The consonant graphemes and the full form of vowel graphemes fit into an imaginary rectangle of uniform size (uniform width and height). Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself (the name of the letter ঘ is itself ghô, not gh).
Graphemes within a word are also evenly spaced, but that spacing is much narrower than the spacing between words. According to Bengali linguist Munier Chowdhury, there are about nine graphemes that are the most frequent in Bengali texts, shown with its percentage of appearance in the adjacent table.[10]. When following a ত tô that is already part of a conjunct with প pô, ন nô or স sô, it is fused with the ত to resemble ও o: ন্তু ntu স্তু stu প্তু ptu. The Bengali script can be divided into vowels and vowel diacritics/marks, consonants and consonant conjuncts, diacritical and other symbols, digits, and punctuation marks.
When following গ gô or শ shô, it takes on a variant form resembling the final tail of ও o: গু gu শু shu. Bengali text is written and read horizontally, from left to right. In Japanese, there is some debate as to whether to accent certain distinctions, such as Tōhoku vs Tohoku. for which the letter-forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra. Used with two types of pronunciation in modern Bengali depending on the location of the consonant it is used with within a syllable, Diacritic.
[5][clarification needed]. Some consonants are written closer to one another simply to indicate that they are in a conjunct together. [nb 2] The Bengali alphabet has often been included with the group of Brahmic scripts for romanisation in which the true phonetic value of Bengali is never represented. (. There are various ways of Romanization systems of Bengali, created in recent years but failed to represent the true Bengali phonetic sound. All of them are used in both Bengali and Assamese languages. Others simply take exceptional forms in conjuncts, bearing little or no resemblance to the base character. 25 (Chatterji 1939: 40), 31 (Hai 1964), 45 (Ashraf and Ashraf 1966: 49), 28 (Kostic and Das 1972:6–7) and 17 (Sarkar 1987). George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Bengali language Movement (North Dinajpur), International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm, "Learning International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", "ITRANS – Indian Language Transliteration Package", "Orthography of Asiatick Words in Roman Letters", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bengali_alphabet&oldid=983470745, Articles containing Bengali-language text, Articles lacking in-text citations from November 2018, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from November 2015, Articles needing additional references from December 2018, All articles needing additional references, Articles with dead external links from July 2017, Articles with permanently dead external links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Special character or sign. While different standards for romanisation have been proposed for Bengali, they have not been adopted with the degree of uniformity seen in languages such as Japanese or Sanskrit. The Unicode block for Bengali is U+0980–U+09FF: [a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon. It is one of the most widely adopted writing system in the world (used by over 265 million people).
The consonants can be placed on top of one another, sharing their vertical line: As the last member of a conjunct, ব bô can hang on the vertical line under the preceding consonants, taking the shape of ব bô (includes বফলা.
Used at the beginning of texts as an invocation, There are two graphemes for the vowel sound, When a vowel sound occurs syllable-initially or when it follows another vowel, it is written using a distinct letter. When preceded by another ট ṭô, ট is reduced to a leftward curl: ট্ট ṭṭô. The Bengali alphabet or Bangla alphabet or Bengali script (Bengali: বাংলা বর্ণমালা, bangla bôrnômala) is the alphabet used to write the Bengali language and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. Some consonants fuse in such a way that one stroke of the first consonant also serves as a stroke of the next. Often, consonant conjuncts are not actually pronounced as would be implied by the pronunciation of the individual components. Many conjuncts represent Sanskrit sounds that were lost centuries before modern Bengali was ever spoken as in জ্ঞ. It is recognisable, as are other Brahmic scripts, by a distinctive horizontal line known as মাত্রা matra running along the tops of the letters that links them together. These vowel marks cannot appear without a consonant and are called, An exception to the above system is the vowel, Although there are only two diphthongs in the inventory of the script: ", অ is in the first syllable and there is a ই, if the অ is the inherent vowel in a word-initial consonant cluster ending in, Some letters that have lost their distinctive pronunciation in modern Bengali are called by more elaborate names. Conjuncts of three consonants also exist, and follow the same rules as above: স sô + ত tô +র rô = স্ত্র strô, ম mô + প pô + র rô = ম্প্র mprô, জ ǰô + জ ǰô + ব bô = জ্জ্ব "ǰǰbô", ক্ষ "kṣô" + ম mô = ক্ষ্ম "kṣmô". When preceded by হ hô, ন nô appears as a curl to the right: হ্ন "hnô". Theoretically, four-consonant conjuncts can also be created, as in র rô + স sô + ট ṭô + র rô = র্স্ট্র rsṭrô, but they are not found in native words. When serving as a vowel mark, উ u, ঊ u, and ঋ ri take on many exceptional forms. Certain combinations must be memorised: ক্ষ "kṣô" হ্ম "hmô".
