ASSAMESE LANGUAGE

eastern Indo-Aryan (Indic) language that is the official language of Assam state of India. The only indigenous Indo-Aryan language of the Assam valley, Assamese has been affected in vocabulary, phonetics, and structure by its close association with Tibeto-Burman dialects in the region. Its grammar is noted for its highly inflected forms, and there are also different pronouns and noun plural markers for use in honorific and nonhonorific constructions. Assamese is also closely related to Bengali; like Bengali and Oriya, Assamese has no grammatical gender distinctions. Assamese literary tradition dates to the 13th century. Prose texts, notably buranjis (historical works), began to appear in the 16th century. In the late 20th century, speakers of Assamese numbered more than 15 million.