Bengali Language & 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: Bengali is spoken in West Bengal of India. West Bengal is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse states of India. The vast majority of the people of Bangladesh speak Bengali (called Bangla in Bengal).
Number of Bengali Speakers: Over 210 million in the world, 100 million in Bangladesh.
Bengali Speakers: In addition to Bangladesh, Bengali is spoken in India, Nepal, Singapore, Malawi, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The traditional area of habitation of Bengali peoples is called Bengal in English and Bongo in Bengali.
Language Classification: Bengali belongs to the easternmost branch, called Aryan or Indo-Iranian, of the Indo-European family of languages.
Bengali Dialects: About six major dialects. In Bangla, sadhu bhaasha (language of Sages) and Cholti Bhaashaa (colloquial language).
Bengali Alphabet: The Bengali script is a cursive script having 12 vowels and 52 consonants.
Bengali Orthography: The Bengali script originated from Brahmi alphabet of the Asokan inscriptions. The spelling system is based on an older version on the language. Some vowel merges were introduced in the spoken language which does not have a completely phonemic orthography.
Bengali Language History: Bengali has two literary styles: Sadhubhasa, an elegant language based on Middle Bengali of the sixteenth century. Chaltibhasa, the current dialect spoken in Calcutta.
Bengali Language Enriched by: Indian languages. Rabindranath Tagore is a Nobel laureate and also known by many as the Shakespeare of India.
Bengali Standardization Efforts: The Bengali alphabet goes back to 1778. Charles Wilkins introduced the first printing. New forms replaced the archaic forms in the mid-19th century.
Unique Features of Bengali: The language played an important role in the independence activities of Bangladeshis. This represented a resistance to Urdu language spoken in Pakistan. Intensive movement in 1950-52 turned into a Language Movement. February 21st is celebrated as the Language Martyrs' Day.
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
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.
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.
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. Also has it's own alphabet
Garo, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 500,000 people in the Brahmaputra valley in the Indian state of Assam.
Mundari, a Munda language with about 850,000 speakers in eastern India, mainly in the Indian state of Bihar. Also written with the Devanagari, Bengali, Oriya and Latin alphabets.
Vowels and vowel diacritics
Consonants
A selection of conjunct consonants
Modifier symbols
Numerals
Sample text in Bengali
