III. LANGUAGE VARIATION:

A. Dialect

1. Regional Variation:

Assamese has mainly three dialects – TheStandard dialect, Kamrupi and Goalparia dialect. All these dialects have many sub-dialects as well. The following are only a few distinguishing features of these three dialects.

Phonological:

2. Accent:

   Std.Assamese			Kamrupi		Goalparia  

     /kƆmƆra/ “gourd” 			/kumra/		/komoro/  

     /ke’tia/ “when” 			/‘keita/		/kon bela/  

3. Distinctive sound segments: 

    Std.Assamese			Kamrupi		Goalparia 
	
     /lora/ “boy” 			/lƆra/  “boy” 	 

    /lƆra/ “run” 			/lƆra/ “run” 	/mƆza/ “tasty” 

    /kƆla/ “black” 			/kƆla/ “black”  

    /kƆla/ “deaf”			/kƆla/ “deaf” 	/mƆza/ “shocks”  

4. Distributional arrangements of phonemes in words- כ>a:

 

  Std.Assamese 			Kamrupi			Goalparia 

     /rƆza/ “king” 			/raza/  			/raza/ 

     /gƆs/  “tree” 			/gas/			/gas/  

     /tƆra/  “star” 			/tora			/tara/  

Final I>a

     Std.Assamese			Kamrupi			Goalparia 

     /bali/   “sand” 			/bala/ 			/bala/  
     /sati/   “umbrella” 			/sata/  			/sata/  

Initial  E>I 

Std.Assamese Kamrupi Goalparia /sendur/ “Vermillion” /tindar/ /sindur/

Morphological:

1. Classifier:

      Std.Assamese			Kamrupi			Goalparia 

      /lorazƆn/   “The boy” 		/apato/ 			/apata/ 

     /bƆstwbor/ “The luggages” 		/bƆstwgila/ 		/bƆstwgilan/ 

2. Negation:

     Std. Assamese				Kamrupi			Goalparia 
     /nazae/ 	  “Doesn’t go” 		/naza/ 			/nazae/  

     /nedekhe/	“Doesn’t see” 		/nedkhe/			/nadekhe/

3. Adjective - Noun concord in terms of inflectional:

      Std.Assamese 			Kamrupi			Goalparia 

     /boga lora/  “Fair boy” 		/bƆga apa/  		/gora apa/  

     /bogi swali/ “Fair girl” 		/bƆga api/ 			/gora api/  

4. Causative and Ergative Verb:

 

     Std.Assamese 						Kamrupi 

    /khwwam/   	“I will cause him/her to eat 			/khwwam/ 

    /khwwam/ 	 “I will instigate him/her to eat” 			/khwwam/ 

5. Differences in the case marking-

     Std.Assamese			   Kamrupi		Goalparia 

     /hi ghƆrƆloi gol/  “He went home”   	/xi ghƆrƆt gel/ 	/Ɔj ghƆrƆt gel/ 

     /hi  hatere khabƆ/ “He will eat with his hand” /xi hatedi khabƆ/	/Ɔj hatdi khabƆ/ 

Syntactic (Passive)

1.Voice:

Std.Assamese	    Kamrupi	   Goalparia
	/kiba knwwa gol/	/kiva khwwa gesi/	/kiba khawa hoil/		“has/have eaten something”
	/eta xכkamכt ahilo/	/eta xכkamot כha/	/ekta kamot ahilun/		"I have come on some business”
	/gesi/ 

Personal pronoun and Verb concord:  
	Std.Assamese	Kamrupi		Goalparia
	/apuni ketia ahile/	/apni kitey ahili/	/tui kwnbela ahili/	 “When did you come”? 
	/tumitaloi zabane/	/tumi take zabina/	/tumi Ɔte zabina/	“Will you go there”? 

Lexical and Semantic Differences:

   Std.Assamese		Kamrupi			Goalparia 

   /apa/ “Boy servant” 		/apa/ “boy” 		/apa/ “boy” 
   /api/   “Girl servant” 	/api/   “girl’ 	    	/api/ “girl” 

  /then/ “leg of non-human 	/then/   “leg of both	           /then/ “leg of both 
     being” 			human and non-		human and non- 
			human being” 		      human being” 

2. Social Variation:

a) Caste:

i) Sub-caste variation: In Assam, casteism is not practiced rigidly to that extent as is found in some other states of India. The fishermen’s dialect is something different from the other castes of Assam.

ii) Sub-tribe Variation:

There are many tribes in Assam and most of them have their own dialect. Bodo, Dimasa, Radha, Garo, Tiwa, Tipera, Deuri, Chutia, Hazong. Mishing, Morna, karbi, Kachari, Rajbanshi etc are the names of various tribes of Assam. Among them, bodo came out as a separate language from its other related groups and it has a large number of language speakers. Other tribes also have their own language but they can also speak Assamese very well. It has been seen that when these tribal people used to speak Assamese, they used some phonological, morphological, grammatical and lexical features of their own languages. E.g.- When a Bodo language speaker used to speak the following Assamese sentences it will be like-

	1. /m I p rhibo parun/  	“I can read” 	/moi porhibo paro/ 

	2. /moi zai/ 		“I go” 		/moi zao/ 

	3. /mat bosonon dibi/ 		“call me” 		/mat kotha dibi/  

b) Sex:

In the Assamese society two-paralled dialect i.e. male and female do not exist, but there are some particular words that are used by male or female only. Most of these words are slang words e.g-

1.	Words used by feminine gender to masculine gender- eg-  

/khesera/ 			“dirty”  
/mordani/ 			“masculine power” 
/podnli xuna/   		“one who frequently visit other houses” (use in ridiculous sense)

2.	Word used by masculine gender to feminine gender- eg-  

 /daini/    			“witch” 
 /sit poikhili/ 		“silly girl” 
/phosphosi/   		“who speaks too much” 

3. The following sentence, which has almost the same meaning, is pronounced differently in the same context by two opposite genders.

Male speaker 		Female speaker

/bapeke zanibi/  		/make zanibi/ 		
“you will learn a lesson” 	“you will learn a lesson”