Dhakaiya Kutti dialect
Dhakaiya Kutti Bengali, also known as Old Dhakaiya Bengali or simply Dhakaiya, is a Bengali dialect, spoken by the Kutti-Bengalis of Old Dhaka in Bangladesh. This dialect is highly mutually intelligible with Standard Bengali and other varieties of Bengali. It is not used in formal settings anymore although historically the local Bais and Bara are said to have used it sometimes.
Features
Dhakaiya Kutti Bengali is a typical eastern dialect of Bengali. As a result of interaction with the Urdu-speaking people in Old Dhaka, many Urdu loanwords entered in the dialect. It has only a few breathy voiced sounds in comparison to Standard Bengali. Some breathy voiced sounds such as , , are pronounced like deaspirated sounds , and respectively. The uses of epenthesis are extensively seen in the dialect like other typical eastern Bengali dialects whereas the standard dialect shows features like syncope and umlaut. The use of double sounds in certain words are also quite common. The word for younger brother-in-law, shala in Standard Bengali and hala in Dhakaiya Kutti Bengali and other eastern dialects, is seen as offensive in almost all Bengali dialects except in the Dhakaiya Kutti dialect this is a common and inoffensive word which can be applied to teachers, parents and animals.| English | Standard Bengali | Dhakaiya Kutti Bengali |
| Boy | Chhele | Pola |
| Girl | Meye | Maiya |
| Youngsters | Chhelemeye | Polapan |
| True | Shotti | Sotti /Hacha |
| Why | Keno | Kela |
| How | Kemon | Kemte |
| Listen | Shon | Son /Hon |
| After drinking tea | Cha kheye | Cha khaya |
| You'll go with me? | amar shonge jaben naki? | amar loge jaiben niki? |
| What did you buy from market? | Bazar theke ki kinechhen? | Bazar theika/thon ki kinchhen? |
| From | theke | theika /thon |
| Banana | kola | kolla |
| Gourd/pumpkin | lau/kodu | koddu |
| But | kintu | mogor, magar - from Persian |
| Me too | amio | ami bi bhi - from Hindustani |
| All | shob | sob |
| I see | dekhi | dehi |
| Going | giye | giya /jaiya |
| I'm doing | ami korchhi | ami kortachhi |
| Will do | korbo | kormu/korum |
History
During the Mughal era, the Bengal Subah was famous for rice cultivation and the city of Jahangirnagar was the province's capital. Rice was a very important export product in the mid-eighteenth century, centred in Dhaka. The merchants who exported the rice were predominantly of Marwari and Central Indian descent. These merchants would go to different areas in Eastern Bengal and collect the rice. The rice was first needed to be cleaned up using before packaging, and this process is called in Bengali. Many local Bengali rice cultivators were employed to do this. They would come from various parts of Bengal to Dhaka to complete this job, and as it was long and tiring to get there and do the job, many of them started living in Dhaka. This migration took place circa 1760. However, not all were involved in the rice trade. The presence of the Mughals in Dhaka meant that there was generally a lot more employment opportunities there and so they took other occupations such as, footsoldiers, guards, chefs and chauffeurs for the Dhakaiya Urdu-speaking Nawabs of Dhaka and other aristocratic families. These groups of people lived together and engaged in conversations and addas with their Hindustani counterparts and their main occupation led them to be known as. As a result of interaction of Bengalis with the migrated North Indian Urdu-speaking people in Old Dhaka led to influence the local eastern Bengali variety of Kutti community. The Bais of Old Dhaka in the twentieth-century used to converse in either Dhakaiya Urdu or Dhakaiya Kutti Bengali. Eventually, the common people living in the localities of Old Dhaka, Kutti or not, used to speak in this dialect.Presently, the speakers of Kutti dialect are minority in Dhaka city following the mass migration of non-Dhakaite Bengalis from districts all over Bengal during the first and second partitions during the British colonial period. The new educated migrant community spoke in Standard Bengali, a standardised dialect of Bengali. The culture of Kuttis of Old Dhaka is in decline due to the influence of Dhaka city, as the capital, welcoming migrants from all over the country who are not familiar with their regional culture.
Some of the Dhakaiya kutti-Bengali community began to see the new migrant community as their opponents due to these dialectal and regional cultural differences. This division was the source of modern troubles in the identities of the Old Dhakaiyas and the post-partition migrant community.