Original Assamese books, the handwritten manuscripts, definitely were religious in nature and used mostly Sanskritized spelling. You can look at http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/~kalita/Asomi2003 for examples of some such original writing.
But, the first few volumes of Orunudoi were written in phonetic Assamese. I can scan a few copies if anyone wants to see. Also, the one of the first Assamese dictionary, the one by Brown, I think, was in phonetic Assamese. For about 20-30 years, starting the early 1800s, most Assamese was printed purely phonetically. That's because the American Baptist printers came to Assam from Burma and were not influenced by subcontinental "standard" since they had never traveled west of Guwahati or possibly even Nagaon. Only later, the orthography was changed to conform again to North Indian or subcontinental "standards". Personally, I would have liked to continue with the phonetic spelling of Assamese since it would have made us unqiue and it would have reduce the unnecessary complexities of spelling that we see in Assamese. But, at that time, the Assamese leaders of Assam were trained and educated in Bengal mostly, and were enamored of everything Bengali. As Saurav suggests, it can be a defining moment now for how we write Assamese in Roman keyboard. We need to preserve our Assamese uniqueness while conforming to the subcontinental "standards" as much as possible. As far starting with "o", I don't like it too much, but if others are willing, it's OK to me. It may be because I am used to seeing the word "Assam" and it's a beloved and sentimental word, and when someone spells its equivalent as "Oxom" it seems weird, but "Axom" is still somewhat like "Assam" that I am used to. So, I figure, my preference to the use of "o" is because of the word "Assam" and other proper nouns in Assamese that I am used to. Jugal Kalita _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
