THE LANGUAGE
Like Greeks while expelled from their homelands clung to their language more passionately, we have also loved, spoken, dreamt and clung to our language.
One fierce and brilliant friend of mine once told me an anecdote regarding sylleti langage which resembles Bengali but has a distint flavour. Like different wines are finally fermented grape juice but a sympathetic and refined tongue can distinguish the sharpness of a Merlot to the mellowness of a Burgundy.
The bird suddenly flew away - description of the flight of a bird translates inn syhlleti - * paakhi igoo phoorut kari uddi gela * This phoorut catches the thurst of air in the bird's wings as it suddenly flew. The language retains the fierce strength of a spoken tongue and smells of something which can be called verbal intimacy.
Other Bengalis have made fun of our accents - ask a syhlleti bride married to a groom in now West Bengal of present and you will find a material to write a novel on accents, human audition, linguistics and human conceit. But we endured. Generations have gone but we spoke our "untamed" accents, we kept a very private self within us, we learnt, re-learnt, forgot, remembered but in spite of our conscious, unconscious attempts to forget, we kept the flame of remembrance burning.
History forgot the geography but language we didnt forget.To make sure that we didn't forget, invites you for a tour de force of our language, always wanted but never done.
When www.syhlleti.org informally voiced its ambitious project for a Syhlleti Grammar, one syhlleti saayan immediately responded and within 48 hours, a transliteration page appeared and he has given us the kind permission to put the link. And this is it Syhlleti Transliteration
The moral of the story: A syhlleti is known by its paw. In thanks and congratulations and hopes unlimited.
Welcome
to Syhlleti Grammar Project