noshihot, it has been used to write medicine and magical manuscripts, as well as Poems of the Second World War.
The script, never having been a part of any formal education, reached the common people with seeming ease. Although it was hardly used in comparison to the Bengali script, it was common for lower-class Sylheti Muslims to sign their names in this script. Many Sylheti Nagri presses fell out of use during the Bangladeshi Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, including Islamia Press in Sylhet town which was destroyed by a fire.
Modern history
Many Sylheti Nagri presses fell out of use during the Bangladeshi Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, including Islamia Press in Sylhet town which was destroyed by a fire. Since then, the script has been used mainly by linguists and academics. It gradually became very unpopular. In the 18th century, Munshi Ashraf Hussain, a researcher of Bengali folk literature, contributed immensely to Sylheti Nagri research. Fakharuddin Chowdhury of the Assam-based Vision Prototype launched a tutorial app to learn the script titled Sylheti Nagri. In the 2010s, Md. Salik Ahmed, Md. Nizam Uddin and Md. Mamunur Rasid translated the last juz' of the Qur'an into the Sylheti language for the first time using both the Eastern Nagari and Sylheti Nagri scripts.Fonts and keyboards
In 1997, Sue Lloyd-Williams of STAR produced the first computer font for script. The is a proprietary font. Noto fonts provides an open source font for the script. Syloti Nagri was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1, and is available on Apple devices. Other fonts include Mukter Ahmed's Fonty 18.ttf, developed from manuscripts to include traditional Sylheti numbers. As a routine project of the Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Sabbir Ahmed Shawon and Muhammad Nurul Islam developed and launched the Syloti Nagri Keyboard, also for Google Play, on 9 December 2017. Different keyboards and fonts are available now:- Syloti Nagri Notes, by the UK-based Sureware Ltd on Google Play.
- Multiling O Keyboard, with additional app Sylheti Keyboard plugin by Honso, on Google Play.
- Google's GBoard has also made Sylheti available as an input from April 2019.
Characters
Vowels
The widely accepted number of vowels is 5, although some texts show additional vowels. For example, the diphthong ôi has sometimes been regarded as an additional vowel. The vowels don't follow the sequence of Bengali alphabet. The vowels also have their own respective diacritics known as "horkot".- "" sounds as the default inherent vowel for the entire script.
- When a vowel sound occurs syllable-initially or when it follows another vowel, it is written using a distinct letter. When a vowel sound follows a consonant, it is written with a diacritic which, depending on the vowel, can appear above, below, before or after the consonant. These vowel marks cannot appear without a consonant and are called horkot.
- An exception to the above system is the vowel, which has no vowel mark but is considered inherent in every consonant letter. To denote the absence of the inherent vowel following a consonant, a diacritic called the oshonto may be written underneath the consonant.
- Although there is only one diphthong in the inventory of the script: "" oi, its phonetic system has, in fact, many diphthongs. Most diphthongs are represented by juxtaposing the graphemes of their forming vowels, as in .
| Letter | Diacritic | Transcription | IPA |
| ꠣ | a | // | |
| ꠁ | ꠤ | i | // |
| ꠃ | ꠥ | u | // |
| ꠄ | ꠦ | e | // |
| ꠅ | ꠧ | ô | // |
| N/A | ôi | /ɔi/ |
Consonants
There are 27 consonants. The names of the letters are typically just the consonant sound with the inherent vowel . Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself, i.e. the name of the letter is ghô.There is a difference between the pronunciation of rô and ṛo. Although in ordinary speech these are pronounced the same as.
| Letter | Transcription 1 | Transcription 2 | IPA | Note |
| ꠇ | kô | xɔ | /~/ | Like the k in "kite" or the kh in "Khartoum" depending on its position within vowels. |
| ꠈ | khô | xɔ́ | /~/ | Like the k in "kite" or the kh in "Khartoum" depending on its position within vowels. |
| ꠉ | gô | gɔ | // | Like the g in "garage". |
| ꠊ | ghô | gɔ́ | // | Like the g in "good". |
| ꠌ | chô | sɔ | /~/ | Like the ch in "chat" or the s in "sun". |
| ꠍ | chhô | sɔ́ | /~/ | Like the ch in "check" or the s in "soon". |
| ꠎ | jô | zɔ | /~/ | Like the j in "jungle" or the z in "zoo". |
| ꠏ | jhô | zɔ́ | /~/ | Like the j in "jump" or the z in "zebra". |
| ꠐ | ṭô | ʈɔ | // | Like the t in "tool". |
| ꠑ | ṭhô | ʈɔ́ | // | Like the t in "tower". |
| ꠒ | ḍô | ɖɔ | // | Like the d in "doll". |
| ꠓ | ḍhô | ɖɔ́ | // | Like the d in "adhere". |
| ꠔ | tô | t̪ɔ | // | Like the t in "soviet". |
| ꠕ | thô | t̪ɔ́ | // | Like the th in "theatre". |
| ꠖ | dô | d̪ɔ | // | Like the th in "the". |
| ꠗ | dhô | d̪ɔ́ | // | Like the th in "within" |
| ꠘ | nô | nɔ | // | Like the n in "net". |
| ꠙ | pô | ɸɔ | /~~/ | Like the p in "pool" or the f in "fun". |
| ꠚ | phô | fɔ́ | /~/ | Like the f in "food". |
| ꠛ | bô | bɔ | // | Like the b in "big". |
| ꠜ | bhô | bɔ́ | // | Like the b in "abhor". |
| ꠝ | mô | mɔ | // | Like the m in "moon". |
| ꠞ | rô | ɾɔ | // | Like the r in "rose". |
| ꠟ | lô | lɔ | // | Like the l in "luck". |
| ꠡ | shô | ʃɔ | // | Like the sh in "shoe". |
| ꠢ | hô | ɦɔ | // | Like the h in "head". |
| ꠠ | ṛô | ɽɔ | // | Like the r in "hurr'y". |
Symbols
Sample texts
The following is a sample text in Sylheti, of the Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations:Sylheti in Sylheti Nagari script
Sylheti in phonetic Romanization
Sylheti in IPA
Gloss
Translation
Unicode
Syloti Nagri was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1.The Unicode block for Syloti Nagri, is U+A800-U+A82F: