Rohingya language

Rohingya (/roʊˈɪndʒə, -hɪn-, -ɪŋjə/; Hanifi Rohingya: 𐴌𐴗𐴥𐴝𐴙𐴚𐴒𐴙𐴝, Ruáingga,رُحَ࣪ڠۡگَ࣪ࢬ‎, pronounced [rʊˈɜiɲɟə]) is a language spoken by the stateless Rohingya people living in the Rakhine State of Myanmar and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh. It is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Bengali–Assamese branch, and is closely related to the Chittagonian language spoken in neighbouring Bangladesh. The Rohingya and Chittagonian languages have a high degree of mutual intelligibility.
Rohingya has primarily the following 25 native consonant phonemes. There are some other consonant phonemes which are from foreign languages such as Arabic, Bengali, Burmese and Urdu.
There are six vowels and several diphthongs in the Rohingya language. They contrast between "open-o" ([ɔ]) and "closed-o" ([o]) by using the different spellings ⟨o⟩/⟨ó⟩ and ⟨ou⟩/⟨óu⟩ respectively. According to another, [o] is interpreted instead as a diphthong [ɔu], leaving only 5 vowels.
Accented vowels, marked with an acute accent, represent stressed (or "hard" vowels), and repeating a vowel lengthens it. Thus, tonals are marked by arranging the location of a stressed vowel in a lengthened pair, like ⟨aá⟩ and ⟨áa⟩.
1. If a noun ends with a vowel then the article is either an or wa if singular, or un or in if plural or uncountable.Usually wa is used for round-fatty objects, and an for flat-thin objects.
2. If a noun ends with a consonant then the article is the end-consonant plus án or wá for singular or ún or ín for plural.
3. If a noun ends with r, then the article is g plus án or wá for singular or ún or ín for plural. gún is used for human and gín for non-human.
Indefinite articles can be used either before or after the noun. Uggwá usually is used for roll/round/fatty shaped objects and ekkán is for thin/flat shaped objects.
Rohingya word order-1 is Subject–Object–Verb.
Rohingya word order-2 is Subject–Time-Place-Object–Verb.
Rohingya word order-3 is Subject–Time-[adjective]-Place-Object–[adverb]-Verb.
Rohingya word order-4 is Subject–Time-[adjective]-Place-Object–[adverb]-Verb_1-Verb_2.
More on Time extension:
Rohingya distinguishes 3 tenses and 4 aspects, as shown in the examples below. In these tenses, the helping verb félai shows perfect action (comparable to English "has/have") and félaat shows perfect continuous action (compare English "has/have been"). The helping verb táki and táikki are comparable to English "be" and "been".
Verb-form-suffix (basic and/or helping verb) indicate both person and tense. The suffixes ~ir, ~yi, ~lám, ~youm are used for the first person, the suffixes ~or, ~yó, ~lá, ~bá for the 2nd person, and the suffixes ~ar, ~ye, ~l, ~bou for the 3rd person.
Similarly ~ir, ~or, ~ar indicate present continuous tense, ~yi, ~yó, ~ye present perfect tense, ~lám, ~lá, ~l past tense, and ~youm, ~bá, ~bou future tense.
Gender: m=male, f=female, n=neuter, *=the person or object is near, **=the person or object is far
The interrogative is indicated by né at the end of the sentence.
Itattú gór ekkán asé né? [Does he have a house?] Itattú gór ekkán asé. [He has a house.] Ibá za né? [Does she go?] Ibá za. [She goes.] Itará giyé né? [Did they go?] Itará giyé. [They went.]
Rohingya verbs indicate person by suffixes.
Present Tense lek = write (command to you sg.) lekí = I/we write. lekó = write (command to you pl.) lekós = You write (sg./pl.). leké = He/she/they write(s).
Present Continuous Tense lekír = I/we am/are writing. lekór = You (sg./pl.) are writing. lekér = He/she/they is/are writing.
Present Perfect Tense lekífélaiyi = I/we have written. lekífélaiyo = You (sg./pl.) have written. lekífélaiyós = You (sg.) have written. (used to very closed people) lekífélaiye = He/she/they has/have written.
Future Tense lekíyóum = I/we will write. lekíbá = You (sg./pl.) will write. lekíbi = You (sg.) will write. (used to very closed people) lekíbóu = He/she/they will write.
Past Tense (Immediate/near past) leikkí = I/we wrote. leikkó = You (sg./pl.) wrote. leikkós = You (sg.) wrote. (used to very closed people) leikké = He/she/they wrote.
Past Tense (Remote past) leikkílám = I/we wrote long ago. leikkílá = You (sg./pl.) wrote long ago. leikkílí = You (sg.) wrote long ago. (used to very closed people) leikkíl = He/she/they wrote long ago.
