Assamese language Assamese language Assamese () (also Asamiya) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It is the easternmost Indo-European language; spoken by over 15 million speakers, and serves as a "lingua franca" in the region. Nefamese is an Assamese-based pidgin used in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in Nagaland. Small pockets of Assamese speakers can be found in Bangladesh. The non-linguistic Bengali dialects of Sylhet and North Bengal are linguistically closer to Assamese, though the speakers identify with the Bengali culture and the
Assamese alphabet is used today. The script presently has a total of 11 vowel letters, used to represent the eight main vowel sounds of Assamese, along with a number of vowel diphthongs. All of these are used in both Assamese and Bengali, the two main languages using the script. Some of the vowel letters have different sounds depending on the word, and a number of vowel distinctions preserved in the writing system are not pronounced as such in modern spoken Assamese or Bengali. For example, the Assamese script has two symbols for the vowel sound and two symbols for the vowel sound