Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Bengali Language shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Bengali Language offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Bengali Language at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Bengali Language? Wrong! If the Bengali Language is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Bengali Language then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Bengali Language? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Bengali Language and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Bengali Language wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Bengali Language then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Bengali Language site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Bengali Language, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Bengali Language, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
{{Infobox Language|name=Bengali|nativename=বাংলা
|states=
India,Bangladesh, and several others]|speakers=230 million (189 million native)|rank=6,{{cite web|rank=6|url = http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html|title = Languages spoken by more than 10 million people|accessdate = 2007-03-03|date = 2007|work =|publisher = Encarta Encyclopedia--> 5,{{cite web|rank=5|url = http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=country|title = Statistical Summaries|accessdate = 2007-03-03|date = 2005|work =|publisher = Ethnologue-->|familycolor=Indo-European|fam2=Indo-Iranian languages|fam3=
Indo-Aryan languages|fam4=List of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages|fam5=Bengali-Assamese|script=Bengali script and [Tripura)] (Bangladesh)Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (West Bengal)]: ) is an Indo-Aryan languages language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the
Magadhi Prakrit, Pāli and
Sanskrit languages.
Bengali is native to the region of eastern
South Asia known as
Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh and the
Indian state of West Bengal. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the
List of languages by number of native speakers (ranking 5th or 6th in the world).Bengali is the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second most widely spoken language in India{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN| title = Languages of India| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Gordon| first = Raymond G., Jr. (ed.| year = 2005| work = Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition.| publisher = SIL International-->{{cite web| url = http://www.censusindia.net/cendat/language/lang_table1.PDF| title = Languages in Descending Order of Strength - India, States and Union Territories - 1991 Census| accessdate = 2006-11-19| year =| month =| work = Census Data Online| publisher = Office of the Registrar General, India| pages =1-->. Along with
Assamese language, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-Iranian languages.
The Bengali language, with its long and rich literary tradition, serves to bind together a culturally diverse region. In 1952, when Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, this strong sense of identity led to the
Bengali Language Movement, in which several people braved bullets and died on February 21. This day has now been declared as the
International Mother Language Day.
History
Like other List of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern
Middle Indic languages of the
Indian Subcontinent.
Magadhi Prakrit, the earliest recorded
spoken language in the region and the language of the Gautama Buddha, had evolved into
Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi") in the early part of the first millennium CE. Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called
Apabhramsa languages just before the turn of the first millennium. The local Apabhramsa language of the eastern Subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the
Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Bengali-Assamese languages. Some argue for much earlier points of divergence—going back to even 500 CE but the language was not static; different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Prakrit is believed to have evolved into Apabhramsa Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with Bengali for a period of time. Abahattha in
Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:
Old Bengali (900/1000 CE–1400 CE)—texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya language and Assamese language branch out in this period.
Middle Bengali (1400–1800 CE)—major texts of the period include Chandidas's Srikrishnakirtan; elision of word-final ô sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods.
New Bengali (since 1800 CE)—shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar → tar "his"/"her"; koriyachhilô → korechhilo Grammatical person grammatical tense grammatical aspect).
Historically closer to
Pāli, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (
Chaitanya era), and also during the
Bengal Renaissance. Of the modern
Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and others such as Punjabi are more influenced by Arabic and
Persian language.
, or the Martyr's monument, in
Dhaka, commemorates the struggle for the Bengali languageUntil the 18th century, there was no attempt to document the grammar for Bengali. The first written Bengali dictionary/grammar,
Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, was written by the Portugal missionary
Manoel da Assumpcam between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal.{{cite web]| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a
Kingdom of Great Britain grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(
A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali
Typesetting in print for the first time. Bangla language in
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali Reformer, also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832).
During this period, the
Choltibhasha form, using simplified inflections and other changes, was emerging from
Shadhubhasha (older form) as the form of choice for written Bengali.{{cite web] (
Bhasha Andolon) in what was then
East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh). Although Bengali speakers were more numerous in the population of Pakistan, Urdu was legislated as the sole national language. On February 21, 1952, protesting students and activists walked into military and police fire in Dhaka University and three young students and several others were killed. Subsequently, UNESCO has declared 21 February as
International Mother Language Day. In a separate event in May 1961, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.{{cite web| url = http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031227/asp/northeast/story_2721710.asp
| title = No alliance with BJP, says AGP chief
| publisher = The Telegraph
| accessdate = 2006-11-19
-->
Geographical distribution
Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as
Bengal, which comprises
Bangladesh and the
Indian state of
West Bengal. Around 98% of the total population of Bangladesh speak Bengali as a native language.{{cite web| url = https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html
| chapter = Bangladesh
| title = The World Fact Book
| publisher = CIA
| accessdate = 2006-11-04
--> There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in immigrant populations in the
Middle East, Western world and
Malaysia.
Official status
Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 23 List of national languages of India recognised by the Republic of India.{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN
| title = Languages of India
| publisher = Ethnologue Report
| accessdate = 2006-11-04
--> It is the official language of the state of
West Bengal and the co-official language of the state of Tripura, Cachar District of southern Assam and the union territory of
Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Bengali speakers make the majority in Neil Island and
Havelock Island. It was made an official language of
Sierra Leone in order to honour the Bangladeshi peacekeeping force from the United Nations stationed there.{{cite news| title = Sierra Leone makes Bengali official language
| url = http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_29-12-2002_pg9_6
| publisher = Daily Times
| date = December 29, 2002
| accessdate = 2006-11-17
--> It is also the co-official language of Assam, which has three predominantly
Sylheti language-speaking districts of southern Assam: Silchar,
Karimganj, and
Hailakandi.{{cite web] and
Amar Shonar Bangla were written in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore.
Dialects
Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Linguist
Suniti Kumar Chatterjee grouped these dialects into four large clusters — Radh, Banga, Kamarupa and Varendra; Bangla language in but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed.{{cite web], Chittagong, Dhaka and
Sylhet divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as Fricative consonant. Western postalveolar consonant affricates চ , ছ় , ~
. The influence of
Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels. Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian language and
Chakma language, have contrastive
tone (linguistics); differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words.
Rajbangsi language, Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong language is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects.{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=haj
| title = Hajong
| publisher = The Ethnologue Report
| accessdate = 2006-11-19
-->
During the standardization of Bengali in the late 19th and early 20th century, the cultural center of Bengal was its capital
Kolkata (then Calcutta). What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of
Nadia District, a district located near Kolkata.{{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/C_0103.htm| title = Chalita Bhasa| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh--> There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use a different word than a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example,
nun (salt) in the west corresponds to
lôbon in the east.
Spoken and literary varieties
Bengali exhibits diglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged:{{cite web]| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh--> {{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/S_0014.htm| title = Sadhu Bhasa| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Shadhubhasha (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language') was the written language with longer verb inflections and more of a Sanskrit-derived (তৎসম tôtshôm) vocabulary. Songs such as India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana (by Rabindranath Tagore) and national song Vande Mātaram (by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay) were composed in Shadhubhasha. However, use of Shadhubhasha in modern writing is negligible, except when it is used delibarately to achieve some effect.
Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিত cholito = 'current' or 'running') , known by linguists as Manno Cholit Bangla (Standard Current Bangla), is a written Bengali style exhibiting a preponderance colloquial idiom and shortened verb forms, and is the standard for written Bengali now. This form came into vogue towards the turn of the 19th century, promoted by the writings of Peary Chand Mitra (Alaler Gharer Dulal, 1857),{{cite web
| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/A_0152.htm| title = Alaler Gharer Dulal| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh--> Pramatha Chowdhury (
Sabujpatra, 1914) and in the later writings of Rabindranath Tagore. It is modeled on the dialect spoken in the Shantipur region in Nadia district,
West Bengal. This form of Bengali is often referred to as the "Nadia standard" or "Shantipuri bangla".{{cite web] region, speak in a dialect that bears very little superficial resemblance to manno cholit bangla, including an entirely different vocabulary. The difference is so much that a person from West Bengal will be very hard pressed to understand even a single sentence in a passage of this dialect. This is known as the Bongali sublanguage, or more informally as Chattagram bangla. Writers (such as Manik Bandopadhyay in Padmanodir Majhi) have used the Bongali dialect in writing conversations. Though formal spoken Bengali is modeled on manno cholit bangla, the majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one Variety (linguistics) — often, speakers are fluent in choltibhasha and one or more Regional dialects.
