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Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is native to the Bengal region (Bangladesh, India's West Bengal and Tripura) of South Asia. With over 242 million (24.2 crore) native speakers and another 43 million (4.3 crore) as second language speakers as of 2025, Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world.
Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India. It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand. Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas (Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions.
Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fifth fastest growing language in India, following Hindi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, and Meitei language (Manipuri), according to the 2011 census of India.—
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Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature, with its millennium-old literary history, was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement.
The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire, and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests and Buddhist Acharyas, the vernacular of Bengal gained much influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam, and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi. Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what is known as Apabhraṃśa, by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time.
Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating."Within the Eastern Indic language family the history of the separation of Bangla from Odia, Assamese, and the languages of Bihar remains to be worked out carefully. Scholars do not yet agree on criteria for deciding if certain tenth century AD texts were in a Bangla already distinguishable from the other languages, or marked a stage at which Eastern Indic had not finished differentiating." The local Apabhraṃśa of the eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages, the Bihari languages, and the Odia language.
The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty.
In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including the development of Dobhashi.
Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah."What is more significant, a contemporary Chinese traveler reported that although Persian was understood by some in the court, the language in universal use there was Bengali. This points to the waning, although certainly not yet the disappearance, of the sort of foreign mentality that the Muslim ruling class in Bengal had exhibited since its arrival over two centuries earlier. It also points to the survival, and now the triumph, of local Bengali culture at the highest level of official society." Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic language and Persian language, which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on the language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali:
In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement. (2025). 9789027238191, John Benjamins Pub. Co.. ISBN 9789027238191 This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan. On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000.
In 2010, the parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India.
In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language.
In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages. It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam. Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011.
In Pakistan, Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan. The Department of Bengali in the University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature.
The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla) and India ( Jana Gana Mana) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol" is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram, a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka Matha) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore, while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala language.
In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations.
The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti language, Chittagonian and Chakma language, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. 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.
During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata, a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the Rarhi dialect of Nadia District and Kushtia District. There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use a different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west.
(and some districts of Assam and Jharkhand) which shows the of the Bengali language.
( those marked with an asterisk * are sometimes considered dialects or sometimes as separate languages)]]
Bengali exhibits diglossia, though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax:
Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises the language as:
While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However, a majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects.
Even in SCB, the vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit (tadbhava), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example:
Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs, combinations of occurring within the same syllable. Two of these, and , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. may all form the glide part of a diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following:
Since the Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments, but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are Syllable in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel, either as in মত "opinion" or , as in মন "mind", with variants like the more open . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the virama (্), may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô, may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in the final ন in মন or the medial ম in গামলা ).
A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures. These allographs, called কার kar, are 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 diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar) 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. In these consonant-vowel ligatures, the so-called "inherent" vowel is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম .
The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, 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 realised using its independent form.
In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô, three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are the superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ), denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal (as in বাংলা "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative (as in উঃ! "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ "sorrow").
The Bengali consonant clusters (যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn) are usually realised as ligatures, 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. As in, ক্ষ (ক+ষ) or হ্ম (হ+ম) In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in a bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from the graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden.
Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi – the Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar.
Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where 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. The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example, the letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra, as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e, also the letter হ hô and Bengali Avagraha ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô. The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between the visible matra and an invisible baseline).
There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem.
In Sylhet Division and Bankura district, modified versions of the Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra. Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in .
Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in the east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam, composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet. After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement.
In the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of the Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist. Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda, and Muhammad Enamul Haq. The Digital Revolution has also played a part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali.
Bengali script like others does have Schwa deletion. It does not mark when the inherent vowel is not used (mainly at the end of words)
One kind of inconsistency is due to the presence of several letters in the script for the same sound. In spite of some modifications in the 19th century, the Bengali spelling system continues to be based on the one used for Sanskrit, 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 postalveolar fricative , although the letter স retains the voiceless alveolar sibilant sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in স্খলন "fall", স্পন্দন "beat", etc. The letter ষ also, sometimes, retains the voiceless retroflex sibilant sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in কষ্ট "suffering", গোষ্ঠী "clan", etc. Similarly, there are two letters (জ and য) for the voiced postalveolar affricate . Moreover, what was once pronounced and written as a retroflex nasal ণ is now pronounced as an alveolar when in conversation (the difference is heard when reading) (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 realised by multiple means, as seen in the following examples: এত "so much", এ্যাকাডেমী "academy", অ্যামিবা "amoeba", দেখা "to see", ব্যস্ত "busy", ব্যাকরণ "grammar".
