Chittagonian (চাটগাঁইয়াsaṭgãia or চিটাইঙ্গাsiṭaiṅga)[1][2] or Chittagonian Bengali[8][9] is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of the Chittagong Division in Bangladesh.[5] Chittagonian and Standard Bengali are not inherently mutually intelligible, although it is considered by some as a nonstandardBengali dialect.[5] Chittagonian is also considered to be a separate language by some linguists.[10] Though its speakers identify with Bengali culture and the Bengali language.[3] It is mutually intelligible with Rohingya and to a lesser extent with Noakhailla. It is estimated (2006) that Chittagonian has 13 million speakers, principally in Bangladesh.[5]
Classification
Chittagonian is a member of the Bengali-Assamese sub-branch of the Eastern group of Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of the wider Indo-European language family. It is derived through an Eastern Middle Indo-Aryan from Old Indo-Aryan, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European.[5]Grierson (1903) grouped the dialects of Chittagong under Southeastern Bengali, alongside the dialects of Noakhali and Akyab. Chatterji (1926) places Chittagonian in the eastern Vangiya group of Magadhi Prakrit and notes that all Bengali dialects were independent of each other and did not emanate from the literary Bengali called "sadhu bhasha".[11] Among the different dialect groups of these eastern dialects, Chittagonian has phonetic and morphological properties that are not present in standard Bengali and other western dialects of Bengali.[12]
^Masica, Colin (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 16. "The dialect of Chittagong, in southeast Bangladesh, is different enough to be considered a separate language."
^"Dialects are independent of literary speech: as such East Bengali dialects, North Bengali dialects (with which Assamese is to be associated) and West Bengali dialects are not only independent of one another, but also they are not, as it is popularly believed in Bengal, derived from literary Bengali, the "sadhu-bhasha", which is a composite speech on an early West Bengali basis."(Chatterji 1926:108)
^Norihiko, Učida (1970). Der Bengali-dialekt von Chittagong. p. 8.
^Hai, Muhammad A. (1965). A study of Chittagong dialect. In Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Studies in Pakistani Linguistics. pp. 17–38.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Moniruzzaman, M. (2007). Dialect of Chittagong. In Morshed, A. K. M.; Language and Literature: Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
