My dear Shri barua Thanks a lot for your thought provoking letter. I share your concern on the name Oxom or Asom and agree that, we should call our homeland's name Assam or Asam, which many noted historians of bygone times, used to write.There is however, nothing wrong, in the name 'Asom' also, which indicate both 'oo' as well as 'oa'phonetically, as there are so many words in Assamese, meaning or implying both.Personally, I would like either Asam or Assam, for our motherland.
I would like to clarify that, I have not joined the Editorship of any newspaper, as yet. I only contribute a column to The Sentinel, which is published every Sunday. With regards and best wishes Yours Sincerely JPRajkhowa. On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 "Barua25" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote : Dear Sri Rajkhowa: I have heard that you have takebn up the Editorship of Sentinel. Congratualations!! During the time of Mr Bezbaruah, he tried to introduce the Roman letter X for the Assamese guttural sound kh. That was a very scientific and logical appraoch. According we should write Assam in Assamese Roman script as OXOM. However, Mr Chandra Prsada Saikia who may be termed a pseudi intellectual of Assam wrote an Editorial in Gariyashi pleading that Assam should be written as ASOM in Assamese Roman script. Needless to say that his reasong is wrong. According to his own statement, it will kill the Assamese X sound in the Assamese word OXOM as it has killed the X sound in so many Assamese words like Saikia, Sarma, Sibasagar simply because we used to write S for X. Now some of us find it very painful to see that Sentinel is also using to write ASOM instead of OXOM. With this letter I plead you to start writing OXOM and not ASOM. In this connection, I include my article on the origin of the wrods OXOM and ASSAM for your information. We should have no business to try to change the name of Assam to ASOM. A reply to yhis letter will be highly appreciated. Regards Rajen Barua Houston, Texas
