Bengali language

Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, ) is an Indo-Aryan language of East South Asia, evolved from Prakrit, Pali and Sanskrit.

With nearly 200 million native speakers, Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages of the world (it is ranked between fourEthnologue Survey 1999 and sevenList of languages by total speakers based on the number of speakers). Bengali is the main language spoken in Bangladesh, and the second most commonly spoken language in India (after Hindi-Urdu). Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-European languages.

Owing to the Bengal renaissance in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bengali literature emerged among the richest in South Asia, and includes luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

History

Like most other modern Indic languages, Bengali arose from the Apabhramsha melting pot of Middle Indic languages, around the turn of the first millennium CE. Some argue for much earlier points of divergence - going back to even 500 BCE, but the language was not static, and different varieties co-existed concurrently, and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. In particular, the eastern region language known as Abahatta (with considerable overlap with Purvi and Magadhi Apabhrangsha), had begun to emerge by the seventh century AD. Hiuen Tsang has noted that the same language was spoken in most of Eastern India.

Bengali as a separate linguistic identity may have emerged around 1000 CE, and three (sometimes four) periods are identified in its history :

Old Bengali (900/1000 - 1400 CE): texts: Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of proto-pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya and Assamese branch out in this period.
Middle Bengali (1400 - 1800 CE): texts: Chandidas's SrikrishnaKirtan; elision of word-final ô sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence.
New Bengali (since 1800 CE): shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar --> tar 'his'/'her'; koriyachhilô --> korechhilo he/she had done).

Bengali is historically closer to Pali, and has seen a resurgence of Sanskrit influence in Middle Bengali (Chaitanya era), and also during the Bengal Renaissance. Of the modern Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and others tend to be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence.

Until 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 Portuguese missionary Manoel da Assumpcam between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, was the first to write a Bengali grammar using Bengali texts and script for illustration: A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778). Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali Reformer, also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832). Even in 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. Spoken and written Bengali continue to evolve in both West Bengal and Bangladesh, and in the various regional dialects. Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah, Bangla Bhashar Itibritta, 1959.

Bengali was the focus, in 1951-52, of the Language movement (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 11 people were killed in police firing in Silchar in southern Assam protesting legislation making the use of Assamese language compulsory in the state. Eventually, the legislation was withdrawn.

Classification and related languages

Bengali is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-European language family.

Assamese, Oriya, and Maithili, three other languages belonging to the Maghadan Branch of the Indo-Aryan language family, are very closely related to Bengali. Assamese, Oriya, and Bengali are considered by some to be nearly mutually intelligible; some local dialects of one language bear a striking resemblance to one or more dialects of the other two languages.

Sylheti, Chittagonian, and Chakma are some of the many languages that are often considered dialects of Bengali. Although these languages are mutually intelligible with neighboring dialects of Bengali, they would not be understood by a native speaker of Standard Bengali.

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. More than 98% of the total population of Bangladesh speak Bengali as a native language. It is the official language in Bangladesh and one of the official languages in the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. There are significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Indian states of Assam and Tripura and in immigrant populations in the West and the Middle East. The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh are written in Bengali.

Official status

Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 14 regional languages recognized by the Union of India. It is the official language of the state of West Bengal and the co-official language of the state of Tripura and union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It was made an official language of Sierra Leone in order to honor the Bangladeshi peace keeping force from United Nations stationed there.Sierra Leone makes Bengali official language, Daily Times, Pakistan, December 29, 2002. It is also the official language of the three predominantly Sylheti-speaking districts of southern Assam: Silchar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi.

Spoken and literary variants

More than other languages of South Asia, Bengali exhibits strong diglossia between the formal, written language and the vernacular, spoken language. Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged: Huq, Daniul, Article on Chalita Bhasa, Banglapedia Huq, Daniul, Article on Shadhu Bhasa, Banglapedia

Shadhubhasha is the written language with longer verb inflections and a more Sanskrit-derived (tôtshôm) vocabulary (shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; bhasha = 'language'). 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, but its use is on the wane in modern writing.
Choltibhasha or Cholitobhasha, a written Bengali style that reflects a more colloquial idiom, is increasingly the standard for written Bengali (cholito = 'current' or 'running'). This form came into vogue towards the turn of the 19th century, in an orthography promoted in the writings of Peary Chand Mitra (Alaler ghare dulal, 1857),Alaler Ghorer Dulal in Pramatha Chowdhury (Sabujpatra, 1914) and in the later writings of Rabindranath Tagore. It is modeled on the dialect spoken in the districts bordering the lower reaches of the Hooghly River particularly the Shantipur region in Nadia district, West Bengal. This form of Bengali is sometimes called the "Nadia standard". Morshed, Abul Kalam Manjoor, Article on Bengali dialects, Banglapedia

Spoken Bengali exhibits far more variation than written Bengali. Formal spoken Bengali, including what is heard in news reports, speeches, announcements, and lectures, is modeled on Choltibhasha. This form of spoken Bengali stands alongside other spoken dialects, or Ancholik Bangla ("regional Bengali"). The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one dialect - often, speakers are fluent in Choltibhasha, one or more Ancholik dialect, and one or more forms of Grammo Bangla ("rural Bengali"), dialects specific to a village or town.

