Showing posts with label Assamese Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Assamese Language. Show all posts

Monday, January 11, 2010

Style guide Creation for Assamese Language (Part II)

Morphology and grammar
The Assamese language has the following characteristic morphological features.
1. Gender and number are not grammatically marked.
2. There is lexical distinction of gender in the third person pronoun.
3. Transitive verbs are distinguished from intransitive.
4. The agentive case is overtly marked as distinct from the accusative.
5. Kinship nouns are inflected for personal pronominal possession.
6. Adverbs can be derived from the verb roots.
7. A passive construction may be employed idiomatically.

Phonetics
The Assamese phonetic inventory consists of eight oral vowel phonemes, three nasalized vowel phonemes, fifteen diphthongs (two nasalized diphthongs) and twenty-one consonant phonemes.
The parts of speech uses in Assamese languageNoun1. Common Noun ---- Man, cow
2. Proper Noun ----- Ram, Rahim, Hari
3. Material Noun ---- Water, Box, Table
4. Verbal Noun ----- Movement, tour
5. Abstract Noun ----- Happiness, beautyPronoun
Example ------ he, she, they, yesterday, now

Adjective
1. Proper Adjective ----- beautiful, ugly
2. Verbal Adjective ----- edited, drawn
3. Adjective Adjective ---- Very much, too much, too many
4. Adverb ---- quickly, repeatedly

Verb
1. Transitive ---- eat, get
2. Intransitive ---- walk, cry

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Style Guide Creation for Assamese Language - Part I

Assamese is an eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 20 million people in the Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and also spoken in Bangladesh and Bhutan. Assamese is closely related to Bengali and Oriya.

The Assamese alphabet is written with a version of the Bengali alphabet. The first printed book was Atmaram Sarma’s translation of the Bible, which published in 1813 by the Serampore English Missionary press in Kolkatta.

The first Assamese dictionary was compiled by an American Baptist Missionary Dr. Miles Bronson. In 1867 at American Baptist Mission Press Sibsagar, published his dictionary. The second dictionary of Assamese language is ‘Hemkosh’ based on Sanskrit spellings, compiled by Hemchandra Barua.

Alphabet

The Assamese script has 41 consonants and 11 Vowels. The Assamese script has 52 characters including 41 consonants and 11 vowels. The characters are similar to the Devanagari. The language has a number of Juktakhars which are combination of consonants.

Assamese alphabet
Vowels and vowel diacritics







Consonants


Some conjunct consonants (Juktakhar)





Additional symbols



Numerals