Even in Standard Bengali, vocabulary items often divide along the split between the
Muslim populace and the
Hindu populace. Due to cultural and religious traditions, Hindus and Muslims might use, respectively, Sanskrit-derived and Perso-Arabic words. Some examples of lexical alternation between these two forms are:{{cite web| url = http://www.betelco.com/bd/bangla/bangla.html| title = History of Bangla (Banglar itihash)| accessdate = 2006-11-20| accessmonthday =| work = Bangla| publisher = Bengal Telecommunication and Electric Company-->
- hello: nômoshkar (S) corresponds to assalamualaikum/slamalikum (A)
- invitation: nimontron/nimontonno (S) corresponds to daoat (A)
- paternal uncle: kaka (S) corresponds to chacha (S/Hindi)
- water : jol (D) corresponds to pani (S)
(here S = derived from Sanskrit, D = deshi; A = derived from Arabic)
Writing system
, a news daily published from Kolkata in Bengali.
The Bengali writing system is not purely
alphabet-based such as the
Latin script. Rather, it is written in the Bengali
abugida, a variant of the Eastern Nagari script used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India. It is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic family script around 1000 CE, Bangla Script in and is similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Sanskrit and many modern
Indo-Aryan languages languages such as
Hindi. It has particularly close historical relationships with the Assamese script and the Oriya script (although the latter is not evident in appearance). The Bengali abugida is a
cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting the independent form of nine
vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine signs denoting the
consonants with the so called "inherent" vowels. Bangla Script in The Bengali orthography reads from left to right.
Although the consonant signs are presented as segments in the basic inventory of the Bengali script, they are actually orthographically syllabic in nature. Every consonant sign has the vowel অ (or sometimes the vowel ও ) "embedded" or "inherent" in it.{{cite web]s above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel
Typographical ligature. These allographs, called
kars (cf. Hindi
matras) are dependent vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example, the graph মি represents the consonant followed by the vowel , where is represented as the allograph ি and is placed
before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা , মী , মু , মূ , মৃ , মে /, মৈ , মো and মৌ represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. It should be noted that in these consonant-vowel ligatures, the so-called "inherent" vowel is expunged from the consonant, but the basic consonant sign ম does not indicate this change.
To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the
hôshonto (্), may be added below the basic consonant sign (as in ম্ ). This diacritic, however, is not common, and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation.
The vowel signs in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent allograph form (as discussed above). To represent a vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই "ladder" and in ইলিশ "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি). A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realized using its independent form.
The Bengali consonant clusters (যুক্তাক্ষর
juktakkhor in Bengali) are usually realized as Typographical ligature, where the consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. There are more than 400 such consonant clusters and corresponding ligatures in Bengali. Many of their shapes have to be learned by rote.
Three other commonly used diacritics in the Bengali are the superposed
chôndrobindu (ঁ), denoting a suprasegmental for nasalization of vowels (as in চাঁদ "moon"), the postposed
onushshôr (ং) indicating the velar nasal (as in বাংলা "Bengali") and the postposed
bishôrgo (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative (as in উঃ! "ouch!").
Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the
daŗi (] in Bengali.
Spelling-to-pronunciation inconsistencies
In spite of some modifications in the nineteenth century, the Bengali spelling system continues to be based on the one used for Sanskrit, Bangla language in and thus does not take into account some sound mergers that have occurred in the spoken language. For example, there are three letters (শ, ষ, and স) for the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative , although the letter স does retain the
voiceless alveolar fricative sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in স্খলন "fall", স্পন্দন "beat", etc. There are two letters (জ and য) for the
voiced postalveolar affricate as well. What was once pronounced and written as a retroflex nasal ণ is now pronounced as an alveolar (unless conjoined with another
retroflex consonant such as ট, ঠ, ড and ঢ), although the spelling does not reflect this change. The near-open front unrounded vowel is orthographically realized by multiple means, as seen in the following examples: এত "so much", এ্যাকাডেমী "academy", অ্যামিবা "amoeba", দেখা "to see", ব্যস্ত "busy", ব্যাকরণ "grammar".
The realization of the inherent vowel can be another source of confusion. The vowel can be phonetically realized as or depending on the word, and its omission is seldom indicated, as in the final consonant in কম "less".
Many consonant clusters have different sounds than their constituent consonants. For example, the combination of the consonants ক্ and ষ is graphically realized as ক্ষ and is pronounced (as in রুক্ষ "rugged") or (as in ক্ষতি "loss") or even (as in ক্ষমতা "power"), depending on the position of the cluster in a word. The Bengali writing system is, therefore, not always a true guide to pronunciation.
For a detailed list of these inconsistencies, consult
Bengali script.
Uses in other languages
The Bengali script, with a few small modifications, is also used for writing Assamese language. Other related languages in the region also make use of the Bengali alphabet. Meitei language, a
Sino-Tibetan languages language used in the Indian state of Manipur, has been written in the Bengali abugida for centuries, though
Meitei Mayek script (the Meitei abugida) has been promoted in recent times. The script has been adopted for writing the
Sylheti language as well, replacing the use of the old Sylheti Nagori script.{{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/S_0656.htm| title = Sylheti Nagri| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Islam| first = Muhammad Ashraful| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Romanization
Several conventions exist for writing Indic languages including Bengali in the Latin script, including "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration" or IAST (based on diacritics),{{cite web] (uses upper case alphabets suited for
ASCII keyboards),{{cite web].{{cite web| url = http://varamozhi.sourceforge.net/iscii91.pdf| title = Annex-F: Roman Script Transliteration| accessdate = 2006-11-20| date = 1 April, 1999| format = PDF| work = Indian Standard: Indian Script Code for Information Interchange - ISCII| publisher = Bureau of Indian Standards, it is important to distinguish between[transliteration from
transcription (linguistics). Transliteration is orthographically accurate(i.e. the original spelling can be recovered), whereastranscription is phonetically accurate (the pronunciationcan be reproduced).Since English does not have the sounds of Bangla, and since pronunciation does not completely reflect the spellings, being faithful to both is not possible.
Although it might be desirable to use a transliteration scheme where the original Bangla orthography is recoverable from the Latin text, Bangla words are currently Romanized on Wikipedia mixed a phonemic orthography, where the pronunciation is represented with no reference to how it is written. The Wikipedia Romanization is given in the table below, with International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions as used above.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{|class="wikitable"|+
Vowels! ||Front||Central||Back|-style="text-align:center"!High|i|| ||u|-style="text-align:center"!High-mid|e|| ||o|-style="text-align:center"!Low-mid|ê|| ||ô|-style="text-align:center"!Low| ||a|| |}|{|class="wikitable"|+
Consonants! ||Labial||Dental||Apico-
Alveolar||Apico-
Postalveolar||Lamino-
Postalveolar||Velar||Glottal|-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessstops|pf||tth|| ||ţţh||chchh||kkh|| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicedstops|bbh||ddh|| ||đđh||jjh||ggh|| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessfricatives| || ||s|| ||sh|| ||h|-style="text-align:center"!Nasals|m|| ||n|| || ||ng|| |-style="text-align:center"!Liquids| || ||l, r||ŗ|| || || |}
|}
Sounds
The phoneme inventory of Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 14 vowels, including the seven nasalization. An approximate
phonetics scheme is set out below in
International Phonetic Alphabet.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{|class="wikitable"|+
Vowels! ||Front||Central||Back|-style="text-align:center"!High||| |||-style="text-align:center"!High-mid||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Low-mid||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Low| |||| |}|{|class="wikitable"|+
Consonants! ||Labial||Dental||Apico-
Alveolar||Apico-
Postalveolar||Lamino-
Postalveolar||Velar||Glottal|-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessstops||||| |||||| || |-style="text-align:center"!Voicedstops||||| |||||||| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessfricatives| || |||| |||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Nasals||| |||| || |||| |-style="text-align:center"!Liquids| || ||, ||||| || || |}|}
Diphthongs
Magadhan languages such as Bengali are known for their wide variety of diphthongs, or combinations of vowels occurring within the same
syllable. Several vowel combinations can be considered true monosyllabic diphthongs, made up of the main vowel (the
nucleus) and the trailing vowel (the
off-glide). Almost all other vowel combinations are possible, but only across two adjacent syllables, such as the disyllabic vowel combination in কুয়া
kua "well". As many as 25 vowel combinations can be found, but some of the more recent combinations have not passed through the stage between two syllables and a diphthongal monosyllable.
