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Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. However, a majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. 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. During the standardisation of Modern Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata, a city founded by the British. Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti, Chittagonian and Chakma, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker’s voice can distinguish words.

• About 45% per cent of Bengali words are unmodified Sanskrit, and the remaining words are from foreign 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.
• 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.
• A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form.
• 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.

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. One kind of inconsistency is due to the presence of several letters in the script for the same sound. In general, the script is fairly transparent for „tadbhav” words (native Bengali words). 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.

English Grammar

For example, the graph মি mi represents the consonant m followed by https://banglabet-bd.com/bd the vowel i, where i is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar) and is placed before the default consonant sign. These allographs, called কার kar, are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô, may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in the final ন in মন mon or the medial ম in গামলা ɡamla). To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it, a special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্), may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ m).

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

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. The script is known as the Bengali alphabet for Bengali and its dialects and the Assamese alphabet for Assamese language with some minor variations. The script used for Bengali, Assamese, and other languages is known as Bengali script.

During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit schwa. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time.better source needed The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty. A research document Classical Bangla published in 2024 by the Kolkata-based institute „Institute of Language Studies and Research” (ILSR), mentions the presence of 51 Bengali words in the dictionary. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time.

With over 242 million native speakers and another 43 million 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. Browse complete list of words Stay up to date on the latest lesson with a free newsletter from us.