Clusters of up to four consonants can be orthographically represented as a typographic ligature called a consonant conjunct (Bengali: যুক্তাক্ষর/যুক্তবর্ণ juktakkhôr/juktôbôrnô or more specifically যুক্তব্যঞ্জন). Browse the words consist of four letters in the English dictionary in alphabetic order :english-bangla.com (Page -1) When writing large numbers with many digits, commas are used as delimiters to group digits, indicating the thousand (হাজার hazar), the hundred thousand or lakh (লাখ lakh or লক্ষ lôkkhô), and the ten million or hundred lakh or crore (কোটি koti) units. These graphemes serve an etymological function, however, in preserving the original Sanskrit spelling in tôtsômô Bengali words (words … Some consonants are abbreviated when appearing in conjuncts and lose part of their basic shape. In the script, clusters of consonants are represented by different and sometimes quite irregular forms; thus, learning to read is complicated by the sheer size of the full set of letters and letter combinations, numbering about 350. When preceded by the abbreviated form of ঞ ñô, চ chô takes the shape of ব bô: ঞ্চ ñchô. Typically, the first consonant in the conjunct is shown above and/or to the left of the following consonants. The presence and absence of this matra can be important. The letters are preserved in the Bengali script with their traditional names despite the fact that they are no longer pronounced differently in ordinary speech. When following হ hô, it takes the variant shape of ঊ u: হৃ hri. In other words, leftwards from the decimal separator, the first grouping consists of three digits, and the subsequent groupings always consist of two digits. The Bengali script is however less blocky and presents a more sinuous shape. Some consonants are compressed (and often simplified) when appearing as the first member of a conjunct. When a vowel sound follows a consonant (or a consonant cluster), it is written with a diacritic which, depending on the vowel, can appear above, below, before or after the consonant. While efforts at standardising the alphabet for the Bengali language continue in such notable centres as the Bangla Academy at Dhaka (Bangladesh) and the Pôshchimbônggô Bangla Akademi at Kolkata (West Bengal, India), it is still not quite uniform yet, as many people continue to use various archaic forms of letters, resulting in concurrent forms for the same sounds. Among the various regional variations within this script, only the Assamese and Bengali variations exist today in the formalised system. The consonants can also be placed side-by-side, sharing their vertical line: The consonants can be placed side-by-side, appearing unaltered: As the first member of a conjunct, the consonants. are the same as in English. A period or dot is used to denote the decimal separator, which separates the integral and the fractional parts of a decimal number. [13], Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The table below shows the vowels present in the modern (since the late nineteenth century) inventory of the Bengali alphabet: Consonant letters are called ব্যঞ্জনবর্ণ bænjônbôrnô "consonant letter" in Bengali.
For example, adding ল lô underneath শ shô in Bengali creates the conjunct শ্ল, which is not pronounced shlô but slô in Bengali. Romanization of Bengali is the representation of the Bengali language in the Latin script. As the last member of a conjunct, the curled top of ধ dhô is replaced by a straight downstroke to the right, taking the form of ঝ ǰhô instead: গ্ধ gdhô দ্ধ ddhô ন্ধ ndhô ব্ধ bdhô.
Some consonants have forms that are used regularly but only within conjuncts.