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The varieties of Prakrit spoken in Bengal region were generally referred to as “eastern Magadhi Prakrit”, as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji, as the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. 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.

• Bengali,a also known by its endonym Bangla,b is a classical Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.
• Bengali has specific sounds that don’t exist in other languages.
• These 39 consonants combine with vowels to create all Bengali words.

Bengali,a also known by its endonym Bangla,b is a classical Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.

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The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/, are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs, combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects.

Plural Formation

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.

Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations. 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. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram, a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, was adopted as the “national song” of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Notuner Gaan known as “Chol Chol Chol” is Bangladesh’s national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. The national anthems of both Bangladesh (Amar Sonar Bangla) and India (Jana Gana Mana) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Tenses (কাল – Kaal)

In most of Bengali grammar books, cases are divided into 6 categories and an additional possessive case (the possessive form is not recognised as a type of case by Bengali grammarians). When a definite article such as -টা -ṭa (singular) or -গুলো -gulo (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number. Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case, including nominative, objective, genitive (possessive), and locative. Additionally, optional particles (e.g. কি -ki, না -na, etc.) are often encliticised onto the first or last word of a yes–no question. 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.

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 general, the Bengali-Assamese script is fairly transparent for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, i.e., it is easier to predict the pronunciation from spelling of the words, though there are many cases where pronunciation is different from what is written. It is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels. Bengali exhibits diglossia, though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language.

A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent ɔ is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures. Since the Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments, but carry an “inherent” vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. 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). 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. 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.

Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in the east to Meherpur in the west. There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, https://banglabet-bd.com/bd/ computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between the visible matra and an invisible baseline).

Examples are লক্ষ্মণ (written as lakṣmaṇa but pronounced as lokkhōn “Lakshman”), বিশ্বাস (written as biśbāsa but pronounced as biśśaś “belief”), বাধ্য (written as bādhya but pronounced as baddhō “obliged”) and স্বাস্থ্য (written as sbāsthya but pronounced as śasthō “health”). Many consonant clusters have different sounds than their constituent consonants. Another kind of inconsistency is concerned with the incomplete coverage of phonological information in the script. The letter ষ also, sometimes, retains the voiceless retroflex sibilant ʂ sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in কষ্ট kɔʂʈo “suffering”, গোষ্ঠী ɡoʂʈʰi “clan”, etc. For example, there are three letters (শ, ষ, and স) for the voiceless postalveolar fricative ʃ, although the letter স retains the voiceless alveolar sibilant s sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in স্খলন skʰɔlon “fall”, স্পন্দন spɔndon “beat”, etc.