Talk:Sylheti language

Bangladesh Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bangladesh, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Bangladesh on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BangladeshWikipedia:WikiProject BangladeshTemplate:WikiProject BangladeshBangladesh articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Bangladesh To-do list:

Add more images to Bangladesh Liberation War and related pages
Clean up Climate change in Bangladesh, it needs a lot of work
Clean up History of Bangladesh after independence, it needs NPOV
Improve Bangladesh back to FA as it was demoted (see discussion)
Improve Bengali language back to FA as it was demoted (see discussion)
Improve Bengalis and related pages
Take a look at the requested articles.
Make a MRT line 3 article.
Extend, add an infobox and a map of New Eskaton to New Eskaton.

Languages Mid‑importance

	Language portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

India: Assam Low‑importance

	India portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Assam.

Archives

Archive 1

March 2022[edit]

Sylheti is considered by the vast majority of its speakers as well as non-Sylheti Bangladeshis and most linguists as a dialect of Bengali, not its own language. It is not a codified language but a spoken regional dialect. Therefore, the title of the page being "Sylheti Language" is greatly misleading. I understand there are claims of it being a language online, but it is a very minority view even among us Sylhetis, who almost without any disagreement consider it a dialect. CorrectionalFacility101 (talk) 08:36, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@CorrectionalFacility101: The present version of the article is properly sourced and had undergone substantial discussion in the talk page. Both the considerarions, separate language and a dialect, are covered in the article. I'd suggest you bring scholarly sources that are more recent than the ones already used in the article. Then we can discuss it further. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:58, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Languages and dialects in south asia form a continuoum. Neighboring regions are not as clear cut distinct fron each other in language as european countries are. Hence the status of languages there as being dialect or lamguage is determined based on the cultural affinity of the people who speak it. In the case of Sylhetis, they are and all identify as Bengali and consider Sylheti a a dialect of Bengali. This is not only the case for Bangladeshi Sylhetis but even Indian Sylhetis. So the title should be altered to Sylheti dialect.

Secondly, the claim of Sylheti nagri being the script of Sylheti is incorrect. It is an archaic script that was used mainly for religious literature and nobody today in Bangladesh or India knows it or uses it, whether Sylheti or non-Sylheti. Traditionally the standard Bengali script was still the main script used by Sylhetis. You will not find a single Sylheti in Bangladesh or India who can read or write in "Sylheti nagri", they all use standard Bangla script.

To say that Sylheti nagri is the "script for Sylheti" is as ludicrous as claiming that ancient norse runes are the standard script for swedish and norwegian. It would seem according to the implications of this wiki article that Sylhetis dont know their own language is a language or the supposed alphabet of its script. Since, again, nobody uses nagri to write sylheti or knows a letter of it. They all use standard bangla script. CorrectionalFacility101 (talk) 23:05, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@CorrectionalFacility101: these are already discussed in talk pages as well as pointed out in the article itself. Please go through the discussions here in WT:LING. Chaipau (talk) 23:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

May 2023[edit]

@UserNumber, I have reverted your effort to bring in Rasinger (2007) yet again with a rather misleading edit summary. Please look at Talk:Sylheti_language#Rasinger_2007 for a reminder.

@Uanfala: for visibility. Chaipau (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@UserNumber, in your edit you mention three as linguists. Rasinger (2007) and Chung (2019) are already settled in the discussion above. The new author, Goswami, is not a linguist but a teacher of English, who makes a passing reference to Sylheti as a dialect of Bengali. Chaipau (talk) 23:13, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sources for L1 and L2 speakers[edit]

In this edit, Sadidiye roughly doubled the number of L1 and L2 speakers of Sylheti. They replaced source Ethnologue with a Bangladeshi government website and an Indian census page. Neither of the new sources state the number of L1 or L2 speakers, they only give the population of certain geographic areas. Specifically:

[1] says the total population of Sylhet Division is 11,034,863 (2022 census). Previous discussions here have pointed out that not everyone in Sylhet Division speaks Sylheti. The source doesn't say anything about the number of Sylheti speakers.
[2] says the last enumerated population for Assam was 31,205,576 (2011) and the 2023 estimated population was approximately 36.6 million. It contains no information about the number of Sylheti speakers.

From these two sources, Sadidiye concluded that there are 20.02 million L1 speakers of Sylheti and 2.5 million L2 speakers of Sylheti. I invite them to explain their calculation.

I believe Ethnologue, despite its drawbacks, is the most authoritative reliable source for the number of L1 and L2 speakers of Sylheti. The most recent free edition is from 2019.[3] It states "Total users in all countries: 11,800,000 (as L1: 10,300,000; as L2: 1,500,000)." We can cite a more recent edition if someone can check it. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:05, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]