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

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
Vowels_and_vowel_diacritics

Consonants

A selection of conjunct consonants

Modifier symbols
Modifier_symbols

Numerals

Sample text in Bengali

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.

BANGLADESH	Latest page update: made by BANGLADESH , Dec 24 2008, 10:55 PM EST (about this update About This Update Edited by BANGLADESH No content added or deleted. - complete history)
	Keyword tags: Bengali Alphabet More Info: links to this page

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Anonymous

Plz correct the modifier symbol above for kat with a ka instead of ba

Dec 20 2010, 11:25 AM EST by Anonymous

Thread started: Dec 20 2010, 11:25 AM EST Watch

The modifier symbol given above for ka is not correct. The symbol given for ka has been posited with the symbol of ba. So please replace the ba with ka symbol of Bangla orth ography.

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