{|class="wikitable" align="right"|+
Diphthongs!IPA||Transliteration||Example|-style="text-align:center"|||ii||nii "I take"|-style="text-align:center"|||iu||biubhôl "upset"|-style="text-align:center"|||ei||nei "there is not"|-style="text-align:center"|||ee||khee "having eaten"|-style="text-align:center"|||eu||đheu "wave"|-style="text-align:center"|||eo||kheona "do not eat"|-style="text-align:center"|||êe||nêe "she takes"|-style="text-align:center"|||êo||nêo "you take"|-style="text-align:center"|||ai||pai "I find"|-style="text-align:center"|||ae||pae "she finds"|-style="text-align:center"|||au||pau "sliced bread"|-style="text-align:center"|||ao||pao "you find"|-style="text-align:center"|||ôe||nôe "she is not"|-style="text-align:center"|||ôo||nôo "you are not"|-style="text-align:center"|||oi||noi "I am not"|-style="text-align:center"|||oe||dhoe "she washes"|-style="text-align:center"|||oo||dhoo "you wash"|-style="text-align:center"|||ou||nouka "boat"|-style="text-align:center"|||ui||dhui "I wash"|}
Stress
In standard Bengali, Stress (linguistics) is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all
trochee; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as
shô-ho-jo-gi-ta "cooperation", where the
boldface represents primary and secondary stress. The first syllable carries the greatest stress, with the third carrying a somewhat weaker stress, and all following odd-numbered syllables carrying very weak stress. However in words borrowed from Sanskrit, the root syllable is stressed, causing them to be out of harmony with native Bengali words.
Adding prefix (linguistics)es to a word typically shifts the stress to the left. For example, while the word
shob-bho "civilized" carries the primary stress on the first syllable , adding the negation prefix creates ô
-shob-bho "uncivilized", where the primary stress is now on the newly-added first syllable অ ô. In any case, word-stress does not alter the meaning of a word and is always subsidiary to sentence-stress.
Intonation
For Bengali words, intonation or pitch of voice has minor significance, apart from a few isolated cases. However in sentences intonation does play a significant role. In a simple
declarative sentence, most words and/or phrases in Bengali carry a rising
Tone (linguistics), with the exception of the last word in the sentence, which only carries a low tone. This
Intonation (linguistics)al pattern creates a musical tone to the typical Bengali sentence, with low and high tones alternating until the final drop in pitch to mark the end of the sentence.
In sentences involving Focus (linguistics)ed words and/or phrases, the rising tones only last until the focused word; all following words carry a low tone. This intonation pattern extends to
wh-questions, as wh-words are normally considered to be focused. In yes-no questions, the rising tones may be more exaggerated, and most importantly, the final syllable of the final word in the sentence takes a high falling tone instead of a flat low tone.
Vowel length
Vowel length is not contrastive in Bengali; all else equal, there is no meaningful distinction between a "short vowel" and a "long vowel", unlike the situation in many other Indic languages. However, when morpheme boundaries come into play, vowel length can sometimes distinguish otherwise homophonous words. This is due to the fact that
open syllable syllable (i.e. words that are made up of only one syllable, with that syllable ending in the main vowel and not a consonant) have somewhat longer vowels than other syllable types. For example, the vowel in
cha: "tea" is somewhat longer than the first vowel in
chaţa "licking", as
cha: is a word with only one syllable, and no final consonant. (The long vowel is marked with a colon : in these examples.) The Affix
ţa "the" can be added to
cha: to form
cha:ţa "the tea". Even when another morpheme is attached to
cha:, the long vowel is preserved. Knowing this fact, some interesting cases of apparent vowel length distinction can be found. In general Bengali vowels tend to stay away from extreme vowel articulation.
Furthermore, using a form of
reduplication called "echo reduplication", the long vowel in
cha: can be copied into the reduplicant
ţa:, giving
cha:ţa: "tea and all that comes with it". Thus, in addition to
cha:ţa "the tea" (long first vowel) and
chaţa "licking" (no long vowels), we have
cha:ţa: "tea and all that comes with it" (both long vowels).
Consonant clusters
Native Bengali (
tôdbhôb) words do not allow initial
consonant clusters; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e. one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম
geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম
gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল
iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল
skul (CCVC) "school".
Sanskrit (তৎসম
tôtshôm) words borrowed into Bengali, however, possess a wide range of clusters, expanding the maximum syllable structure to CCCVC. Some of these clusters, such as the
mr in মৃত্যু
mrittu "death" or the
sp in স্পষ্ট
spôshţo "clear", have become extremely common, and can be considered legal consonant clusters in Bengali. English and other foreign (বিদেশী
bideshi) borrowings add even more cluster types into the Bengali inventory, further increasing the syllable capacity to CCCVCCCC, as commonly-used loanwords such as ট্রেন
ţren "train" and গ্লাস
glash "glass" are now even included in leading Bengali dictionaries.
Final consonant clusters are rare in Bengali. Most final consonant clusters were borrowed into Bengali from English, as in লিফ্ট
lifţ "lift, elevator" and ব্যাংক
bêņk "bank". However, final clusters do exist in some native Bengali words, although rarely in standard pronunciation. One example of a final cluster in a standard Bengali word would be গঞ্জ
gônj, which is found in names of hundreds of cities and towns across Bengal, including নবাবগঞ্জ
Nôbabgônj and মানিকগঞ্জ
Manikgônj. Some nonstandard varieties of Bengali make use of final clusters quite often. For example, in some Purbo (eastern) dialects, final consonant clusters consisting of a nasal and its corresponding oral stop are common, as in চান্দ
chand "moon". The Standard Bengali equivalent of
chand would be চাঁদ
chãd, with a nasalized vowel instead of the final cluster.
Grammar
Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives (
inflection). However, nouns and pronouns are highly
declension (altered depending on their function in a sentence) into four
grammatical case while verbs are heavily grammatical conjugation.
As a consequence, unlike Hindi, Bengali verbs do not change form depending on the gender of the nouns.
Word order
As a Head directionality parameter language, Bengali follows
Subject Object Verb word order, although variations to this theme are common. Bengali makes use of postpositions, as opposed to the
prepositions used in English and other European languages.
Determiner (function)s follow the noun, while numerals,
adjectives, and
possession (linguistics) precede the noun.{{cite web| url = http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=84&menu=004| title = Bengali| accessdate = 2006-11-20| work = UCLA Language Materials project| publisher = University of California, Los Angeles-->
Yes-no questions do not require any change to the basic word order; instead, the low (L)
tone (linguistics) of the final syllable in the utterance is replaced with a falling (HL)
tone (linguistics). Additionally optional grammatical particle (e.g. কি
-ki, না
-na, etc.) are often
clitic onto the first or last word of a yes-no question.
Wh-questions are formed by fronting the wh-word to
focus (linguistics) position, which is typically the first or second word in the utterance.
Nouns
Nouns and pronouns are inflected for declension, including
Nominative case,
Accusative case, genitive case, and
locative case. The case marking pattern for each noun being inflected depends on the noun's degree of animacy. When a article (grammar) such as -টা
-ţa (singular) or -গুলা
-gula (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for grammatical number.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{| class="wikitable"|-|+
Singular Noun Inflection|-!! Animate! Inanimate|-! Nominative| ছাত্রটাchhatro-ţathe student|জুতাটা juta-ţathe shoe|-! Objective|ছাত্রটা
কে chhatro-ţa-
kethe student|জুতাটা juta-ţathe shoe|-! Genitive|ছাত্রটা
র chhatro-ţa-
rthe student's|জুতাটা
র juta-ţa-
rthe shoe's|-! Locative| -|জুতাটা
য় juta-ţa-
(t)eon/in the shoe|}|{| class="wikitable"|-|+
Plural Noun Inflection|-!! Animate! Inanimate|-! Nominative|ছাত্র
রাchhatro-
rathe students|জুতাগুলা juta-gulathe shoes|-! Objective|ছাত্র
দের(কে)chhatro-
der(ke)the students|জুতাগুলা juta-gulathe shoes|-! Genitive|ছাত্র
দেরchhatro-
derthe students'|জুতাগুলা
র juta-gula-
rthe shoes'|-! Locative| -|জুতাগুলা
তেjuta-gula-
teon/in the shoes|}|}
When counted, nouns take one of a small set of
measure words. As in many
East Asian languages (e.g. Chinese language,
Japanese language,
Thai language, etc.), nouns in Bengali cannot be counted by adding the numeral directly adjacent to the noun. The noun's measure word (
MW) must be used between the numeral and the noun. Most nouns take the generic measure word -টা
-ţa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes (e.g. -জন
-jon for humans).
