The language

Assamese, also known as Axamiya (অসমীয়া), Asamiya, or Asami, is a language spoken primarily in the state of Assam, India. With over 15 million speakers as per the Census of India 2011, it holds significant cultural and linguistic importance in the region. Belonging to the eastern branch of the Indo-Aryan (IA) language family, Assamese shares several linguistic features characteristic of this group. It is an agglutinative language, meaning that it forms words by adding affixes to a base. Additionally, Assamese follows the typical SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order, where the subject precedes the object and the verb typically comes at the end of the sentence. Despite being part of the IA family, Assamese boasts some unique linguistic features. One of its distinctive features is the classifier system, a grammatical structure used to classify nouns based on various categories such as shape, size, or type. Pre-verbal negation is another notable feature, where negation markers are placed before the verb in a sentence. Assamese also features a voiceless velar fricative sound, represented by the letters স, শ, ষ in the Assamese script. Unlike many other IA languages, Assamese does not employ retroflexion. It also lacks a phonemic contrast in vowel length, meaning that vowel length does not alter the meaning of words in the language.