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Definition: Assamese from The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide

Official language of the state of Assam, India. It is an Indo-Aryan language. Although the name of Assam itself is of Thai origin, the Assamese adopted a language and script akin to Bengali from about AD 1300. Modern Assamese literature dates from about 1840.

ASSAMESE

From Dictionary of Languages
12,000,000 SPEAKERS India Assamese is the easternmost of the INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES of India. It is spoken in the Indian state of Assam, in the middle Brahmaputra valley, where that wide river flows south-westwards eventually to reach the Bay of Bengal. Until modern times this was the eastern outpost of the whole Indo-European language family. Assamese , called by its own speakers Asamiya , is named after the Indian state (Assamese Asam , pronounced Ohom ) which in turn gets its name from the Tai people who dominated the region from the 13th to the 19th centuries (see AHOM ). Assamese developed its special character because, unlike Bengali and Hindi, it was not simply a language of the Indian plians. Mountains shadow the lower Brahmaputra valley on both sides. Their inhabitants speak numerous quite unrelated languages, Tai, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan. Assamese became the lingua franca of all these peoples, and in the process lost many of the features that almost all other Indian…
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Full text Article Sankaradeva

From Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature
(b. 1449–d. 1568 or 1569) Indian poet, dramatist, saint An extraordinarily long-lived saint, the founder of an influential cult, a poet and dramatist in the Assamese language of India, and the inventor of an artificial dialect, Sankaradeva became a one-man literary movement. He wrote actively…
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Full text Article Assamese

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
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Full text Article Renaissance drama

From Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature
Drama can describe virtually any kind of performance—acted or not. Ordinarily, though, the term applies to a play written for performance by actors who impersonate the play's characters before an audience. The Renaissance was a particularly fruitful period for European drama. First, the period saw…
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A group of Tibeto- MONGOL , INDO-IRANIAN and BURMESE peoples who inhabit the Indian state of Assam. Their principal language is Assamese, an INDO-ARYAN language, although Bengali is also widely spoken. ‘Assam’ probably derives from ‘Ahom’, the name of a SHAN dynasty who replaced the Kamarupa rulers…
| 286 words
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Full text Article National Language Policies

From The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction
cultural diversity language ideology language policy language practice mulitilingualism globalization nation state National language policy refers to official efforts to determine the status, use, domains, and territories of language(s) in a nation-state and the rights of the speakers of the…
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Full text Article Assamese

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
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Full text Article Assamese

From The Macquarie Dictionary
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Full text Article Assamese

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
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Full text Article Indo-Aryan languages

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Major subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by more than 800 million people, principally in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Old Indo-Aryan period is represented by Sanskrit . Middle Indo-Aryan ( c. 600 bce…
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Full text Article languages of India

From Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature
To say that the linguistic situation in India is complex may seriously understate the matter. Literally hundreds of languages, many with regional variants, are actually spoken in India today. The Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) of India recognizes 22 official ones, including English, …
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