LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 17:8 August 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
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         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
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Phonemes in Dhiyan

S. Sulochana Singha, Research Scholar

Abstract

Dhiyan or Dehan is the name of language spoken by Koch–Rajbangshi people of Barak Valley. Dhiyan is mainly spoken in ten villages in the Eastern part of Barak river namely Horinagar, Japirbon, Leburbon, Gororbon, Dewan (Labok) or Dewan Bosti, Narayanpur, Larchingpar, Thaligram, Lakkhichora, and Digli. Ethnically, they are Mongoloids and their language may fall under the Indo-Aryan sub-group of the Indo-European language family, nevertheless no study has been made to prove their classification. The total population of Dhiyan speaking Koch-Rajbangshi in Barak valley is estimated about 5000 in approximate.

The present paper is an attempt to describe the phonemic inventory of the language in terms of number of vowels, consonants and diphthongs including their distribution and arrangement in the language. The study will also investigate whether Dhiyan exhibits the phonological features of Indo-Aryan languages or not?

Keywords: Dhiyan, Koch-Rajbongshi, Indo-Aryan, Eastern part of Barak river, Phonemes.

1. Introduction

Dehan or Dhiyan is the name of language spoken by Koch-Rajbangshi people of Barak Valley. Ethnically, they are Mongoloids and their language may fall under the Indo-Aryan sub-group of the Indo-European language family. Nevertheless no study has been made to prove their classification. The Rajbangshi language spoken in Barak Valley has some similarity with Rajbangshi language spoken in Goalpara, Dhubri, and Kokrajhar Districts of Assam and Cooch Behar District of West Bengal. It is interesting to note that Dhiyan language has close contact with neighboring languages like Assamese, Bengali, Manipuri and Dimasa. Therefore lexical items of all three languages are found in its vocabulary as loan elements. In this regard, Some Koch-Rajbangshi scholars are in opinion that they had their own language which is linguistically much closer to Boro, Deori, Dimasa, Garo, Tiwa, Dhimal and Toto of Eastern part of India particularly North Bengal and Northeast India. Etymologically, the term ‘Dehan’ is derived from the word ‘Dewan’ the court name of the commander of the Koch army of Cachar which was given by the great Chilarai when he came to conquer Cachar in the middle of sixteenth century (Gait, 1984). So the Koch-Rajbangshi of present Barak Valley came with Chilarai as armed forces and later they established permanently in the Barak Valley. In the course of time, the ‘Dewan’ became ‘Dehan’ due to difficulty in pronunciation of the ‘w’ sound by the Bengali speaking people of Barak Valley. Since the ‘w’ sound is not present in the phonemic inventory of Bengali language. Later on it became Dhiyan. The total population of Dhiyan speaking Koch-Rajbangshi in Barak valley is estimated about 5000 in approximate.

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

S. Sulochana Singha, Research Scholar
Assam University
Silchar 788011
Assam
India
sulo.kutu@gmail.com

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