Sylheti Nagri

Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nāgarī (Sylheti: ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ, síloṭi nagri, pronounced [sílɔʈi nagɾi]), known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri (ꠍꠤꠟꠦꠐ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ) as well as by many other names, is an Indic script. The script was historically used in the regions of Bengal and Assam, that were east of the Padma. It was primarily used in the eastern part of the Sylhet region, to document poetry known as puthis. In the course of the twentieth century, it has lost much ground to the standardised Eastern Nagari script. Printing presses for Sylheti Nagri existed as late as into the 1970s, and in the 2000s, the script was added to the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). (See Syloti Nagri (Unicode block) for more details.)

Historically the script was transcribed in Middle Bengali, though having similar characteristics to the more popular Dobhashi literary dialect, it was distinguished for its phonological influence from Sylheti. It is also claimed that the orthography of the script equates with Sylheti, reflecting the phonetic and grammatical features of the vernacular, it provided a simpler and more precise representation than the more prevalent Bengali script. Sylheti Nagri therefore represented a unique literary culture of the Sylhet region. Contemporarily, the script is being revived by some as a key identity marker of Sylhet's cultural heritage.