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|-|+
Measure Words|-! Bengali! Bengali transliteration! Literal translation! English translation|-| নয়
টা গরু| Nôe-
ţa goru| Nine-
MW cow| Nine cows|-|কয়
টা বািলশ| Kôe-
ţa balish| How many-
MW pillow| How many pillows|-| অনেক
জন েলাক| Ônek-
jon lok| Many-
MW person| Many people|-| চার-পাঁচ
জন িশক্ষক| Char-pãch-
jon shikkhôk| Four-five-
MW teacher| Four or five teachers|}
Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল
aţ biŗal instead of আট
টা বিড়াল
aţ-'ţa
biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, when the semantic class of the noun is understood from the measure word, the noun is often omitted and only the measure word is used, e.g. শুধু একজন' থাকবে।
Shudhu êk-'jon
thakbe. (lit. "Only one-MW' will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one
person will remain.", given the semantic class implicit in -জন
-jon.
In this sense, all nouns in Bengali, unlike most other Indo-European languages, are similar to mass nouns.
Verbs
Verbs divide into two classes:
finite verb and non-finite. Non-finite verbs have no inflection for tense or person, while finite verbs are fully inflected for grammatical person (first, second, third), grammatical tense (present, past, future),
grammatical aspect (simple, perfect, progressive), and honorific (intimate, familiar, and formal), but
not for number.
conditional mood, imperative, and other special inflections for
grammatical mood can replace the tense and aspect suffixes. The number of inflections on many verb roots can total more than 200.
Inflectional suffixes in the morphology (linguistics) of Bengali vary from region to region, along with minor differences in syntax.
Bengali differs from most Indo-Aryan Languages in the
zero copula, where the copula or connective
be is often missing in the present tense. Bangla language in Thus "he is a teacher" is
she shikkhôk, (literally "he teacher").Among Bengali speakers brought up in neighbouring linguistic regions (e.g. Hindi), the lost copula may surface in utterances such as
she shikkhôk hochchhe. This is viewed as ungrammatical by other speakers, and speakers of this variety are sometimes (humorously) referred as "hochchhe-Bangali".In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian language and
Hungarian language.
Vocabulary
Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered
tôtshômo (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are
tôdbhôbo (derived from Sanskrit words), and the rest being
bideshi (foreign) and
deshi words.
However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a large proportion of these words are archaic or highly technical, minimizing their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of
tôdbhôbo words, while
tôtshômo only make up 25% of the total. Tatsama in Tatbhava in
Deshi and
Bideshi words together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.
Due to centuries of contact with
European ethnic groupss, Mughals,
Arabs,
Turkish people,
Persians, ethnic Pashtuns, and
East Asians, Bengali has
Loanword many words from foreign languages. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from Hindi language, Assamese language, Chinese language, Burmese language, and several indigenous
Austroasiatic languages(like
Santali).
Byomkes Chakrabarti A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Kolkata, 1994, ISBN 8170741289 of Bengal. After centuries of invasions from
Persia and the Middle East, numerous
Persian language, Arabic language, Turkish language, and
Pashtun language words were absorbed into Bengali. Portuguese language, French language,
Dutch language and
English language words were later additions during the
British Raj.
Sample
See also
Notes
References
| Surname1 = Haldar
| Given1 = Gopal
| Year = 2000
| Title = Languages of India
| Publisher = National Book Trust, India
| ISBN = 81-237-2936-7
-->.
| Surname1 = Alam
| Given1 = M
| Year = 2000
| Title = Bhasha Shourôbh: Bêkorôn O Rôchona (The Fragrance of Language: Grammar and Rhetoric)
| Publisher = S. N. Printers, Dhaka
-->.
- Chakrabarti, Byomkes, A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Kolkata, 1994, ISBN 8170741289 Byomkes Chakrabarti
- {{Harvard reference
| Author = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
| Surname1 = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
| Year = 2003
| Title = Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh
| Publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka
-->.
| Surname1 = Cardona
| Given1 = G
| Surname2 = Jain
| Given2 = D
| Year = 2003
| Title = The Indo-Aryan languages
| Publisher = RoutledgeCurzon, London
-->.
| Surname1 = Chatterji
| Given1 = SK
| Year = 1921
| Title = Bengali Phonetics
| Journal = Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
-->.
| Surname1 = Chatterji
| Given1 = SK
| Year = 1926
| Title = The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language
| Publsher = Calcutta Univ. Press
-->.
| Surname1 = Ferguson
| Given1 = CA
| Surname2 = Chowdhury
| Given2 = M
| Year = 1960
| Title = The Phonemes of Bengali
| Journal = Language, 36(1), Part 1
-->.
| Surname1 = Hayes
| Given1 = B
| Surname2 = Lahiri
| Given2 = A
| Year = 1991
| Title = Bengali intonational phonology
| Journal = [Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
| Publisher = Springer Science
-->.
| Surname1 = Klaiman
| Given1 = MH
| Year = 1987
| Chapter = Bengali
| Editor = Bernard Comrie
| Title = The World's Major Languages
| Publisher = Croon Helm, London and Sydney
| ISBN = 0195065115
-->.
| Surname1 = Masica
| Given1 = C
| Year = 1991
| Title = The Indo-Aryan Languages
| Publisher = Cambridge Univ. Press
-->.
| Surname1 = Radice
| Given1 = W
| Year = 1994
| Title = Teach Yourself Bengali: A Complete Course for Beginners
| Publisher = NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
| ISBN = 0844237523
-->.
| Surname1 = Ray
| Given1 = P
| Surname2 = Hai
| Given2 = MA
| Surname3 = Ray
| Given3 = L
| Year = 1966
| Title = Bengali language handbook
| Publisher = Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington
|ISBN = {{ASIN|B000B9G89C-->
-->.
| Surname1 = Sen
| Given1 = D
| Year = 1996
| Title = Bengali Language and Literature
| Publisher = International Centre for Bengal Studies, Calcutta
-->.
| Surname1 = Bhattacharya
| Given1 = T
| Year = 2000
| Chapter = Bangla (Bengali)
| Title = Encyclopedia of World's Languages: Past and Present (Facts About the World's Languages)
| Publisher = WW Wilson, New York
| Editor = Gary, J. and Rubino. C.
| URL = http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uclyara/bong_us.pdf
| ISBN = 0824209702
-->.
| Surname1 = Baxter
| Given1 = C
| Year = 1997
| Title = Bangladesh, From a Nation to a State
| Publisher = Westview Press
| ISBN = 0813336325
-->.
External links
- Ethnologue report for Bengali
- Bengali Language: A Brief Introduction
- Samsad Bengali-English dictionary. 3rd ed. online. Requires unicode enabled browser.
- Free Bangla Unicode Solutions.
- The South Asian Literary Recordings Project, The Library of Congress. Bengali Authors.
{{Infobox Language|name=Bengali|nativename=বাংলা
|states=India,
Bangladesh, and several others]|speakers=230 million (189 million native)|rank=6,{{cite web|rank=6|url = http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html|title = Languages spoken by more than 10 million people|accessdate = 2007-03-03|date = 2007|work =|publisher = Encarta Encyclopedia--> 5,{{cite web|rank=5|url = http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=country|title = Statistical Summaries|accessdate = 2007-03-03|date = 2005|work =|publisher = Ethnologue-->|familycolor=Indo-European|fam2=
Indo-Iranian languages|fam3=Indo-Aryan languages|fam4=List of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages|fam5=Bengali-Assamese|script=Bengali script and [Tripura)] (Bangladesh)Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (West Bengal)]: ) is an Indo-Aryan languages
language of the eastern
Indian subcontinent, evolved from the
Magadhi Prakrit,
Pāli and
Sanskrit languages.
Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh and the
Indian state of
West Bengal. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the
List of languages by number of native speakers (ranking 5th or 6th in the world).Bengali is the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second most widely spoken language in India{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN| title = Languages of India| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Gordon| first = Raymond G., Jr. (ed.| year = 2005| work = Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition.| publisher = SIL International-->{{cite web| url = http://www.censusindia.net/cendat/language/lang_table1.PDF| title = Languages in Descending Order of Strength - India, States and Union Territories - 1991 Census| accessdate = 2006-11-19| year =| month =| work = Census Data Online| publisher = Office of the Registrar General, India| pages =1-->. Along with
Assamese language, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-Iranian languages.
The Bengali language, with its long and rich literary tradition, serves to bind together a culturally diverse region. In 1952, when Bangladesh used to be
East Pakistan, this strong sense of identity led to the Bengali Language Movement, in which several people braved bullets and died on February 21. This day has now been declared as the International Mother Language Day.
History
Like other List of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages of the
Indian Subcontinent.
Magadhi Prakrit, the earliest recorded spoken language in the region and the language of the Gautama Buddha, had evolved into
Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi") in the early part of the first millennium CE. Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called Apabhramsa languages just before the turn of the first millennium. The local Apabhramsa language of the eastern Subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or
Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the
Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Bengali-Assamese languages. Some argue for much earlier points of divergence—going back to even 500 CE but the language was not static; different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Prakrit is believed to have evolved into Apabhramsa Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with Bengali for a period of time. Abahattha in
Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:
Old Bengali (900/1000 CE–1400 CE)—texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya language and Assamese language branch out in this period.
Middle Bengali (1400–1800 CE)—major texts of the period include Chandidas's Srikrishnakirtan; elision of word-final ô sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods.
New Bengali (since 1800 CE)—shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar → tar "his"/"her"; koriyachhilô → korechhilo Grammatical person grammatical tense grammatical aspect).
Historically closer to Pāli, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (
Chaitanya era), and also during the
Bengal Renaissance. Of the modern
Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and others such as
Punjabi are more influenced by Arabic and
Persian language.
, or the Martyr's monument, in
Dhaka, commemorates the struggle for the Bengali languageUntil the 18th century, there was no attempt to document the grammar for Bengali. The first written Bengali dictionary/grammar,
Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, was written by the Portugal
missionary Manoel da Assumpcam between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in
Bhawal.{{cite web]| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a Kingdom of Great Britain grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(
A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali
Typesetting in print for the first time. Bangla language in Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali Reformer, also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832).
During this period, the
Choltibhasha form, using simplified inflections and other changes, was emerging from
Shadhubhasha (older form) as the form of choice for written Bengali.{{cite web] (
Bhasha Andolon) in what was then East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh). Although Bengali speakers were more numerous in the population of
Pakistan, Urdu was legislated as the sole national language. On February 21, 1952, protesting students and activists walked into military and police fire in
Dhaka University and three young students and several others were killed. Subsequently,
UNESCO has declared 21 February as International Mother Language Day. In a separate event in May 1961, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.{{cite web| url = http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031227/asp/northeast/story_2721710.asp
| title = No alliance with BJP, says AGP chief
| publisher = The Telegraph
| accessdate = 2006-11-19
-->
Geographical distribution
Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises
Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Around 98% of the total population of Bangladesh speak Bengali as a native language.{{cite web| url = https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html
| chapter = Bangladesh
| title = The World Fact Book
| publisher = CIA
| accessdate = 2006-11-04
--> There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in immigrant populations in the
Middle East, Western world and
Malaysia.
Official status
Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 23
List of national languages of India recognised by the Republic of India.{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN
| title = Languages of India
| publisher = Ethnologue Report
| accessdate = 2006-11-04
--> It is the official language of the state of West Bengal and the co-official language of the state of Tripura, Cachar District of southern
Assam and the union territory of
Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Bengali speakers make the majority in Neil Island and Havelock Island. It was made an official language of Sierra Leone in order to honour the Bangladeshi peacekeeping force from the United Nations stationed there.{{cite news| title = Sierra Leone makes Bengali official language
| url = http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_29-12-2002_pg9_6
| publisher = Daily Times
| date = December 29, 2002
| accessdate = 2006-11-17
--> It is also the co-official language of Assam, which has three predominantly
Sylheti language-speaking districts of southern Assam:
Silchar,
Karimganj, and Hailakandi.{{cite web] and
Amar Shonar Bangla were written in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore.
Dialects
Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a
dialect continuum. Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee grouped these dialects into four large clusters — Radh, Banga, Kamarupa and Varendra; Bangla language in but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed.{{cite web], Chittagong,
Dhaka and
Sylhet divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as
Fricative consonant. Western
postalveolar consonant affricates চ , ছ় , ~. The influence of
Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels. Some variants of Bengali, particularly
Chittagonian language and Chakma language, have contrastive
tone (linguistics); differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words.
Rajbangsi language, Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong language is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects.{{cite web| url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=haj
| title = Hajong
| publisher = The Ethnologue Report
| accessdate = 2006-11-19
-->
During the standardization of Bengali in the late 19th and early 20th century, the cultural center of Bengal was its capital
Kolkata (then Calcutta). What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia District, a district located near Kolkata.{{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/C_0103.htm| title = Chalita Bhasa| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work =
Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh--> There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use a different word than a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example,
nun (salt) in the west corresponds to
lôbon in the east.
Spoken and literary varieties
Bengali exhibits
diglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged:{{cite web]| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh--> {{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/S_0014.htm| title = Sadhu Bhasa| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Shadhubhasha (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language') was the written language with longer verb inflections and more of a Sanskrit-derived (তৎসম tôtshôm) vocabulary. Songs such as India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana (by Rabindranath Tagore) and national song Vande Mātaram (by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay) were composed in Shadhubhasha. However, use of Shadhubhasha in modern writing is negligible, except when it is used delibarately to achieve some effect.
Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিত cholito = 'current' or 'running') , known by linguists as Manno Cholit Bangla (Standard Current Bangla), is a written Bengali style exhibiting a preponderance colloquial idiom and shortened verb forms, and is the standard for written Bengali now. This form came into vogue towards the turn of the 19th century, promoted by the writings of Peary Chand Mitra (Alaler Gharer Dulal, 1857),{{cite web
| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/A_0152.htm| title = Alaler Gharer Dulal| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Huq| first = Mohammad Daniul| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Pramatha Chowdhury (
Sabujpatra, 1914) and in the later writings of
Rabindranath Tagore. It is modeled on the dialect spoken in the
Shantipur region in Nadia district,
West Bengal. This form of Bengali is often referred to as the "Nadia standard" or "Shantipuri bangla".{{cite web] region, speak in a dialect that bears very little superficial resemblance to manno cholit bangla, including an entirely different vocabulary. The difference is so much that a person from West Bengal will be very hard pressed to understand even a single sentence in a passage of this dialect. This is known as the Bongali sublanguage, or more informally as Chattagram bangla. Writers (such as
Manik Bandopadhyay in
Padmanodir Majhi) have used the Bongali dialect in writing conversations. Though formal spoken Bengali is modeled on manno cholit bangla, the majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one Variety (linguistics) — often, speakers are fluent in choltibhasha and one or more Regional dialects.
Even in Standard Bengali, vocabulary items often divide along the split between the
Muslim populace and the
Hindu populace. Due to cultural and religious traditions, Hindus and Muslims might use, respectively, Sanskrit-derived and Perso-Arabic words. Some examples of lexical alternation between these two forms are:{{cite web| url = http://www.betelco.com/bd/bangla/bangla.html| title = History of Bangla (Banglar itihash)| accessdate = 2006-11-20| accessmonthday =| work = Bangla| publisher = Bengal Telecommunication and Electric Company-->
- hello: nômoshkar (S) corresponds to assalamualaikum/slamalikum (A)
- invitation: nimontron/nimontonno (S) corresponds to daoat (A)
- paternal uncle: kaka (S) corresponds to chacha (S/Hindi)
- water : jol (D) corresponds to pani (S)
(here S = derived from Sanskrit, D = deshi; A = derived from Arabic)
Writing system
, a news daily published from Kolkata in Bengali.
