Assamese language in the past. There are also significant Assamese-speaking communities in Australia, Dubai, the United Kingdom, Canada, Nepal and the United States. Assamese is the official language of Assam, and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India. The Assam Secretariat functions in Assamese. The Assamese phonemic inventory consists of eight vowels, ten diphthongs, and twenty-three consonants (including two semivowels). Consonant clusters in Assamese include thirty three pure consonant letters in the Assamese alphabet. Each letter represents a single sound with an inherent vowel, the short vowel . The first twenty-five consonants letters are called "sparxa barna"
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