Dialects

Dialectical differences in Bengali manifest themselves in three forms: standardized dialect vs. regional dialect, literary language vs. colloquial language and lexical (vocabulary) variations.

While the standard form of the language does not show much variation across the Bengali-speaking areas of South Asia, regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Eight groups are typically considered: Western, Southwestern, Central (or West-Central), Northern, Bahe, Eastern, Ganda, and Vanga, but this list is very fluid.See the Ethnologue report Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Rajbangshi and Hajong are considered separate languages, although they are very similar to Northern Bengali dialects. Sylheti, closely related to Eastern Bengali, is often considered a separate language. Chittagonian See the Ethnologue report and Chakma are heavily influenced by the neighboring Tibeto-Burman languages, and are also typically considered separate languages from Bengali.

During standardization of Bengali in the late 19th and early 20th century, the cultural elite were mostly from the regions of Kolkata and Nadia. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of the 19th century Kolkata elite. While this language has been standardized today through two centuries of education and media, variation is widespread, with many speakers familiar with or fluent in both their socio-geographical variety as well as the standard dialect used in the media.

Writing system

Bengali is written in the Bengali alphasyllabary (also called syllabic alphabet or abugida), a Brahmic script similar to the Devanagari alphasyllabary used for Hindi, Sanskrit, and many other Indic languages. The Bengali alphasyllabary is a cursive script with 12 vowel characters and 52 consonant characters. As in all alphasyllabaries, every consonant in the Bengali script can come with what is called an "embedded" or "inherent" vowel sound. For example, the simple letter ম can represent the consonant ^* in a word like কম "less". However, in another word, the same letter ম can represent the sequences or , as in মত "opinion" and মন "mind", respectively, with no added symbol for the vowels or . If the consonant sound is followed by some other vowel sound in the pronunciation, this can be written by writing a variety of vowel diacritics above, below, before, after, or around the consonant they belong to. Vowels not associated with a consonant (for example, vowels at the beginning of a word) are written with separate symbols. To emphatically indicate that a consonant is not pronounced with the embedded vowel, an extra diacritic may be added below the consonant. Consonant clusters are typically indicated by ligating two or more consonant symbols.

The Bengali spelling system is based on a much older version of the language, and thus does not take into account some sound mergers that have occurred in the spoken language. For example, the alphabet has two letters for the sound and three for the sound . Conversely, a number of letters now have more than one pronunciation; the letter এ can represent either the low vowel or the high-mid vowel [e. Furthermore, many letters and diacritics have become "silent letters" in the spoken language. The word for "health", for example, is written , but pronounced . With these minor inconsistencies and redundancies, the Bengali script cannot be described as entirely phonemic.

This same script, with a few small modifications, is also used for writing Assamese. Other related languages in the region also make use of the Bengali alphabet. Meithei (Manipuri), a Sino-Tibetan language used in the Indian state of Manipur, is written in the Bengali alphasyllabary for centuries now, though Meetei-Mayek (the Meithei alphasyllabary) has been promoted in recent times. For centuries, the Sylheti language used a different script, based on the Devanagari alphasyllabary. This script, called Sylheti Nagori,Sylheti Nagri on has now fallen out of use, as most speakers of Sylheti have adopted the Bengali script.

Sounds

The phonemic inventory of Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 14 vowels, including the seven nasalized vowels. An approximate phonetic scheme is set out below in IPA.

**Vowels**
	Front	Central	Back
High
High-mid
Low-mid
Low

**Consonants**
	Labial	Dental	Apico- Alveolar	Apico- Postalveolar	Lamino- Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stops
Voiced stops
Voiceless fricatives
Nasals
Liquids			,

Romanization

Several conventions exist for writing Indic languages including Bengali in the Latin script, including IAST (based on diacritics), ITRANS (uses upper case alphabets suited for ASCII keyboards), and the National Library at Calcutta romanization.

