Atong language (Sino-Tibetan)

This article is about the Sino-Tibetan language. For the Niger-Congo language, see Atong language (Cameroon).
Atong
A.tong
Native toIndia, Bangladesh
RegionMeghalaya, India and adjacent areas in Bangladesh
Native speakers
(undated figure of 10,000, 4,600 in India)[1]
Latin, Bengali-Assamese
Language codes
ISO 639-3aot
Glottologaton1241
ELPAtong (India)

A.tong is one of the Garo dialect Sino-Tibetan (or Tibeto-Burman) language which is also related to Koch, Rabha, Bodo other than Garo language.[2] It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India, southern Kamrup district in Assam, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The spelling "A.tong" is based on the way the speakers themselves pronounce the name of their language. There is no glottal stop in the name and it is not a tonal language.

A reference grammar of the language has been published by Seino van Breugel.[3] A dictionary with Atong–English and English-A.tong sections, as well as semantic word lists[4] was published in 2021, two years after the publication of an analysis of A.tong stories.[5] In 2009, a book of stories in A.tong[6] and an Atong-English dictionary[7] were published by and sold at the Tura Book Room in Tura, Meghalaya, India. It is not certain if those books are still available there. The A.tong spelling system used in those books is explained in the A.tong Spelling Guide,[8] available online.

Atong has been classified as an endangered language by Ethnologue. Atong's situation is most probably due to the influence of Standard Garo, a prestige language in the State of Meghalaya. Many parents are not teaching Atong to their children anymore. However, in there are still places in South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills where Atong is still spoken en also transmitted to the younger generation.

  1. ^ Atong at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Jacquesson, François. 2006. La réconstruction du passé: le cas des langues boro-garo. Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris 101(1), 273-303
  3. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2014. A grammar of Atong. Leiden, Boston: Brill. [1]
  4. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2021. A dictionary of Atong: A Tibeto-Burman language of Northeast India and Bangladesh. Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.
  5. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2019. Atong Texts: Glossed, translated and annotated narratives in a Tibeto-Burman language of Meghalaya, Northeast India. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
  6. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2009a. Atong morot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  7. ^ Breugel, Seino van. 2009b. Atong-English Dictionary, 1st edn. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  8. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong spelling guide