Past Tense (If possibility) lekítám = I/we would have written. lekítá = You (sg./pl.) would have written. lekítí = You (sg.) would have written. (used to very closed people) lekítóu = He/she/they would have written.
Forming Noun, Doer, Tool, Action lekóon = act of writing. e.g. Debalor uore lekóon gom noó. Writing on wall is not good. lekóya = writer. e.g. Itaráttú lekóya bicí. They-have many writers. lekóni = thing with which you write. e.g. Añártú honó lekóni nái. I-have no any writing-thing (i.e. pen, pencil) lekát = in the action of writing. e.g. Tui lekát asós. You are busy-in-writing.
Examples of the case inflection are given below, using the singular forms of the Rohingya term for "hóliba (tailor)" which belongs to Rohingya's first declension class.
Seventy or more different forms are available in Rohingya. A hyphen (-) between letters is to be removed, it is used for initial understanding only — how the word is formed.
The Hanifi Rohingya script is a unified script for the Rohingya language. Rohingya was first written in the 19th century with a version of the Perso-Arabic script. In 1975, an orthographic Arabic script was developed, based on the Urdu alphabet.
In the 1980s, (Maolana) Mohammad Hanif and his colleagues created the suitable phonetic script based on Arabic letters; it has been compared to the N’ko script. The script also includes a set of decimal numbers.
A virtual keyboard was developed by Google for the Rohingya language in 2019 and allows users to type in the Rohingya script. Ahkter Husin, a Rohingya software developer developed a keyboard for Android phones which is available on Google Play Store. Ahkter Husin and Kyaw Zay Ya Lin Tun also developed a keyboard app for IOS. Rohingya programmers also developed an online Unicode keyboard converter.
The first Rohingya language texts, written in Arabic script, are claimed to be more than 200 years old, though there is no concrete evidence about it. While Arakan was under British rule (1826–1948), the Rohingya people used mainly English and Urdu for written communication. Since independence in 1948, Burmese has been used in all official communications. Since the early 1960s, Rohingya scholars have started to realise the need for a writing system suited to their own language.
Later in 1975, Rohingya community leaders in Myanmar have chosen to use the Arabic script for modern usage as well. This modern use of the script is called “Rohingya Fonna”. The Rohingya Fonna script is essentially this historic script, but with some extra symbols as the unmodifed Arabic script is unsuited to the Rohingya language. While there is minimal literature using Rohingya Fonna, it does have the approval of the community leaders. One of the most significant advocates of Rohingya Arabic script has been Kyaw Hla Aung, a world-renowned lawyer and civil rights activist.
At present, a Rohingya Unicode font is available. It is based on Arabic letters (since those are far more understood by the people) with additional tone signs. Tests that have been conducted suggest that this script can be learned in a matter of hours if the reader has learned Arabic in a madrassa.
The script includes 3 Arabic vowel diacritics, as well as 3 additional diacritics. Six "double diacritics" representing nasal vowels are also present. In addition, Rohingya Fonna also has 3 tone markers. Tone markers act as "modifiers" of vowel diacritics. In simpler words, they are "diacritics for the diacritics". They are written "outside" of the word, meaning that they are written above the vowel diacritic if the diacritic is written above the word, and they are written below the diacritic if the diacritic is written below the word. They are only ever written where there are vowel diacritics. This is important to note, as without the diacritic present, there is no way to distinguish between tone markers and I‘jām i.e. dots that are used for purpose of phonetic distinctions of consonants.
The Rohingya Fonna Unicode keyboard layout as well as a free font can be found here.
Letters in yellow boxes are solely used in loanwords. Letters in green boxes are uniquely Rohingya.
In 1999 E.M. Siddique Basu was able to simplify the Rohingya writing using Latin letters. It is an intuitive writing system which can be learnt easily and is known as Rohingyalish or Rohingya Fonna that uses only 26 Roman letters, five accented vowels, and two additional Latin characters for retroflex and nasal sounds.
Q, V, and X are used only for loan-words.
The character set table of the Rohingya writing system uses the Latin letters shown above (ç and ñ with green background). The vowels are written both unaccented (aeiou) and accented (áéíóú). The use of c, ç and ñ is adapted to the language; c represents /ʃ/ (English sh), ç is the retroflex r ([ɽ]), and ñ indicates a nasalised vowel (e.g., fañs /fãs/ 'five'). Crucially, these can all be accessed from an English keyboard, for example by using the English (US) International keyboard.
Names and pronunciation of letters The names of the letters of the Latin Rohingya alphabet are similar to the names of the letters of the English alphabet.
Long vowels in Rohingyalish are spelled with double vowels: for example, a long /ɔ/ is spelled as "oo", while a long /o/ is spelled as "oou".
The following is a sample text in Rohingya of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with English, contrasted with versions of the text in Bengali and Assamese.