Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

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. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. In the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra.

A selection of conjunct consonants

• In Sylhet and Bankura, modified versions of the Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities.
• After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement.
• Vowel length is not contrastive in Bengali; there is no meaningful distinction between a „short vowel“ and a „long vowel,“ unlike the situation in many other Indic languages.
• According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji, dictionaries from the early 20th century attributed a little more than 50% of the Bengali vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Sanskrit words, corrupted forms of Sanskrit words, and loanwords non-Indo-European languages).
• Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল aṭ biṛal instead of আটটা বিড়াল aṭ-ṭa biṛal „eight cats“) would typically be considered ungrammatical.

The letters usually hang from a horizontal headstroke called the matra (not to be confused with its Hindi cognate matra, which denotes the dependent forms of Hindi vowels) Though formal spoken Bengali is modeled on manno cholit bangla, the majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety—often, speakers are fluent in choltibhasha and one or more Regional dialects. The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels. The south-western dialects (Radh) form the basis of standard colloquial Bengali, while Bangali is the dominant dialect group in Bangladesh. 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.

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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. For example, the graph মি mi represents the consonant m followed by the vowel i, where i is represented as the allograph ি and is placed before the default consonant sign. Every consonant sign has the vowel অ ɔ (or sometimes the vowel ও o) „embedded“ or „inherent“ in it. Although the consonant signs are presented as segments in the basic inventory of the Bengali script, they are actually orthographically syllabic in nature. It is similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Sanskrit and many modern Indic languages such as Hindi.

The differences between the two styles are not huge and involve mainly forms of pronouns and verb conjugations. Usually, standard Bangla is used in literary and artistic work, plays and mass communication, but recently the use of dialects in these activities has increased. People speak in dialect at home, but will generally use spoken Bangla outside and standard colloquial Bangla for academic and literary purposes. Thus the following Bangla words from Sanskrit are spelled যম (yam) and যাত্রা (yatra) but are pronounced as if spelled জম (jam) and জাত্রা (jatra).

For example, the letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ „3“ are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra, as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e, also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô. For example, in মই moj „ladder“ and in ইলিশ iliʃ „Hilsa fish“, the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent formি). In these consonant-vowel ligatures, the so-called „inherent“ vowel ɔ is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম mɔ. For example, the graph মি mi represents the consonant m followed by the vowel i, where i is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô, may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in the final ন in মন mon or the medial ম in গামলা ɡamla). To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্), may be added below the basic consonant grapheme https://ctextoken.io (as in ম্ m).

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 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.