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Atong is a Sino-Tibetan language related to Koch, Rabha, Boro and Garo.〔Jacquesson, François. 2006. La réconstruction du passé: le cas des langues boro-garo. ''Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris'' 101(1), 273-303〕 It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The correct spelling "Atong" 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. No current estimate of the number of speakers is available; according to the Linguistic Survey of India it was spoken by approximately 15,000 people in the 1920s. Since the Atong consider themselves and are considered by the Garos to be a subtribe of the Garos, they are not counted as a separate ethnic or linguistic community by the Indian government. Almost all Atong speakers are bilingual in Garo to a greater or lesser extent. Garo is seen as a more prestigious language. Since there is a bible translation in Garo, but not in Atong, it is the language used in all churches and most Atong speakers are Christians. Garo is also the language of education in schools in the Atong-speaking area, although some schools provide education in English. A reference grammar of the language has been published by Seino van Breugel.〔van Breugel, Seino. 2014. ''A grammar of Atong''. Leiden, Boston: Brill. ()〕 An Atong–English dictionary〔van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. ''Atong–English dictionary''. Tura: Tura Book Room.〕 and a book of stories in Atong〔van Breugel, Seino. 2009c. ''Atong morot balgaba golpho''. Tura: Tura Book Room.〕 are published by and available at the Tura Book Room. == Phonemes and alphabet == The phonemes of Atong are given in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) in Table 1. That table also presents how the phonemes are written in the Atong alphabet used for everyday writing by people who are not linguists. As we can see in the table, the glottal stop can be written with either a raised dot or an apostrophe. The raised dot was used by missionaries to write the glottal stop in Garo when the writing system for that language was created in the 1800s. The apostrophe is an easier way to write the glottal stop, since it is available on all computer keyboards. The vowel phoneme is written in the orthography, as it is in Khasi and Welsh. It was the Welsh Presbyterians that developed the Khasi writing system and used the letter to write the phoneme in Khasi. As we can see in Table 1, the consonant phoneme has an aspirated and non-aspirated pronunciation. The aspirated allophone occurs at the beginning of a syllable, while the unaspirated occurs syllable finally. Both phonemes are written with the letter . Aspirated is by no means uncommon in Asian languages; Burmese and Korean are examples. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Atong language (Sino-Tibetan)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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