The Bengali writing system is not purely alphabet-based such as the Latin script. Rather, it is written in the Bengali
abugida, a variant of the
Eastern Nagari script used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India. It is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic family script around 1000 CE, Bangla Script in and is similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Sanskrit and many modern
Indo-Aryan languages languages such as Hindi. It has particularly close historical relationships with the
Assamese script and the
Oriya script (although the latter is not evident in appearance). The Bengali abugida is a
cursive script with eleven
graphemes or signs denoting the independent form of nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine signs denoting the
consonants with the so called "inherent" vowels. Bangla Script in The Bengali orthography reads from left to right.
Although the consonant signs are presented as segments in the basic inventory of the Bengali script, they are actually orthographically syllabic in nature. Every consonant sign has the vowel অ (or sometimes the vowel ও ) "embedded" or "inherent" in it.{{cite web]s above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel
Typographical ligature. These allographs, called
kars (cf. Hindi
matras) are dependent vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example, the graph মি represents the consonant followed by the vowel , where is represented as the allograph ি and is placed
before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা , মী , মু , মূ , মৃ , মে /, মৈ , মো and মৌ represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. It should be noted that in these consonant-vowel ligatures, the so-called "inherent" vowel is expunged from the consonant, but the basic consonant sign ম does not indicate this change.
To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the
hôshonto (্), may be added below the basic consonant sign (as in ম্ ). This diacritic, however, is not common, and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation.
The vowel signs in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent allograph form (as discussed above). To represent a vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই "ladder" and in ইলিশ "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি). A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realized using its independent form.
The
Bengali consonant clusters (যুক্তাক্ষর
juktakkhor in Bengali) are usually realized as Typographical ligature, where the consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. There are more than 400 such consonant clusters and corresponding ligatures in Bengali. Many of their shapes have to be learned by rote.
Three other commonly used diacritics in the Bengali are the superposed
chôndrobindu (ঁ), denoting a suprasegmental for nasalization of vowels (as in চাঁদ "moon"), the postposed
onushshôr (ং) indicating the
velar nasal (as in বাংলা "Bengali") and the postposed
bishôrgo (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative (as in উঃ! "ouch!").
Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the
daŗi (] in Bengali.
Spelling-to-pronunciation inconsistencies
In spite of some modifications in the nineteenth century, the Bengali spelling system continues to be based on the one used for Sanskrit, Bangla language in and thus does not take into account some sound mergers that have occurred in the spoken language. For example, there are three letters (শ, ষ, and স) for the
voiceless palato-alveolar fricative , although the letter স does retain the voiceless alveolar fricative sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in স্খলন "fall", স্পন্দন "beat", etc. There are two letters (জ and য) for the voiced postalveolar affricate as well. What was once pronounced and written as a retroflex nasal ণ is now pronounced as an alveolar (unless conjoined with another
retroflex consonant such as ট, ঠ, ড and ঢ), although the spelling does not reflect this change. The near-open front unrounded vowel is orthographically realized by multiple means, as seen in the following examples: এত "so much", এ্যাকাডেমী "academy", অ্যামিবা "amoeba", দেখা "to see", ব্যস্ত "busy", ব্যাকরণ "grammar".
The realization of the inherent vowel can be another source of confusion. The vowel can be phonetically realized as or depending on the word, and its omission is seldom indicated, as in the final consonant in কম "less".
Many consonant clusters have different sounds than their constituent consonants. For example, the combination of the consonants ক্ and ষ is graphically realized as ক্ষ and is pronounced (as in রুক্ষ "rugged") or (as in ক্ষতি "loss") or even (as in ক্ষমতা "power"), depending on the position of the cluster in a word. The Bengali writing system is, therefore, not always a true guide to pronunciation.
For a detailed list of these inconsistencies, consult
Bengali script.
Uses in other languages
The Bengali script, with a few small modifications, is also used for writing Assamese language. Other related languages in the region also make use of the Bengali alphabet.
Meitei language, a
Sino-Tibetan languages language used in the Indian state of
Manipur, has been written in the Bengali abugida for centuries, though Meitei Mayek script (the Meitei abugida) has been promoted in recent times. The script has been adopted for writing the
Sylheti language as well, replacing the use of the old Sylheti Nagori script.{{cite web| url = http://banglapedia.org/HT/S_0656.htm| title = Sylheti Nagri| accessdate = 2006-11-17| last = Islam| first = Muhammad Ashraful| work = Banglapedia| publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh-->
Romanization
Several conventions exist for writing Indic languages including Bengali in the Latin script, including "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration" or
IAST (based on diacritics),{{cite web] (uses upper case alphabets suited for ASCII keyboards),{{cite web].{{cite web| url = http://varamozhi.sourceforge.net/iscii91.pdf| title = Annex-F: Roman Script Transliteration| accessdate = 2006-11-20| date = 1 April, 1999| format = PDF| work = Indian Standard: Indian Script Code for Information Interchange - ISCII| publisher =
Bureau of Indian Standards, it is important to distinguish between[transliteration from
transcription (linguistics). Transliteration is orthographically accurate(i.e. the original spelling can be recovered), whereastranscription is phonetically accurate (the pronunciationcan be reproduced).Since English does not have the sounds of Bangla, and since pronunciation does not completely reflect the spellings, being faithful to both is not possible.
Although it might be desirable to use a transliteration scheme where the original Bangla orthography is recoverable from the Latin text, Bangla words are currently Romanized on Wikipedia mixed a
phonemic orthography, where the pronunciation is represented with no reference to how it is written. The Wikipedia Romanization is given in the table below, with
International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions as used above.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{|class="wikitable"|+
Vowels! ||Front||Central||Back|-style="text-align:center"!High|i|| ||u|-style="text-align:center"!High-mid|e|| ||o|-style="text-align:center"!Low-mid|ê|| ||ô|-style="text-align:center"!Low| ||a|| |}|{|class="wikitable"|+
Consonants! ||Labial||Dental||Apico-
Alveolar||Apico-
Postalveolar||Lamino-
Postalveolar||Velar||Glottal|-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessstops|pf||tth|| ||ţţh||chchh||kkh|| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicedstops|bbh||ddh|| ||đđh||jjh||ggh|| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessfricatives| || ||s|| ||sh|| ||h|-style="text-align:center"!Nasals|m|| ||n|| || ||ng|| |-style="text-align:center"!Liquids| || ||l, r||ŗ|| || || |}
|}
Sounds
The phoneme inventory of Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 14 vowels, including the seven
nasalization. An approximate phonetics scheme is set out below in
International Phonetic Alphabet.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{|class="wikitable"|+
Vowels! ||Front||Central||Back|-style="text-align:center"!High||| |||-style="text-align:center"!High-mid||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Low-mid||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Low| |||| |}|{|class="wikitable"|+
Consonants! ||Labial||Dental||Apico-
Alveolar||Apico-
Postalveolar||Lamino-
Postalveolar||Velar||Glottal|-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessstops||||| |||||| || |-style="text-align:center"!Voicedstops||||| |||||||| |-style="text-align:center"!Voicelessfricatives| || |||| |||| |||-style="text-align:center"!Nasals||| |||| || |||| |-style="text-align:center"!Liquids| || ||, ||||| || || |}|}
Diphthongs
Magadhan languages such as Bengali are known for their wide variety of
diphthongs, or combinations of
vowels occurring within the same syllable. Several vowel combinations can be considered true monosyllabic diphthongs, made up of the main vowel (the
nucleus) and the trailing vowel (the
off-glide). Almost all other vowel combinations are possible, but only across two adjacent syllables, such as the disyllabic vowel combination in কুয়া
kua "well". As many as 25 vowel combinations can be found, but some of the more recent combinations have not passed through the stage between two syllables and a diphthongal monosyllable.
