Bengali language Wikipedia

In spite of some modifications in the 19th century, the Bengali spelling system continues to be based on the one used for Sanskrit, and thus does not take into account some sound mergers that have occurred in the spoken language. One kind of inconsistency is due to the presence of several letters in the script for the same sound. In general, the script is fairly transparent for “tadbhav” words (native Bengali words). The Bengali script in general has a comparatively shallow orthography when compared to the Latin script used for English and French, i.e., in many cases there is a one-to-one correspondence between the sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) of Bengali.

Bengali Consonants (ব্যঞ্জনবর্ণ – Benjonborno) – 39 Essential Letters

Similarly, there are two letters (জ and য) for the voiced postalveolar affricate dʒ. But it is quite opaque for “tatsam” words (words derived from Sanskrit), for both, phoneme-to-grapheme as well as grapheme-to-phoneme conversions. In fact, Bengali-Assamese script has the deepest orthography (deep orthography) among the Indian scripts. The first version of the Aesop’s Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist.

• Find language exchange partners or join Bengali conversation groups.
• What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District.
• Furthermore, it is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka Matha) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore, while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala.
• Like other Indic scripts, the Bengali script has Schwa deletion and does not always mark when the inherent vowel is deleted — typically at the end of words.
• The standard literary form of Modern Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in Shantipur region of the Nadia district.

Use flashcards for vocabulary

Most nouns are gender-neutral, and gender is mainly indicated through pronouns and some specific words. Bengali has minimal gender distinctions compared to other Indo-Aryan languages. Bengali vowels are the building blocks of pronunciation. Our interactive guide helps you master each letter with proper pronunciation.

Bengali makes use of postpositions, as opposed to the prepositions used in English and most European languages. As a head-final language, Bengali follows a subject–object–verb word order, although variations on this theme are common. However, nouns and pronouns are moderately declined (altered depending on their function in a sentence) into four cases while verbs are heavily conjugated, and the verbs do not change form depending on the number of the noun. Published under the imprint of Benglish Books, these are based on phonetic transliteration and closely follow spellings used in social media but for using an underline to describe soft consonants.

Tenses (কাল – Kaal)

Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam, and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971.

Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam. The 3rd article of the Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. Bengali is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand, and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers banglabet-bd.com/bd reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi, Mumbai, Thane, Varanasi, and Vrindavan. Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura, southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language.