In the context of Bengali Romanization, it is important to distinguish between 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). Since English does not have the sounds of Bengali, 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 Bengali orthography is recoverable from the Latin text, Bengali words are currently Romanized on Wikipedia mixed a phonemic transcription, where the pronunciation is represented with no reference to the spelling. The Wikipedia Romanization is given in the table below, with IPA transcriptions as used above.

**Vowels**
	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
High-mid	e		o
Low-mid	ê		ô
Low		a

**Consonants**
	Labial	Dental	Apico- Alveolar	Apico- Postalveolar	Lamino- Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stops	p f	t th		ţ ţh	ch chh	k kh
Voiced stops	b bh	d dh		đ đh	j jh	g gh
Voiceless fricatives			s		sh		h
Nasals	m		n			ng
Liquids			l, r	ŗ

Bengali, like most Indo-Aryan languages, has an Abugida orthography, i.e. a vowel is inherent in every non-conjunct consonant - either অ ô (e.g. ম in মরা môra) or ও o (e.g. ম in মরি mori), although many instances exhibit schwa-deletion (e.g. ম in গামলা gamla).

Because of this ambiguity in the spelling system, the transliteration and transcription of a Bengali word can differ. A word like গামলা is correctly transliterated as gāmalā (gāmlā would correspond to the orthography গাম্লা) and transcribed gamla ^*. Transcription models would confuse homophonous words such as সাপ (sāpa) and শাপ (śāpa), which are both pronounced shap .

**Romanization Choices**
	transcription (on Wikipedia)	transliteration (ITRANS)	transliteration (diacritics)
সাপ	shap	sApa	sāpa
শাপ	shap	shApa	śāpa
গামলা	gamla	gAmalA	gāmalā
বই/বৈ	boi	bai	bai

On the other hand, correct transliterations are hard to pronounce for those who do not already speak Bengali, as the graphemic transliteration of Bengali can be misleading with respect to pronunciation.

Two standards are commonly used for transliteration of Indic languages including Bengali. The older diacritic approach, or ITRANS, is a transliteration scheme that uses upper- and lower-case letters contrastively and is more suited for ASCII-derivative keyboards. IAST uses diacritics instead of contrastive upper-case letters. Diphthongs remain a serious problem for most transliteration schemes, as in the distinction between বই from বৈ; this is not resolved in standard IAST or ITRANS transliterations also.

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 other vowel combinations are possible, but only across two adjacent syllables, such as the disyllabic vowel combination ^* in kua "well". As many as 25 diphthongs can be found, but some of the more recent combinations have not passed through the stage between two syllables and a diphthongal monosyllable.

**Monosyllabic Diphthongs**
Nucleus IPA	Off-glide IPA	Transliteration	Example
^*	^*	ii	nii "I take"
^*	^*	iu	biubhôl "upset"
^*	^*	ei	nei "there is not"
^*	^*	ee	khee "having eaten"
^*	^*	eu	đheu "wave"
^*	^*	eo	kheona "do not eat"
^*	^*	êe	nêe "she takes"
^*	^*	êo	nêo "you take"
^*	^*	ai	pai "I find"
^*	^*	ae	pae "she finds"
^*	^*	au	pau "sliced bread"
^*	^*	ao	pao "you find"
^*	^*	ôe	nôe "she is not"
^*	^*	ôo	nôo "you are not"
^*	^*	oi	noi "I am not"
^*	^*	oe	dhoe "she washes"
^*	^*	oo	dhoo "you wash"
^*	^*	ou	nouka "boat"
^*	^*	ui	dhui "I wash"

Stress

In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic; 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 ^* "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 has stress, out of harmony with the situation with native Bengali words.

Adding prefixes to a word typically shifts the stress to the left; for example, while the word "civilized" carries the primary stress on the first syllable negative prefix ^*" target="_blank" >creates ô" target="_blank" >^*. 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 have 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, with the exception of the last word in the sentence, which only carries a low tone. This intonational 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 focused 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 monosyllables (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 suffix 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 allow only very restricted 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 geram (CV.CVC) for gram (CCVC) "village" or iskul (VC.CVC) for skul (CCVC) "school".

Sanskrit (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 mrittu "death" or the sp in spôshţo "clear", have become extremely common, and can be considered legal consonant clusters in Bengali. Other commonly-heard clusters from Sanskrit include pr (proshno "question"), br (brishţi "rain"), bhr (bhromon "travel"), tr (trish "thirty"), dr (druto "rapid"), kr (krimi "worm"), gr (gram "village"), sr (sromik "worker"), str (stri "woman"), sth (sthanio "local"), and sn (snan "bath").

