Assamese

Assamese (অসমীয়া, Ôxômiya) is an Indo-Aryan language used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is spoken by over 13 million people. It is the official language of Assam. It is spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Assamese speakers can also be found in Bhutan.

Assamese and the cognate languages, Maithili, Bengali, and Oriya, developed from Magadhi Prakrit. The earliest relics of the language can be found in paleographic records of the Kamarupa Kingdom from the 5th century to the 12th century. Aspects of Assamese language have been discovered in Charyapada, the 9th century collection of Buddhist verses discovered in 1907 in Nepal. The 16th and 17th centuries saw a flourishing of Vaishnavite literature, leading to the emergence of modern forms of literature in the late 19th century. Assamese became the court language in the Ahom kingdom by the 17th century.

Assamese uses the Assamese script, a variant of the Eastern Nagari script, which has its roots in the Gupta script.

Recent studies have identified four dialect groups in Assamese: Eastern group, spoken in Sibsagar district and districts around it; Central group spoken in present Nagaon district and adjoining areas; Kamrupi group spoken in undivided Kamrup, Nalbari, Barpeta, Darrang, Kokrajhar, and Bongaigaon districts; and Goalparia group spoken in the Dhubri and Goalpara districts and in certain areas of Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon districts.

Assamese has a relatively free word order. Gender and number are not marked but there is lexical distinction of gender in the third person pronoun. There are transitive and intransitive verbs. Adverbs can be derived from verb roots. Assamese is a pro-drop language but a pronoun is mandatory in certain sentences.

Info: Wikipedia