{|class="wikitable" align="right"|+
Diphthongs!IPA||Transliteration||Example|-style="text-align:center"|||ii||nii "I take"|-style="text-align:center"|||iu||biubhôl "upset"|-style="text-align:center"|||ei||nei "there is not"|-style="text-align:center"|||ee||khee "having eaten"|-style="text-align:center"|||eu||đheu "wave"|-style="text-align:center"|||eo||kheona "do not eat"|-style="text-align:center"|||êe||nêe "she takes"|-style="text-align:center"|||êo||nêo "you take"|-style="text-align:center"|||ai||pai "I find"|-style="text-align:center"|||ae||pae "she finds"|-style="text-align:center"|||au||pau "sliced bread"|-style="text-align:center"|||ao||pao "you find"|-style="text-align:center"|||ôe||nôe "she is not"|-style="text-align:center"|||ôo||nôo "you are not"|-style="text-align:center"|||oi||noi "I am not"|-style="text-align:center"|||oe||dhoe "she washes"|-style="text-align:center"|||oo||dhoo "you wash"|-style="text-align:center"|||ou||nouka "boat"|-style="text-align:center"|||ui||dhui "I wash"|}
Stress
In standard Bengali, Stress (linguistics) is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all
trochee; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as
shô-ho-jo-gi-ta "cooperation", where the
boldface represents primary and secondary stress. The first syllable carries the greatest stress, with the third carrying a somewhat weaker stress, and all following odd-numbered syllables carrying very weak stress. However in words borrowed from Sanskrit, the root syllable is stressed, causing them to be out of harmony with native Bengali words.
Adding
prefix (linguistics)es to a word typically shifts the stress to the left. For example, while the word
shob-bho "civilized" carries the primary stress on the first syllable , adding the negation prefix creates ô
-shob-bho "uncivilized", where the primary stress is now on the newly-added first syllable অ ô. In any case, word-stress does not alter the meaning of a word and is always subsidiary to sentence-stress.
Intonation
For Bengali words, intonation or pitch of voice has minor significance, apart from a few isolated cases. However in sentences intonation does play a significant role. In a simple declarative sentence, most words and/or phrases in Bengali carry a rising
Tone (linguistics), with the exception of the last word in the sentence, which only carries a low tone. This
Intonation (linguistics)al pattern creates a musical tone to the typical Bengali sentence, with low and high tones alternating until the final drop in pitch to mark the end of the sentence.
In sentences involving
Focus (linguistics)ed words and/or phrases, the rising tones only last until the focused word; all following words carry a low tone. This intonation pattern extends to
wh-questions, as wh-words are normally considered to be focused. In yes-no questions, the rising tones may be more exaggerated, and most importantly, the final syllable of the final word in the sentence takes a high falling tone instead of a flat low tone.
Vowel length
Vowel length is not contrastive in Bengali; all else equal, there is no meaningful distinction between a "short vowel" and a "
long vowel", unlike the situation in many other Indic languages. However, when morpheme boundaries come into play, vowel length can sometimes distinguish otherwise homophonous words. This is due to the fact that open syllable
syllable (i.e. words that are made up of only one syllable, with that syllable ending in the main vowel and not a consonant) have somewhat longer vowels than other syllable types. For example, the vowel in
cha: "tea" is somewhat longer than the first vowel in
chaţa "licking", as
cha: is a word with only one syllable, and no final consonant. (The long vowel is marked with a colon : in these examples.) The
Affix ţa "the" can be added to
cha: to form
cha:ţa "the tea". Even when another morpheme is attached to
cha:, the long vowel is preserved. Knowing this fact, some interesting cases of apparent vowel length distinction can be found. In general Bengali vowels tend to stay away from extreme vowel articulation.
Furthermore, using a form of
reduplication called "echo reduplication", the long vowel in
cha: can be copied into the reduplicant
ţa:, giving
cha:ţa: "tea and all that comes with it". Thus, in addition to
cha:ţa "the tea" (long first vowel) and
chaţa "licking" (no long vowels), we have
cha:ţa: "tea and all that comes with it" (both long vowels).
Consonant clusters
Native Bengali (
tôdbhôb) words do not allow initial
consonant clusters; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e. one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম
geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম
gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল
iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল
skul (CCVC) "school".
Sanskrit (তৎসম
tôtshôm) words borrowed into Bengali, however, possess a wide range of clusters, expanding the maximum syllable structure to CCCVC. Some of these clusters, such as the
mr in মৃত্যু
mrittu "death" or the
sp in স্পষ্ট
spôshţo "clear", have become extremely common, and can be considered legal consonant clusters in Bengali. English and other foreign (বিদেশী
bideshi) borrowings add even more cluster types into the Bengali inventory, further increasing the syllable capacity to CCCVCCCC, as commonly-used loanwords such as ট্রেন
ţren "train" and গ্লাস
glash "glass" are now even included in leading Bengali dictionaries.
Final consonant clusters are rare in Bengali. Most final consonant clusters were borrowed into Bengali from English, as in লিফ্ট
lifţ "lift, elevator" and ব্যাংক
bêņk "bank". However, final clusters do exist in some native Bengali words, although rarely in standard pronunciation. One example of a final cluster in a standard Bengali word would be গঞ্জ
gônj, which is found in names of hundreds of cities and towns across Bengal, including নবাবগঞ্জ
Nôbabgônj and মানিকগঞ্জ
Manikgônj. Some nonstandard varieties of Bengali make use of final clusters quite often. For example, in some Purbo (eastern) dialects, final consonant clusters consisting of a nasal and its corresponding oral stop are common, as in চান্দ
chand "moon". The Standard Bengali equivalent of
chand would be চাঁদ
chãd, with a nasalized vowel instead of the final cluster.
Grammar
Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives (inflection). However, nouns and pronouns are highly
declension (altered depending on their function in a sentence) into four grammatical case while verbs are heavily
grammatical conjugation.
As a consequence, unlike Hindi, Bengali verbs do not change form depending on the gender of the nouns.
Word order
As a Head directionality parameter language, Bengali follows Subject Object Verb
word order, although variations to this theme are common. Bengali makes use of
postpositions, as opposed to the prepositions used in English and other European languages.
Determiner (function)s follow the
noun, while numerals, adjectives, and possession (linguistics) precede the noun.{{cite web| url = http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=84&menu=004| title = Bengali| accessdate = 2006-11-20| work = UCLA Language Materials project| publisher = University of California, Los Angeles-->
Yes-no questions do not require any change to the basic word order; instead, the low (L) tone (linguistics) of the final syllable in the utterance is replaced with a falling (HL)
tone (linguistics). Additionally optional grammatical particle (e.g. কি
-ki, না
-na, etc.) are often
clitic onto the first or last word of a yes-no question.
Wh-questions are formed by fronting the wh-word to
focus (linguistics) position, which is typically the first or second word in the utterance.
Nouns
Nouns and pronouns are inflected for
declension, including Nominative case, Accusative case, genitive case, and locative case. The case marking pattern for each noun being inflected depends on the noun's degree of
animacy. When a article (grammar) such as -টা
-ţa (singular) or -গুলা
-gula (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for grammatical number.
{| style="align:center; width:60%;" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- valign="top"|{| class="wikitable"|-|+
Singular Noun Inflection|-!! Animate! Inanimate|-! Nominative| ছাত্রটাchhatro-ţathe student|জুতাটা juta-ţathe shoe|-! Objective|ছাত্রটা
কে chhatro-ţa-
kethe student|জুতাটা juta-ţathe shoe|-! Genitive|ছাত্রটা
র chhatro-ţa-
rthe student's|জুতাটা
র juta-ţa-
rthe shoe's|-! Locative| -|জুতাটা
য় juta-ţa-
(t)eon/in the shoe|}|{| class="wikitable"|-|+
Plural Noun Inflection|-!! Animate! Inanimate|-! Nominative|ছাত্র
রাchhatro-
rathe students|জুতাগুলা juta-gulathe shoes|-! Objective|ছাত্র
দের(কে)chhatro-
der(ke)the students|জুতাগুলা juta-gulathe shoes|-! Genitive|ছাত্র
দেরchhatro-
derthe students'|জুতাগুলা
র juta-gula-
rthe shoes'|-! Locative| -|জুতাগুলা
তেjuta-gula-
teon/in the shoes|}|}
When counted, nouns take one of a small set of
measure words. As in many
East Asian languages (e.g. Chinese language,
Japanese language, Thai language, etc.), nouns in Bengali cannot be counted by adding the numeral directly adjacent to the noun. The noun's measure word (
MW) must be used between the numeral and the noun. Most nouns take the generic measure word -টা
-ţa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes (e.g. -জন
-jon for humans).