Less commonly-heard clusters from Sanskrit include dhr (dhrubo "fixed, permanent"), ghr (ghrina "disgust"), ml (mlan "melancholy"), nr (nritto "dance"), sf (sfurti "delight"), st (stômbho "tower"), and skh (skhôlon "slip").

English and other foreign (bideshi) borrowings add even more cluster types into the Bengali inventory, further increasing the syllable capacity to CCCVCCCC, as commonly-used loanwords such as ţren "train" and glash "glass" are now even included in leading Bengali dictionaries. Clusters from English borrowings include bl (blauz "blouse"), thr (thru or thrute "through, via"), ţr (ţrak "truck"), đr (đraivar "driver"), fr (frans "France"), fl (flaiţ "flight"), spl (splêsh "splash"), sţ (sţeshon "station"), sţr (sţreiţ "straight"), skr (skru "screw"), and sm (smarţ "smart"). Furthermore, some clusters occasionally found in Sanskrit borrowings are now more commonly heard in English borrowings. These clusters include pl (plen "plane"), kl (klash "class"), gl (glash "glass"), sl (sloli "slowly"), spr (spring "spring"), and sk (skarţ "skirt").

Final consonant clusters are rare in Bengali. Most final consonant clusters were borrowed into Bengali from English, as in lifţ "lift, elevator" and 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 gônj, which is found in names of hundreds of cities and towns across Bengal, including Nôbabgônj and 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 chand "moon". The Standard Bengali equivalent of chand would be chñad, with a nasalized vowel instead of the final cluster.

Grammar

Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives (called inflection). However, nouns and pronouns are highly declined (altered depending on their function in a sentence) into four cases while verbs are heavily conjugated.

Word order

As a Head-Final language, Bengali follows Subject Object Verb word order, although variations to this theme are highly common. Bengali makes use of postpositions, as opposed to the prepositions used in English and other European languages. Determiners follow the noun, while numerals, adjectives, and possessors precede the noun.

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. [-na, etc.) are often encliticized 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.

Nouns

Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case, including nominative, objective, genitive (possessive), and locative. The case marking pattern for each noun being inflected depends on the noun's degree of animacy. When a definite article such as -ţa (singular) or -gula (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number.

the student the shoe the student the shoe the student's the shoe's on/in the shoe

**Singular Noun Inflection**
	Animate	Inanimate
Nominative	chhatro-ţa	juta-ţa
Objective	chhatro-ţa-ke	juta-ţa
Genitive	chhatro-ţa-r	juta-ţa-r
Locative	-	juta-ţa-(t)e

the students the shoes the students the shoes the students' the shoes' on/in the shoes

**Plural Noun Inflection**
	Animate	Inanimate
Nominative	chhatro-ra	juta-gula
Objective	chhatro-der(ke)	juta-gula
Genitive	chhatro-der	juta-gula-r
Locative	-	juta-gula-te

When counted, nouns take one of a small set of measure words. As in many Asian languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, 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 ţa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes (e.g. jon for humans).

**Measure Words**
Bengali	Literal translation	English translation
Nôe-ţa goru	Nine-MW cow	Nine cows
Kôe-ţa balish	How many-MW pillow	How many pillows
Ônek-jon lok	Many-MW person	Many people
Char-pañch-jon shikkhôk	Four-five-MW teacher	Four or five teachers

Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. aţ biŗal instead of aţ-ţa biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, omitting the noun and preserving the measure word is commonly encountered: e.g. 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 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 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 honor (intimate, familiar, and formal), but not for number. Conditional, imperative, and other special inflections for 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 of Bengali vary from region to region, along with minor differences in syntax.

An aspect in which Bengali differs from most Indo-Aryan Languages is 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 (humourously) referred as "hochchhe-Bangali". In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian or Hungarian).

Vocabulary

Bengali may have as many as 75,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered tôtshôm (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are tôdbhôb (native Bengali vocabulary), and the rest being bideshi (foreign) and deshi (indigenous Austroasiatic) 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 tôdbhôb words, while tôtshôm 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 Europeans, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, Bengali has absorbed countless words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary. 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, Assamese, Chinese, Burmese, and several indigenous Austroasiatic languages of Bengal. After centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, numerous Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed and fully integrated into the lexicon. Later, European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and most significantly English.

Phonological variations

There are marked dialectal differences between the speech of Bengalis living on the Poshchim (western) side and Purbo (eastern) side of the Padma River.

Fricatives

In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern Bangladesh (Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions), many of the stops and affricates heard in Kolkata Bengali are pronounced as fricatives.

