Talk:Sylhet

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To-do list for Sylhet:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do: Expand Transport section with details of the road/waterways/rail network and major links. Add details of the various Gas fields and history of petroleum exploration. Verify Add more references. There are some additional interesting details with references at this link. Information to be incorporated into article Notable people: Syed Murtaza Ali[1] Geography: Investing in Nature around Sylhet Economy: Establishment of Sylhet Economic Zone History: Indian government site on Karimganj District

Contents 1 'Bibhag' and 'zila' 2 Sylheti Non-Sylheti Relations 2.1 Sylheti-Other Bengali Matrimonial Relations 3 Language vs.Dialect 4 The Sylheti Language 5 Rewrite Needed 6 History 7 References

[edit] 'Bibhag' and 'zila'

(Sylhet bibhag) and (Sylhet zila) should be written in Bangla. That way it'll be more or less consistent to other Bangladesh-related stuff. However, I currently do not have the means to use Bangla in Unicode. Could anyone help me? Sheehan (Talk) 08:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Have added the bangla. theres a good piece of software called Avro something, which i recommend for typing in bangla. it isnt what i use (i use a keyboard that i developed myself, but thats a bit complicated because i use several alphabets) but its very very good for writing in bangla and u can use it basically anywhere. Just google it and im sure you'll find it. By the way, on the topic of Bibhag and Zila, I think it would be best to keep the spelling as Bibhag and Zila, because that is how they are spelled in Bangladeshi and Indian English and have been for centuries, so Bibhag and Zila are English words (I even found Zila in an English dictiobnary once, although it was published in India.) Therefore, I think it should be kept Zila and Bibhag as they are English words not just transliterations of Bangla words, to change it to IPA would be like changing the english 'know' to the IPA rendering, which is ridiculous. However, IPA should be kept to within the brackets after the Bangla script, to show how they pronounce the words in bangla, in which case it is a transliteration. ...But I being IPA literate I'm not too bothered, that's just my opinion...and i wanted to know what you all think. Tanzeel 21:55, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the help. I found the program you talked about: avro keyboard and it's a pretty nice one. Sheehan (Talk) 02:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sylheti Non-Sylheti Relations

I have added information about Sylhoti-Non-Sylhoti relations. This is specially topical since the Monica Ali incident in the UK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.74.21.73 (talk • contribs)

I hope you do provide references. Blogs, comments to blogs, letters to editors are not really references. In this wide open world of the Internet, ANYONE can make a comment in a blog. Please see how to provide good references. Thank you. --Ragib 20:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Quote from Citation section of Wiki:

'An opinion is a view that someone holds, the content of which may or may not be verifiable. However, that a certain person or group expressed a certain opinion is a fact (that is, it is true that the person expressed the opinion) and it may be included in Wikipedia if it can be verified; that is, if you can cite a good source showing that the person or group expressed the opinion'.

The fact that several letters pages and articles seem to indicate the general gist of what I've written in the artcle regarding 'Sylhoti-Non-Sylhoti' relations means that according to Wiki rules, I am verifying points made in the section using legitimate sources. Hence further citations are unnecessary.

Yes, the policy is right, but you might have misunderstood it. The policy says with proper sources, you can say taht Mr. X has said this. But you cannot say Fact Y is true because Mr. X has written it in a letter. You can only say that the letter writer (the person) has expressed this opinion. A letter to the editor or a blog comment does not show that a particular group holds some opinion, rather it shows the author of the comment/letter expressed that particular comment. So, please change the wording of the section accordingly or provide further citations. --Ragib 20:29, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

To be more precise, you are requested to provide citations for the following facts:

• there has always been rivalry between Bangladeshis from the peripheral and sparsely-populated Sylhot and those hailing from the major metropolitan areas like Dhaka and Chittagong. .
• This rivalry most often manifests itself in the language spoken by Sylhoti's
• Sylhoti preference of marrying within their ethnic group.
• Sylhotis are fiercely proud of their own language, family-orientated community culture and conservative practice of Islam.

These statements are unreferenced. Please provide citations that show any such phenomenon exists. Thank you. --Ragib 20:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes I concur. There need to be many more citations for this article. The following paragraph in particular would not be too difficult to verify, as it is about London. Although I am not entirely convinced of its relevance in this article:

• More than eight out of 10 Indian restaurants in the UK are owned by Bangladeshis, the vast majority of whom - 95% - come from Sylhet. In 1946, there were 20 restaurants or small cafes owned by Sylheti Bengalis; in 1960 there were 300; and by 1980, more than 3,000. Now, according to the Curry Club of Great Britain, there are 8,500 Indian restaurants, of which roughly 7,200 are Bengali. An awful lot of chicken tikka masala, apparently now Britain's national dish, has its origins in this region.

Recurring dreams 05:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sylheti-Other Bengali Matrimonial Relations

To me it is a common practice atleast in the upper echelon. To substantiate the fact I shall submit three prominent examples:

1. Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, the Chief Advisor of Current Care Taker government hails from greater Dhaka, but her wife hails from greater Sylhet( sister of Enam Ahmed Chowdhury)

2. The longest serving finance minister of Bangladesh, Mr. Saifur Rahman, the most promonent Sylheti of our time,is married to a lady from A.K. Khan's family of Chittagong.

3. Mr. Humayun Rashid Chowdhury, a career diplomat who eventually became the Speaker of Bangladesh, was a native of Sylhet town(Amborkhana) and was married to a lady of famous Daroga Bari of Comilla town.

So, the saying that Sylhetis do not go for matrimonial relations with other Bengalis is not true at all.