Another kind of inconsistency is concerned with the incomplete coverage of phonological information in the script. The inherent vowel attached to every consonant can be either or depending on vowel harmony (স্বরসঙ্গতি) with the preceding or following vowel or on the context, but this phonological information is not captured by the script, creating ambiguity for the reader. Furthermore, the inherent vowel is often not pronounced at the end of a syllable, as in কম "less", but this omission is not generally reflected in the script, making it difficult for the new reader.
Many consonant clusters have different sounds than their constituent consonants. For example, the combination of the consonants ক্ and ষ is graphically realised as ক্ষ and is pronounced (as in রুক্ষ "coarse"), (as in ক্ষমতা "capability") or even (as in ক্ষতি "harm"), depending on the position of the cluster in a word. Another example is that there are around 7 or more graphemes to represent the sound . These are 'শ' as in শব্দ ( śabda, pronounced as śôbdo "word"), 'ষ' as in ষড়যন্ত্র ( ṣaṛayantra, pronounced as śoṛōjontrō "conspiracy"), 'স' as in সরকার ( sarakāra, pronounced as śorkar "government"), 'শ্ব' as in শ্বশুর (written as śbaśura but pronounced with the ব b silent, i.e., as śōśur "father-in-law"), 'শ্ম' as in শ্মশান (written as śmaśāna but pronounced with the ম 'm' silent, i.e., as śośan "crematorium"), 'স্ব' as in স্বপ্ন (written as "sbapna" but pronounced with the ব 'b' silent, i.e., as śopnō "dream"), 'স্ম' as in স্মরণ (written as smaraṇa but pronounced with the ম 'm' silent, i.e., as śorōn "remembrance"), 'ষ্ম' as in গ্রীষ্ম (written as grīṣma but pronounced with the ম 'm' silent, i.e., as griśśō "summer") and so on. In most of the consonant clusters, only the first consonant is pronounced and rest of the consonants are silent. Examples are লক্ষ্মণ (written as lakṣmaṇa but pronounced as lokkhōn "Lakshman"), বিশ্বাস (written as biśbāsa but pronounced as biśśaś "belief"), বাধ্য (written as bādhya but pronounced as baddhō "obliged") and স্বাস্থ্য (written as sbāsthya but pronounced as śasthō "health"). Some consonant clusters have completely different pronunciation as compared to the constituent consonants. For example, 'হ্য' as in ঐতিহ্য (meaning "heritage") where hy is pronounced as jjh (written as aiti hya but pronounced as ōiti jjhō). The same হ্য is pronounced as 'hæ' as in হ্যাঁ (meaning "yes") (written as hyām̐ but pronounced as nasalised "hæ").
Another example of inconsistency in the script is that of words like, অন্য (written as anya but pronounced as ōnnō "other, different") and অন্ন (written as anna but pronounced as onnō "cooked rice, food"); in these words, the letter অ is combining with two different consonant clusters ন্য ( nya) and ন্ন ( nna), and while the same letter অ has two different pronunciations, ō and o, the two different consonant clusters have the same pronunciation. Thus, same letters and graphemes can often have different pronunciations depending on their position in a word and different graphemes and letters often have the same pronunciation.
The main reason for these numerous inconsistencies is that there have been lots of sound mergers in Bengali, but the script has failed to account for the sound shifts and consonant mergers in the language. Bengali has lots of tatsam words (words directly derived from Sanskrit) and in all these words, the original spelling has been preserved but the pronunciations have changed due to consonant mergers and sound shifts. In fact, most of the tatsam words have many grapheme-to-phoneme inconsistencies while most of the tadbhav words (native Bengali words) have fairly consistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence.
The Bengali writing system is, therefore, not often a true guide to pronunciation.
In the context of Bengali romanisation, it is important to distinguish transliteration from transcription. Transliteration is orthographically accurate (i.e. the original spelling can be recovered), whereas transcription is phonetically accurate (the pronunciation can be reproduced). As the spelling often doesn't reflect the actual pronunciation, transliteration and transcription are often different.
Although it might be desirable to use a transliteration scheme where the original Bengali orthography is recoverable from the Latin text, Bengali words are currently romanised on Wikipedia using a phonemic transcription, where the true phonetic pronunciation of Bengali is represented with no reference to how it is written.