Poshchim Bangla (Western Bengali) palato-alveolar affricates চ ছ ^*," target="_blank" >and ঝ ^*," target="_blank" >ছ় ^*," target="_blank" >and ঝ় [z. A similar pronunciation is also found in Assamese, a related language across the border in India.

The aspirated velar stop খ and the aspirated labial stop ফ ^*" target="_blank" >and ফ় [f in many dialects of Purbo Bangla. These pronunciations are most extreme in the Sylheti dialect of extreme northeastern Bangladesh -- the dialect of Bengali most common in the United Kingdom.

Many Purbo Bangla dialects share phonological features with Assamese, including the debuccalization of শ to হ ^*.

Tibeto-Burman influence

The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Purbo Bangla is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels, a more fronted place of articulation for the apico-postalveolar stops ট ঠ ^*," target="_blank" >and ঢ ^*" target="_blank" >and ড়/ঢ় [.

Unlike most Indic languages, some Purbo Bangla dialects do not include the breathy voiced stops ঘ ঝ ^*," target="_blank" >ধ ^*.

Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma Bengali (considered by some to be separate languages), have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words.

Lexical variations

The third major factor in dialectical difference, specifically between the dialects of West Bengal and Bangladesh, is a lexical one. Even in Standard Bengali, vocabulary items often divide along the split between the predominantly Muslim Bangladeshi populace and largely Hindu West Bengali populace. Due to their cultural and religious traditions, Muslims occasionally utilize Perso-Arabic words instead of the Sanskrit-derived forms.

Some examples of lexical alternation between standard West Bengali forms (or commonly called Hindu forms) and their corresponding standard Bangladeshi forms (or commonly called Muslim forms) are as follows:

hello: nômoshkar (S) corresponds to assalamualaikum/slamalikum (A)
invitation: nimontron/nimontonno (S) corresponds to daoat (A)
guest: otithi (S) corresponds to mehman (P)
sir: môshae (S) corresponds to shaheb (A)
bath/shower: snan/chan (S) corresponds to gosol (A)
water: jôl (S) corresponds to pani (S/Hindi)
meat: mangsho (S) corresponds to gosh/goshto/gosto (P)
prayer: prarthona (S) corresponds to doa (A)
God: Bhôgoban, Ishshor (S) corresponds to Allah (A), Khoda (P)
mother: ma (S) corresponds to amma (A)
father: baba (S) corresponds to abba (A)
maternal aunt: mashi (S) corresponds to khala (A)
paternal aunt: pishi (S) corresponds to fupi/fupu (P)
paternal uncle: kaka (S) corresponds to chacha (S/Hindi)

(here S = derived from Sanskrit; A = derived from Arabic, P = derived from Persian)

The differences above depend on the region contemplated and are not always clearly distinct. For example, many people in West Bengal continue to use the words chan and gosol (or nimontron and daoat) interchangeably with no particular bias towards one word or the other; a similar situation prevails (even among Muslims) in Hindu majority and Western regions of Bangladesh. Additionally, baba and ma are also heard often in Bangladesh.

Though jôl, pani, kaka, and chacha are all Sanskrit derivatives, pani and chacha became more associated with the Hindustani language that imbibed so much of Mughal culture and so became the word of choice for Muslim speakers of Bengali.

Furthermore, 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. Because each pair of words is made up of only native vocabulary, the choice of which word to use is not based on one's religion, but on regional usage. Examples of such cases are listed below, with the West Bengali standard marked (W) and the Bangladeshi standard marked (E):

salt: nun (W) corresponds to lôbon (E)
chili pepper: lôngka (W) corresponds to morich (E)
with: shôngge (W) corresponds to shathe (E)
house/home: baŗi (W) corresponds to basha (E)

In both India and Bangladesh, the words baŗi and basha can refer to slightly different meanings; baŗi is often translated to mean "house" or "building", while basha is often translated to mean "residence". Still, for the basic meaning of "home", Bengalis tend to use baŗi in India and basha in Bangladesh.

Note that these differences reflect the vocabulary of the standard varieties of Bengali in West Bengali and Bangladesh. Variation in the vocabulary of the countless regional dialects of both West Bengal and Bangladesh are even more pronounced.

External links

Bengali Language: A Brief Overview
Ethnologue report for Bengali
Bengali Language: A Brief Introduction
Link to Sylheti dialect of Bangladesh
Ranking of Languages by Native Speakers
Transliterator Transliterate online from Romanised (English alphabets) to Unicode Bengali
Samsad Bengali-English dictionary. 3rd ed. online. Requires unicode enabled browser (such as Firefox).

Notes

References

Indo-Aryan languages | Languages of Bangladesh | Languages of India | Bengali language | Bengali literature

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