LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 22:3 March 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Phonological Analysis of Rampurhat Variety of Bangla

Shreosi Chatterjee, M.A., PGDTE

Abstract

Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language majorly spoken in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh. Reportedly, the different dialects of Bangla are spoken by more than two hundred million native speakers across the globe. Different researchers had classified these dialects in various ways based on where it is spoken. However, there are some discrepancies in the classifications as the same variety of Bangla spoken in a few regions have been classified by researchers differently. It can also be observed in the case of Bangla spoken in a socio-economically backward district of West Bengal, Birbhum. This can be due to different factors including limitation of access, lack of data, domination of more prestigious variety, overt prestige of speakers, etc. It is even more important to point out that due to the lack of enough research, many distinguishing features of Birbhum Bangla have remained unnoticed till date.

This study aims to analyze the phonological features of one of the regional varieties of Birbhum Bangla spoken in the Rampurhat region by comparing it with the Colloquial variety of Bangla.

Keywords: Birbhum Bangla, Rampurhat variety, regional dialect, phonological features

1. Introduction and Background

Many attempts have been done by researchers to classify the various Bangla dialects. Grierson (1898) divided the Bangla dialects based on their geographical locations where he mentioned Birbhum Bangla as a Western Bangla dialect. Later, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee (1975) classified it as Eastern Radhi, and Sukumar Sen (1993) called it Jharkhondi Bangla. Other researchers have also referred to it as Radhi or Jharkhondi Bangla. It can be observed that some of the features of Birbhum Bangla are somewhat similar to Radhi and Jharkhondi Bangla. However, features of Birbhum Bangla have not been studied in-depth in the past and the classification cannot be confirmed yet. Therefore, it is important to do a systematic study of this language and its varieties to be able to classify it properly.

The terms Language, dialect, and variety are often disputed and used interchangeably depending on the context. R. Wardaugh (1986) tried to explain these terms with different examples. He defined Language as a combination of multiple dialects and clarified that each speaker of a language speaks at least one dialect. According to him, “A dialect is a subordinate variety of a language” and also mentioned that in case a language has only one dialect, both the terms become synonymous. Hudson (1996) defined ‘a variety’ of a language as ‘a set of linguistic items with similar distribution’. The word ‘variety’ can therefore be used to refer to any kind of variation in language including dialects, pidgins, creoles, regional varieties, sociolect, idiolect, etc. In this case, the Rampurhat variety of Birbhum Bangla has been investigated in this study further.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Shreosi Chatterjee, M.A., PGDTE
The English and Foreign Languages University
Hyderabad, Telangana 500007, India
shreosi5398@gmail.com
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