[Assam] Asom or Oxom, phonetically speaking

[Chan Mahanta]

Good  note Rajen. Hope they publish it.

c








At 8:33 AM -0600 3/7/06, Rajen Barua wrote:
>Letters to the editor
>
>THE STATESMAN, KOLKATA 4 March 2006
>
>Asom or Oxom, phonetically speaking
>
>Sir, — I am writing this letter with reference 
>to a decision by the Assam government to change 
>the name of the state to Asom. This is a wrong 
>decision for certain reasons. Asom is a 
>Sanskritised spelling and not an Assamese 
>spelling. The proper Assamese spelling in the 
>Roman script should be Oxom. The Assamese 
>gutteral kh sound is a well-recognised velar 
>fricative, and is also found among other 
>languages including Greek and Russian. The 
>International Phonetic Association has 
>designated the Greek letter, ‘X’, for this 
>Assamese sound. This sound is not represented by 
>the letter, ‘S’, as written in the word Asom. As 
>such it is ‘X’ and not ‘S’ that should be used. 
>Again, the first letter should be ‘O’ and not 
>‘A’.
>The letter ‘A’ is used in Sanskrit and Hindi 
>where they have two ‘A’s. In Assamese we have 
>only one ‘A’. The correct vowel for the Assamese 
>pronunciation should be ‘O’. The Assam 
>government by taking a decision to use the 
>Sanskritised form of spelling — Asom instead of 
>Oxom — is trying to kill the proper Assamese 
>ethnic sound ‘XO’. This will be a great letdown 
>for the entire Assamese people, and we request 
>the Assam government not to meddle with the 
>Assamese language. If it has to change the name, 
>it should adopt the correct spelling, i.e. Oxom.
>— Yours, etc., Rajen Barua,
>Katy (Texas), USA, 4 March.
>
>
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>assam mailing list
>assam at assamnet.org
>http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
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