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|-|+
Measure Words|-! Bengali! Bengali transliteration! Literal translation! English translation|-| নয়
টা গরু| Nôe-
ţa goru| Nine-
MW cow| Nine cows|-|কয়
টা বািলশ| Kôe-
ţa balish| How many-
MW pillow| How many pillows|-| অনেক
জন েলাক| Ônek-
jon lok| Many-
MW person| Many people|-| চার-পাঁচ
জন িশক্ষক| Char-pãch-
jon shikkhôk| Four-five-
MW teacher| Four or five teachers|}
Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল
aţ biŗal instead of আট
টা বিড়াল
aţ-'ţa
biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, when the semantic class of the noun is understood from the measure word, the noun is often omitted and only the measure word is used, e.g. শুধু একজন' থাকবে।
Shudhu êk-'jon
thakbe. (lit. "Only one-MW' will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one
person will remain.", given the semantic class implicit in -জন
-jon.
In this sense, all nouns in Bengali, unlike most other Indo-European languages, are similar to mass nouns.
Verbs
Verbs divide into two classes: finite verb and non-finite. Non-finite verbs have no inflection for tense or person, while finite verbs are fully inflected for
grammatical person (first, second, third), grammatical tense (present, past, future), grammatical aspect (simple, perfect, progressive), and
honorific (intimate, familiar, and formal), but
not for number.
conditional mood, imperative, and other special inflections for
grammatical mood can replace the tense and aspect suffixes. The number of inflections on many verb roots can total more than 200.
Inflectional suffixes in the morphology (linguistics) of Bengali vary from region to region, along with minor differences in syntax.
Bengali differs from most Indo-Aryan Languages in the
zero copula, where the
copula or connective
be is often missing in the present tense. Bangla language in Thus "he is a teacher" is
she shikkhôk, (literally "he teacher").Among Bengali speakers brought up in neighbouring linguistic regions (e.g. Hindi), the lost copula may surface in utterances such as
she shikkhôk hochchhe. This is viewed as ungrammatical by other speakers, and speakers of this variety are sometimes (humorously) referred as "hochchhe-Bangali".In this respect, Bengali is similar to
Russian language and Hungarian language.
Vocabulary
Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered
tôtshômo (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are
tôdbhôbo (derived from Sanskrit words), and the rest being
bideshi (foreign) and
deshi words.
However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a large proportion of these words are archaic or highly technical, minimizing their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of
tôdbhôbo words, while
tôtshômo only make up 25% of the total. Tatsama in Tatbhava in
Deshi and
Bideshi words together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.
Due to centuries of contact with
European ethnic groupss, Mughals, Arabs, Turkish people,
Persians, ethnic Pashtuns, and
East Asians, Bengali has
Loanword many words from foreign languages. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from Hindi language, Assamese language, Chinese language, Burmese language, and several indigenous Austroasiatic languages(like Santali).
Byomkes Chakrabarti A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Kolkata, 1994, ISBN 8170741289 of Bengal. After centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, numerous
Persian language,
Arabic language, Turkish language, and Pashtun language words were absorbed into Bengali.
Portuguese language, French language, Dutch language and English language words were later additions during the
British Raj.
Sample
See also
Notes
References
| Surname1 = Haldar
| Given1 = Gopal
| Year = 2000
| Title = Languages of India
| Publisher = National Book Trust, India
| ISBN = 81-237-2936-7
-->.
| Surname1 = Alam
| Given1 = M
| Year = 2000
| Title = Bhasha Shourôbh: Bêkorôn O Rôchona (The Fragrance of Language: Grammar and Rhetoric)
| Publisher = S. N. Printers, Dhaka
-->.
- Chakrabarti, Byomkes, A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Kolkata, 1994, ISBN 8170741289 Byomkes Chakrabarti
- {{Harvard reference
| Author = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
| Surname1 = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
| Year = 2003
| Title = Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh
| Publisher = Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka
-->.
| Surname1 = Cardona
| Given1 = G
| Surname2 = Jain
| Given2 = D
| Year = 2003
| Title = The Indo-Aryan languages
| Publisher = RoutledgeCurzon, London
-->.
| Surname1 = Chatterji
| Given1 = SK
| Year = 1921
| Title = Bengali Phonetics
| Journal = Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
-->.
| Surname1 = Chatterji
| Given1 = SK
| Year = 1926
| Title = The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language
| Publsher = Calcutta Univ. Press
-->.
| Surname1 = Ferguson
| Given1 = CA
| Surname2 = Chowdhury
| Given2 = M
| Year = 1960
| Title = The Phonemes of Bengali
| Journal = Language, 36(1), Part 1
-->.
| Surname1 = Hayes
| Given1 = B
| Surname2 = Lahiri
| Given2 = A
| Year = 1991
| Title = Bengali intonational phonology
| Journal = [Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
| Publisher = Springer Science
-->.
| Surname1 = Klaiman
| Given1 = MH
| Year = 1987
| Chapter = Bengali
| Editor = Bernard Comrie
| Title = The World's Major Languages
| Publisher = Croon Helm, London and Sydney
| ISBN = 0195065115
-->.
| Surname1 = Masica
| Given1 = C
| Year = 1991
| Title = The Indo-Aryan Languages
| Publisher = Cambridge Univ. Press
-->.
| Surname1 = Radice
| Given1 = W
| Year = 1994
| Title = Teach Yourself Bengali: A Complete Course for Beginners
| Publisher = NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
| ISBN = 0844237523
-->.
| Surname1 = Ray
| Given1 = P
| Surname2 = Hai
| Given2 = MA
| Surname3 = Ray
| Given3 = L
| Year = 1966
| Title = Bengali language handbook
| Publisher = Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington
|ISBN = {{ASIN|B000B9G89C-->
-->.
| Surname1 = Sen
| Given1 = D
| Year = 1996
| Title = Bengali Language and Literature
| Publisher = International Centre for Bengal Studies, Calcutta
-->.
| Surname1 = Bhattacharya
| Given1 = T
| Year = 2000
| Chapter = Bangla (Bengali)
| Title = Encyclopedia of World's Languages: Past and Present (Facts About the World's Languages)
| Publisher = WW Wilson, New York
| Editor = Gary, J. and Rubino. C.
| URL = http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uclyara/bong_us.pdf
| ISBN = 0824209702
-->.
| Surname1 = Baxter
| Given1 = C
| Year = 1997
| Title = Bangladesh, From a Nation to a State
| Publisher = Westview Press
| ISBN = 0813336325
-->.
External links
- Ethnologue report for Bengali
- Bengali Language: A Brief Introduction
- Samsad Bengali-English dictionary. 3rd ed. online. Requires unicode enabled browser.
- Free Bangla Unicode Solutions.
- The South Asian Literary Recordings Project, The Library of Congress. Bengali Authors.
Bengali language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bengali or Bangla (IPA: [ˈbaŋla] (help · info)) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit languages.
Bengali Language Movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bengali Language Movement, also known as the Language Movement (Bengali: ভাষা আন্দোলন; Bhasha Andolon), was a political effort in Bangladesh (then known ...
The Bengali Language and Translation
Article about the different forms of Bengali or Bangla language. ... Bengali - One language, Multiple Variations. Bengali, also called Bangla, is the official language of ...
Bengali Jobs, Bengali speaking jobs - Top Language Jobs
Bengali speaking jobs, 4 Bengali jobs available on Top Language Jobs in London, UK and Europe. Top Language Jobs, the market leading provider of language recruitment and ... ...
Bengali Jobs, Bengali Speaking Language Jobs in London, UK & Europe
See below all the latest Bengali speaking jobs from leading recruitment agencies and employers.
SOAS Language Centre - Bengali Learning Materials - by Arif Billah
Bengali Learning Materials-- by Arif Billah Course books. Teach Yourself Bengali (McGraw Hill, 2003) William Radice [Beginners – Intermediate] Intermediate Bangla (LINCOM Europa ...
SOAS Language Centre - Bengali Language Courses
Study Bengali. SOAS Language Centre in London provides beginners', intermediate and advanced courses in a range of African and Asian languages, and can cater for the needs of ...
Bengali Language Learning Software Bengali Talk Now
Language Source provides language learning software around the world to educational institutes and business in over hundred languages
Bengali - Celebrating language news story
My favourite festival is Eid ul Fitr, which comes after Ramadan. Ramadan is the month when we Muslims fast. That means we try not to have anything to eat or drink from dawn till ...
Stadium Housing - Translation - Bengali language
Translation - Bengali language ... For information on some english lessons offered in our main boroughs, please click on the Borough name below;