Hossain Akhtar Chowdhury 07:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

---

The source that has been quoted clearly states that Sylhetis prefer to marry people from within their own ethnic group. Naturally some individuals will intermarry in any given group. Amongst Sylhetis this is a minority trend. Your Dhakaiya centralising tendency doesn't speak for Sylheti experiences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.74.21.247 (talk • contribs)

Habz, please stop your repeated racist comments. --Ragib 00:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Language vs.Dialect

Is Sylheti a separate language?I think it is a dialect of Bengali as supported by most of the linguitics experts.Infact the people from three Barak Valley districts of Assam, i.e. Hailakandi,Karimganj and Kachar have ensured the status of Bengali as the official language of these districts, instead of Assamese, after rigorous movement.Hence,it is proved that the language of Sylhet, like that of other Barak Valley districts of Assam, is definitely standard Bengali, while the spoken version is predominantly a dialect with significance difference from standard Bengali.

Moreover, Sylheti does not have any separate script or litterature which can be differentiated from Bengali.Therefore, it is definitely a dialect of Bengali, not indeed a language in itself. (Take for example the dialect of Hobiganj. It is very close to that of Brahmanbaria, is not that?)

Al-minar 20:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There's a separate article on the Sylheti language, and I would think that discussion of its status as dialect or language should go there. I will just say that the comments above reflect two different ways of looking at the issue, and the two ways need to be disentangled. One has to do with the linguistic notion of a language vs. a dialect: two different languages are not mutually intelligible. ("Mutually" means in both directions: I would guess that since most Sylhetis receive education in more or less standard Bangla, they can understand Bangla--but the opposite, that most speakers of standard Bangla can easily understand spoken Sylheti, might be less true.)

The other way of looking at the question is the political and sociolinguistic one, i.e. whether a government treats two varieties as languages or dialects, or whether speakers of a variety think of it as a different language. This is a less scientific form of evidence, but in practice often carries more weight.

And BTW, there *is* a separate Sylheti script, although the language is often written in the Bengali script. At any rate, the possession of a separate script does not really bear on the issue of whether it's a language or a dialect (see most discussions of Hindi and Urdu).

Mcswell 22:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Sylheti Language

That Sylhoti is viewed as a separate language is readily ascertainable by the fact that linguistic experts such as George Grierson support it's distinctiveness. In addition, the majority of Sylhoti's living abroad in the diaspora and those native to Greater Sylhot (Sylhot, Habigonj, Moulvi Bazaar and Shunamgonj) consider it so. Most Sylheti's prefer to speak Sylheti in comparison to the standard Bangla imposed by the Dhaka based government after the Liberation War.

There are also subtle differences and dialects within the Sylhoti language between the differing regions of Greater Sylhot, eg. people from Habigonj (where my parents are originally from) speak Sylhoti in a slightly different manner, with some words evolved from Dhaka and outside regions, than that spoken in Sylhet district.

Sylhoti is distinguished by a wide range of fricative sounds (which correspond to aspirated stops in closely-related languages such as Bangla), the lack of breathy voiced stops seen in many other Indic languages, word-final stress, and a relatively large set of loanwords from Arabic, Hindi and Persian. Sylheti is spoken by about 10 percent of Bangladeshis.

Given that Sylhot was part of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa, the language has many common features with Assamese, including the existence of a larger set of fricatives than other East Indic languages. According to Grierson, "The inflections also differ from those of regular Bengali, and in one or two instances assimilate to those of Assamese".

Until 1971, the Sylhoti was written in the Nagri script, similar but different to Bangla. The government discontinued it's use in order to create a standard script for the new country. In 1997 STAR developed a basic computer font generated from scanned samples of the wood block type and intended for use by linguists and academics studying Sylheti literature.

However, so much interest was shown by the Bengali media at the demonstration of the font in Sylhet, December 1997, that STAR was commissioned by the Sylot Academy to develop a Siloti Nagri computer font for general use. The resulting "New Surma" font was designed for clarity and ease of reading, and to reflect the character of both the Sylheti manuscripts and the earlier printing fonts.

Even Assamese and Bangla are different languages and this is demonstrated by the fact that the Indian state of Assam campaigned for Assamese to be recognised as a separate language and succeeded in doing so. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.9.46.138 (talk) 19:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Rewrite Needed

This article is specifically for the area encompassing Sylhet City and not Sylhet District or Sylhet Division.

However, as it stands, a lot of the text concerns Sylhet District, particularly the Demographics & Culture section. For example,

Early Thalukdors and Zameedars who were forced to give up their coat af arms to the British, came mainly from the Habiganj and Sunamganj areas

has nothing to do with Sylhet city nor Sylhet District.

The link between Sylhet and British Bangladeshis, Indian restaurants is more appropriate to the article on Sylhet Division or, possibly, Sylhet District. The exception being the recent boom in property development within Sylhet town where the large majority of investment is coming from British Bangladeshis.

I recommend a rewrite of this article along the lines of Dhaka & Shahbag so that the information is relevant to the city and its surrounding areas.

If no one has any objections, I will make a start.
→ AA ^{(talk • contribs)} — 11:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

It still needs some work before it can be considered "A" class - particularly the "todo" list should be cleared.
→ AA ^{(talk • contribs)} — 08:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes brother im agreed upon your points.Many informations are related to sylhet district. So whole article should be revised and get best infos of Sylhet city & should be edited thereby.
→ User:classicbanna ^{(talk • contribs)} — 08:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I got distracted with other articles so haven't had a chance to start on this. If you are able to do the re-write, please go ahead and I'll help where/when required. Cheers. → AA ^(talk) — 11:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

There is no source (historical or otherwise) to suggest that sylhet was ever the capital of the Kingdom of ancient Gaur? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.203.187 (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References

This article needs more references. Most of the sections are not cited/referenced. --Ragib (talk) 22:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)