Atong language (Sino-Tibetan)
A.tong is one of the Garo dialect Sino-Tibetan (or Tibeto-Burman) language which is also related to Koch, Rabha, Bodo other than Garo language. It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India, southern Kamrup district in Assam, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The spelling "A.tong" is based on the way the speakers themselves pronounce the name of their language. There is no glottal stop in the name and it is not a tonal language.
| Atong | |
|---|---|
| A.tong | |
| Native to | India, Bangladesh |
| Region | India, State of Meghalaya and adjacent areas in Bangladesh |
Native speakers | (undated figure of 10,000, 4,600 in India) |
Writing system | Latin, Bengali-Assamese |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | aot |
| Glottolog | aton1241 |
| ELP | Atong (India) |
A reference grammar of the language has been published by Seino van Breugel. A dictionary with Atong–English and English-A.tong sections, as well as semantic word lists was published in 2021, two years after the publication of an analysis of A.tong stories. In 2009, a book of stories in A.tong and an Atong-English dictionary were published by and sold at the Tura Book Room in Tura, Meghalaya, India. It is not certain if those books are still available there. The A.tong spelling system used in those books is explained in the A.tong Spelling Guide, available online.
Atong has been classified as an endangered language by Ethnologue. Atong's situation is most probably due to the influence of Standard Garo, a prestige language in the State of Meghalaya. Many parents are not teaching Atong to their children anymore. However in there are still places in South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills where Atong is still spoken en also transmitted to the younger generation.