Sylheti is spoken mainly in Bangladesh but there is also a large
number of speakers in the London area. While there’s plenty of
debate about the status of the language (is it a separate language
or a dialect of Bengali?), there is little confusion about the
unique script used to write Sylheti in the past.
The script is known as Sylheti Nagari or informally as Siloti
Nagri although some people take offense at this latter term. Its
literary history can be traced back to the latter half of the
18th century, with the earliest extant manuscript dating from
1775. Though use of the script has nearly died out, the London-based
organization Sylheti
Translation and Research publishes primers and reprints
various Sylheti literature.
Sylheti Nagari bears many similarities to Devanagari but lacks
many of its complexities — for example, there are far fewer
natural conjuncts and the vowel matras are never written before
a base consonant. There are several common ligatures but the Sylheti
Language Kit will form these automatically wherever necessary.
Sylheti Nagari is not included in the latest version of Unicode
and it may be some time before it is adopted. We have however
developed support for the script by using the Private
Use Area provided in Unicode. This solution allows users
to create Unicode compatible texts now which will assist in the
preservation of Sylheti literature.
The Sylheti Language Kit will include one font
and several different keyboard layouts including an ISCII style
driver and a Bijoy compatible adaptation. In a departure from
our normal development cycle, we hope to support Sylheti Nagari
by incorporating the font illustrated above which was developed
by STAR (Sylheti Translation and Research). The development of
the necessary Unicode intelligence is nearly complete but we still
need to gain licensing rights to the font.