Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

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Bengali alphabet
Origin
The Bengali alphabet is derived from the Brahmi alphabet. It is also closely related to the Devanagari alphabet, from which it started to diverge in the 11th Century AD. The current printed form of Bengali alphabet first appeared in 1778 when Charles Wilkins developed printing in Bengali. A few archaic letters were modernised during the 19th century. Bengali has two literary styles: one is called Sadhubhasa (elegant language) and the other Chaltibhasa (current language). The former is the traditional literary style based on Middle Bengali of the sixteenth century, while the later is a 20th century creation and is based on the speech of educated people in Calcutta. The differences between the two styles are not huge and involve mainly forms of pronouns and verb conjugations. Some people prefer to call this alphabet the Eastern Nagari script or Eastern Neo-Brahmic script

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Notable features
The Bengali alphabet is a syllabic alphabet in which consonants all have an inherent vowel which has two different pronunciations, the choice of which is not always easy to determine and which is sometimes not pronounced at all. Vowels can be written as independent letters, or by using a variety of diacritical marks which are written above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to. When consonants occur together in clusters, special conjunct letters are used. The letters for the consonants other than the final one in the group are reduced. The inherent vowel only applies to the final consonant.

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Used to write:
Bengali ( ), an eastern Indo-Aryan language with around 211 million speakers in Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal and also in Malawi, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia, the UAE, UK and USA.

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

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Assamese, an eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 15 million people in the Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and also spoken in Bangladesh and Bhutan. Manipuri, one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur in north-east India and has about 1.1 million speakers. It is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and also has its own alphabet Garo, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 800,000 people in the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam, and also in Bangladesh. Mundari, a Munda language with about two million speakers in eastern India, mainly in the Indian state of Bihar, also in Bangladesh and Nepal. It has been written with the Devanagari, Bengali, Oriya and Latin alphabets.

Phonetic scripts Adaptated scripts

Vowels and vowel diacritics

More consonant-vowel combinations

Consonants

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm

A selection of conjunct consonants

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm

All conjunct consonants

Modifier symbols

Numerals

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

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Download a spreadsheet with these charts (Excel format, 80K)

Sample text in Bengali

Listen to a recording of this text Translation All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) Information about Bengali | Bengali phrases | Bengali numbers | Tower of Babel in Bengali | Bengali learning materials

Links
Information about Bengali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_language http://www.betelco.com/bd/bangla/bangla.html Online Bengali lessons http://www.bangla-online.info http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/bengali_index.html

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language http://www.jaspell.co.uk/learnbengali.htm http://mylanguages.org/learn_bengali.php http://www.bangla-online.info http://www.bangalinet.com/learn_bangla.htm Numbers in Bengali http://mylanguages.org/bengali_numbers.php http://www.connect-bangladesh.org/bangla/Numbers.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iQtAKx8K40 Ekushey - an add-on for MS Word which enables you to type in Bengali or Assamese http://www.altruists.org/projects/ek/ Online Bengali Dictionaries http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/dictionary.html http://www.bangladict.org http://www.abhidhan.com http://www.bengali-dictionary.com Free bengali fonts http://www.ekushey.org/index.php/page/otf_bangla_fonts http://scriptsource.org/scr/Beng http://www.omicronlab.com/bangla-fonts.html http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont/ http://banglafont.com http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Bengali.html Online radio in Bengali http://www.bbc.co.uk/bengali/ http://www.washingtonbanglaradio.com/ http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,615,00.html http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/bengali/top/ http://www.banglaradio.org.au http://www1.voanews.com/bangla/news/ Online Bengali magazines http://www.parabaas.com http://www.kheyal.com http://ajantrik.8m.net

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language http://www.abasar.net http://www.freewebs.com/guruchandali/ http://www.sulekhapatrika.com Viswayan - information about Bengali language, literature, drama, video, etc. http://www.viswayan.com/ Bangali jokes http://www.banglajokes.net/ ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient scripts, including classical & medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Old Cyrillic, Phoenician, Avestan, Ugaritic, Linear B, Anatolian scripts, Coptic, Cypriot, Brahmi, Old Persian cuneiform: http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm

Indo-Aryan languages
Awadhi, Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Chakma, Dhivehi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Kotia, Kutchi, Maithili, Marathi, Marwari, Modi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Romany, Saraiki, Sindhi, Sinhala, Sourashtra, Sugali, Sylheti, Urdu

Languages written with the Bengali alphabet

Bengali, Garo, Manipuri, Mundari, Sylheti Also used to write: Bishnupriya, Bodo, Chakma, Chiru, Koda, Nisi, Deori, Dimasa, Hajong, Koch, Khasi, Kudmali, Tiwa, Sauria Paharia, Miri, Chothe Naga, Thangal Naga, Moyon Naga, Maring Naga, Rabha, Rangpuri, Santali, Sadri, Oraon Sadri, Sulung, Panchpargania, Tippera, Kok Borok, Toto and Usui.

Syllabic alphabets / abugidas

Ahom, Badaga, Balinese, Batak, Baybayin (Tagalog), Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Chakma, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Dhives Akuru, Ethiopic, Evla Akuru, Gondi, Grantha, Gujarati, Gupta, Gurmukhi, Hanuno'o, Javanese, Kaithi, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Khojki, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, Mongolian Horizontal Square Script, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Pahawh Hmong, Pallava, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sindhi, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagbanwa, Takri, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Tolong Siki, Tulu, Varang Kshiti

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Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm

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