Bangla Language Banglapedia
An influx of Perso-Arabic words into the language took place at this point of evolution. It is flanked by various Austric languages like Santali, Mundari, Khasi and Sino-Tibetan languages like Kachhari, Boro, Garo, Tripuri etc, each of them encroaching at times on the Bangla-speaking areas. This new Indo-Aryan (NIA) language is historically related to Irish, english, French, Greek, Russian, persian etc. Some resources will still introduce historic forms of Bengali first, so watch out for this. Therefore, sometimes Bengali written with the English alphabet can look extra confusing.
For example, in মই moj https://bdcrazytime.com/strategy/ “ladder” and in ইলিশ iliʃ “Hilsa fish,” the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি). To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the hôshonto (্), may be added below the basic consonant sign (as in ম্ m). It should be noted that in these consonant-vowel ligatures, the so-called “inherent” vowel is expunged from the consonant, but the basic consonant sign ম does not indicate this change.
It is the second most spoken and fifth fastest growing language in India, following Hindi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, and Meitei (Manipuri), according to the 2011 census of India. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand. Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language.
Other related languages in the nearby region also make use of the Bengali script like the Meitei language in the Indian state of Manipur, where the Meitei language has been written in the Bengali script for centuries, though the Meitei script has been promoted in recent times. The script is known as the Bengali alphabet for Bengali and its dialects and the Assamese alphabet for Assamese language with some minor variations. The inherent vowel attached to every consonant can be either ɔ or o depending on vowel harmony (স্বরসঙ্গতি) with the preceding or following vowel or on the context, but this phonological information is not captured by the script, creating ambiguity for the reader. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh (Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives.
Vocabulary
Why should you learn the Bengali language, also known as Bangla? To learn how to familiarize yourself with the Bengali alphabet, keep reading! For example, the Foreign Service Institute created a short course for embassy employees to learn the language, and you can access these materials via the Live Lingua Project. If you want to learn Bengali, start by taking advantage of free online resources to learn some of the basics of the language. About 300 million people in Bangladesh and India speak Bengali, or Bangla as the language is known to natives.
- The most recent attempt has been by publishers Mitra and Ghosh with the launch of three popular children’s books, Abol Tabol, Hasi Khusi and Sahoj Path, in Roman script at the Kolkata Book Fair 2018.
- Radhi is the basis of standard colloquial Bangla, spoken in wide areas of south-western Bengal.
- Some consonant clusters have completely different pronunciation as compared to the constituent consonants.
Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. The West-Central dialects (Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form the basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali.
Abugidas / Syllabic alphabets
As a consequence, unlike Hindi, Bengali verbs do not change form depending on the gender of the nouns. Some of these clusters, such as the mr in মৃত্যু mrittu “death” or the sp in স্পষ্ট spôshţo “clear,” have become extremely common, and can be considered legal consonant clusters in Bengali. Sanskrit (তৎসম tôtshôm) words borrowed into Bengali, however, possess a wide range of clusters, expanding the maximum syllable structure to CCCVC.
Yes–no questions do not require any change to the basic word order; instead, the low (L) tone of the final syllable in the utterance is replaced with a falling (HL) tone. 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. The most recent attempt has been by publishers Mitra and Ghosh with the launch of three popular children’s books, Abol Tabol, Hasi Khusi and Sahoj Path, in Roman script at the Kolkata Book Fair 2018.
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. 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.
Consonant clusters
Learning the Bengali alphabet will help you overcome these hurdles. For example, the word জ্বর (jɔr / “fever”) may be romanized as jor, jvara, jôr, dʒɔr, or something else. On top of the sounds that English speakers can easily mix up, the romanization of Bengali is not very standardized.