Assamese grammar/Assamese Language- অসমীয়া ভাষা

Assamese language is the eastern most of the Indo-European languages, the western most is German.

Introduction

Comparison of some words in English and Assamese that have very similar meanings--

Door and duwar,

Name and naam,

Mother and matri,

Father and pitri,

Anonymous and anamika,

Path and poth.

Are they similar? How?

In fact there are a lot of languages that share many features with both Assamese and English!

Assamese and others

Although Assamese and English are similar, there are languages closer to English, say French. Similarly Bengali is very close to Assamese.

In fact Assamese and Bengali can be grouped together for purposes.

Again, Assamese and Bengali can be grouped with other similar languages like Odiya, Maithili, Bishnupriya Manipur etc. to constitute the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.

The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages can be again grouped with other languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati , and such languages to constitute the Indo-Aryan languages.

Why notmore? The Indo-Aryan languages are further placed with languages like Persian to constitute the classification called Indo-Iranian languages.

The Indo-Persian languages are a part of what is called the Indo-European languages, which also includes English.

Origin of Assamese

Like most of the Indo-Aryan languages, Assamese too traces it's roots to Sanskrit, a very old Indo-European language like Latin and Greek.

From Sanskrit came up Magadhi Prakrit, and from Magadhi Prakrit came Assamese.

Some sources also point to Kamarupi Prakrit as the predecessor of Assamese.

It however can be said that Assamese was spoken at least by the 7th century.

The oldest texts in Assamese are the Buddhist Charyapadas. These texts not only include Assamese features of mideaval times, like the use of -ante, but also a centre filled ro similar to modern Assamese ro with a diagonal line. Some argue that the Assamese letter ro was being formed at that time, as current Assamese ro does have only an inner diagonal. Others say the fully filled ro was due to pen style. Other languages such as Bengali and Maithili also claim the texts.