The most recent attempt has been by publishers Mitra and Ghosh with the launch of three popular children's books, Abol Tabol, Hasi Khusi and Sahoj Path, in Roman script at the Kolkata Book Fair 2018. Published under the imprint of Benglish Books, these are based on phonetic transliteration and closely follow spellings used in social media but for using an underline to describe soft consonants.
Yes–no questions do not require any change to the basic word order; instead, the low (L) tone of the final syllable in the utterance is replaced with a falling (HL) tone. Additionally, optional particles (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 position, which is typically the first or second word in the utterance.
In most of Bengali grammar books, cases are divided into 6 categories and an additional possessive case (the possessive form is not recognised as a type of case by Bengali grammarians). But in terms of usage, cases are generally grouped into only 4 categories.
When counted, nouns take one of a small set of . Nouns in Bengali cannot be counted by adding the numeral directly adjacent to the noun. An appropriate measure word ( MW), a classifier, must be used between the numeral and the noun (most languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area are similar in this respect). Most nouns take the generic measure word -টা -ṭa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes (e.g. -জন -jôn for humans). There is also the classifier -khana, and its diminutive form -khani, which attaches only to nouns denoting something flat, long, square, or thin. These are the least common of the classifiers.
Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল aṭ biṛal instead of আট টা বিড়াল aṭ- ṭa biṛal "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 এক জন থাকবে। Shudhu êk- jôn thakbe. ( MW will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one person will remain.", given the semantic class implicit in -জন -jôn.
In this sense, all nouns in Bengali, unlike most other Indo-European languages, are similar to .
suffixes in the morphology 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. in Thus, "he is a teacher" is তিনি শিক্ষক se 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 hocche. This is viewed as ungrammatical by other speakers, and speakers of this variety are sometimes (humorously) referred as "hocche-Bangali". In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian and Hungarian. Romani language grammar is also the closest to Bengali grammar.
According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji, dictionaries from the early 20th century attributed a little more than 50% of the Bengali vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Sanskrit words, corrupted forms of Sanskrit words, and loanwords non-Indo-European languages). About 45% per cent of Bengali words are unmodified Sanskrit, and the remaining words are from foreign languages. However, more modern sources cite that this is not the case with Bengali vocabulary, as there are far more dominant foreign influences that accurately reflect the way modern Bengalis speak and utilise Bengali. Persian language is also thought to have influenced many grammatical forms. More recent studies suggest that the use of foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Because of centuries of contact with Europeans, Turkic peoples, and Persians, Bengali has absorbed numerous words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary.
Persian language influence was significant for the development of Bengali up to the modern day, and was the primary official language in the region for 600 years, until British Empire rule, when it was changed to English in 1836. In fact, there was so much Persian influence that a register of highly Persianized Bengali, known as Dobhashi appeared in medieval Bengal.
The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three types of contact. After close contact with several indigenous Austroasiatic languages,Byomkes Chakrabarti A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Kolkata, 1994, and later the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, and the Mughal Empire, whose court language was Persian language, numerous Arabic, Persian language, and Chaghatai words were absorbed into the lexicon.
Later, East Asian travellers and lately European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French language, Dutch language, and most significantly English during the British Raj.
hello invitation water bath sister / elder sister brother / elder brother মাসী māsī Native, from Sanskrit mātṛṣvasā খালা khālā Directly borrowed from Arabic khālah maternal aunt পিসী pisī Native, from Sanskrit pitṛṣvasā ফুফু phuphu Native, from Prakrit phupphī paternal aunt কাকা kākā From Persian or Dravidian kākā চাচা chāchā From Prakrit cācca paternal uncle প্রার্থনা prārthonā Directly borrowed from Sanskrit prārthanā দোয়া doyā Borrowed from Arabic dua prayer প্রদীপ prôdīp Directly borrowed from Sanskrit pradīp বাতি bāti Native, compare with Prakrit batti and Sanskrit barti lamp লঙ্কা lônkā Native, named after Sri Lanka মরিচ môrich Directly borrowed from Sanskrit marica chilli
Phonology
The phoneme inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 Nasal vowel. The inventory is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme).
+Vowels
!
! colspan="3" Non-nasalised
! colspan="3" Nasalised +Consonants
! colspan="3" !Labial consonant
!Dental consonant
!Retroflex
!Palato-
alveolar
!Velar consonant
!Glottal
Stress
In standard Bengali, stress 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 in সহযোগিতা shô -hô-jo -gi-ta "cooperation", where the boldface represents primary and secondary stress.
