Native to India, Bangladesh | ISO 639-3 haj | |
Region Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal Native speakers 63,000 (2001 census)
8,000 in Bangladesh (no date) Language family Mixed
Tibeto-Burman
Largely mixed with Indo Aryan (late 19th century)
Eastern
Hajong Writing system Assamese script, Latin script | ||
Hajong, originally a Tibeto-Burman language, is now considered an Indo-Aryan language with Tibeto-Burman roots. It is spoken by more than 175,000 ethnic Hajongs in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal in India and the Mymensingh District in Bangladesh. It is written in the Assamese script and the Latin script. It has many Sanskrit loan words. The Hajongs originally spoke a Tibeto-Burman language, but it was largely mixed with Assamese and Bengali.
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Old Hajong
The language spoken by the Hajong people now may be considered an Indo-Aryan language, this is due to language shift from a Tibeto-Burman language. Old Hajong or Khati Hajong may have been related to Garo or Bodo languages.
Variations
The Hajong Language varies within the clans because of regional variations. There are five notable clans of the Hajong people.
Writing system
The Hajong language is written using both the Latin and the Assamese scripts. Although both of these scripts are in use in India, the Hajongs in Bangladesh expect to use the Bengali script since most education is in Bengali medium. Often, for writing Hajong, the Assamese script is used. In each script, there is one added unique symbol for the close, back, unrounded vowel /ɯ/. In Latin script, it is written with "â" or simply uh. In Bengali script with "অৗ" or "কৗ" when it is syllable final.
Phonology
Hajong has 23 consonant phonemes, 8 vowel phonemes, and 2 approximants which have some characteristics of consonants namely /w/ and /j/ which act as diphthongs. The vowel phonemes are /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /æ/, /o/, /ǒ/ and /ɯ/ (close, back, unrounded). Unlike other indo-Aryan languages, Hajong language has only one 'i' and 'u'. It is somewhat ambiguous whether the final vowel is a phoneme or an allophone of [a] in the environment of other close vowels. The extra vowel /ɯ/ is not present in other Indo-Aryan languages, but is typical for the Tibeto-Burman family. The phonology of Hajong includes some vowel harmony and the devoicing of final consonants.For separating syllables the apostrophe sign (') or hyphen (-) is used.
Diphthongs
Hajong phonology has diphthongs which are iotized vowels with j(y) and w. Diphthongs are usually combinations of i or u with other vowel phonemes. Common examples of diphthongs are ya, as in Dyao which is the combined form of i and a; wa, as in khawa which is the combination of u and a; yuh, as in muh'yuh, combination of i and uh, and wuh, as in tuhwuhi, combination of u and uh.
Grammar
Hajong language primarily has a canonical word order of Subject–object–verb. A subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. Hajong language has a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions, to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun and to have subordinators appear at the end of subordinate clauses. Hajong is an agglutinative language. Even though it is considered an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, Hajong does not conjugate verbs in the same way Bengali or Asamiya do, but rather has a simplified system. The case endings in Hajong are also unique compared to other Indo-Aryan languages and may represent affinity with Tibeto Burman languages. The following table is taken from Phillips: