Linguistic Survey Of India Vol V Part I Indo Aryan Family Eastern Group

EASTEEN OP KEtLSA. 279
Tlie dialects of the Districts of Earidpur, Jessore and Khulna form a connecting link
between the standard language of Central Bengal, and the extreme Eastern type which
we find in Dacca and Backergunge.
If we wish to give the sab-dialect of these Districts a distinct name, we may call it
East-Central
The only real marks of an Eastern pronunciation which we meet in these three
Districts is in the letters chh9 which is pronounced as $, and/ which is pronounced as z.
Thus we have achhe, he is, pronounced, ase, and jan, a person, is pronounced ton. There
is also the usual tendency to pronounce e like the d in hat. Thus gela, he went, is pro-
nounced gold.
But ch is not pronounced ts or *. They say ckdkar, a servant, not tiakar; h is not
dropped. They say kaUa> he became, not 'aila, and dhariya> having seized, not tfariyd;
s is not pronounced as A. They say 8&p (sbap), a snake, not h&p.
We still find the dative termination, re instead of ke, but, as a rule, allowing for
contractions, the grammar is practically the same as that of Central Bengal
In the extreme south of Faridpur, as already pointed out, the dialect is the same
as that of Backergunge,
The first two specimens come from the Sub-division of Bagerhat, in the Khulna
District. This part of the country being close to Backergunge still retains some of the
peculiarities of that District.
The system of transliteration is the modified phonetic one used for Eastern Bengali.
The Collector also states,c the pronunciation of / M z is by no means universal, and
when it occurs, is more common in the middle than in the beginning of word/ I have
not attemptedcto show this transliteration. I have thought it best to transliterate every
j sound by z, as ia the case of other Eastern Bengali specimens.