Consonant clusters
Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). 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".
Writing system
The Bengali-Assamese script is an abugida, a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic scripts around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). in It is a cursive script with eleven or signs denoting nine vowels and two , and thirty-nine graphemes representing and other modifiers. There are no distinct Letter case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words. Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra.
Alternative and historic scripts
Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on a large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore, which borders Odisha, have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar, some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari, Kaithi and Tirhuta script.
Orthographic depth
The Bengali script in general has a comparatively shallow orthography when compared to the Latin script used for English and French, i.e., in many cases there is a one-to-one correspondence between the sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) of Bengali. But grapheme-phoneme inconsistencies do occur in many other cases. In fact, Bengali-Assamese script has the deepest orthography (deep orthography) among the Indian scripts. In general, the Bengali-Assamese script is fairly transparent for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, i.e., it is easier to predict the pronunciation from spelling of the words. But the script is fairly opaque for phoneme-to-grapheme conversion, i.e., it is more difficult to predict the spelling from the pronunciation of the words.
Uses
The script used for Bengali, Assamese, and other languages is known as Bengali alphabet. The script is known as the Bengali alphabet for Bengali and its dialects and the Assamese alphabet for Assamese language with some minor variations. Other related languages in the nearby region also make use of the Bengali script like the Meitei language in the Indian state of Manipur, where the Meitei language has been written in the Bengali script for centuries, though the Meitei script has been promoted in recent times.
Number system
Bengali digits are as follows:
Some 19th-century grammars note additional signs for fractions, quarters and sixteenths in particular.
০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯
Romanisation
There are various romanisation systems used for Bengali created in recent years which have failed to represent the true Bengali phonetic sound. The Bengali alphabet has often been included with the group of Brahmic scripts for romanisation where the true phonetic value of Bengali is never represented. Some of them are the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, or IAST system (based on diacritics); "Indian languages Transliteration", or ITRANS (uses upper case letters suited for ASCII keyboards); and the National Library at Kolkata romanisation.
Grammar
Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives (inflection). However, nouns and pronouns are moderately declension (altered depending on their function in a sentence) into four grammatical case while verbs are heavily conjugated, and the verbs do not change form depending on the number of the noun.
Word order
As a head-final language, Bengali follows a subject–object–verb word order, although variations on this theme are common. Bengali makes use of postpositions, as opposed to the prepositions used in English and other European languages. follow the noun, while numerals, , and possessors precede the noun.
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 definite article such as -টা -ṭa (singular) or -গুলো -gulo (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number.
+Noun inflection
! rowspan="2" ! colspan="2" Animate
! colspan="2" Inanimate +Measure words
Verbs
There are two classes of verbs: finite verb and non-finite. Non-finite verbs have no inflection for tense or person, while finite verbs are fully inflected for person (first, second, third), tense (present, past, future), aspect (simple, perfect, progressive), and honour (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.
Vocabulary
Bengali is typically thought to have around 100,000 separate words, of which 16,000 (16%) are considered to be তদ্ভব tôdbhôbô, or Tadbhava (inherited Indo-Aryan vocabulary), 40,000 (40%) are তৎসম tôtśômô or Tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit), and borrowings from দেশী deśi, or "indigenous" words, which are at around 16,000 (16%) of the Bengali vocabulary. The rest are বিদেশী bideśi or "foreign" sources, including Persian language, Turkish language, Arabic, and English among others, accounting for around 28,000 (28%) of all Bengali words, highlighting the significant influence that foreign languages and cultures have had on the Bengali language throughout Bengal's long history of contact with different peoples and the cultural exchanges that came with such interactions. Bengali is reportedly similar to Assamese and has a lexical similarity of 40 per cent with Nepali language.
Sample text
The following is a sample text in Bengali of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
See also
Notes
(2025). 9780700711598, Routledge. ISBN 9780700711598
(1996). 9788126000944, Sahitya Akademi. ISBN 9788126000944
(1982). 9780824811839, University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 9780824811839
Further reading
External links
Categories: Eastern Indo-aryan Languages, Languages Of Bangladesh, Official Languages Of India, Subject–object–verb Languages, Languages Of West Bengal, Languages Of Tripura, Official Languages Of Assam, Languages Written In Brahmic Scripts, Languages Of Jharkhand, Languages Of Bihar, Classical Language In India
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