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Infobox Language|name=Bengali |nativename=বাংলা |states=Bangladesh, India and several others |region=Eastern South Asia |speakers=270 million |rank=4-7 (native speakers; varying estimates) and seven 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,and also Kazi Nazrul Islam, the National Poet of Bangladesh 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 AD, 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 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. 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
Official status Bengali is the 4th most widely spoken language of the world and the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 22 national 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 honour the Bangladeshi peace keeping force from United Nations stationed there. 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: 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 আঞ্চলিক বাংলা 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 গ্রাম্য বাংলা 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. The name of the dialects generally originates from the district where the language is spoken. 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. Mostly speech varies across distances of just few miles and takes distinct forms among the religious communities. Apart from the present dialects, there are a few more which have disappeared now days. For example, ‘Bikramapuri’, Sātagāiyã’ (this is the name used in East Bengal for the dialect of South-western Rarh region). The present dialects of Bengali include: English: one/individual man-of two son(s) was/were Meaning: A certain man had two sons. English: one-person-of two individual son(s) was/were Example:ek-jan-er dui-ta polā āchilo (Bikrampur) English: one-person-of two individual son(s) was/were Meaning: A man had two sons Example: aek jon mānsir dui chaāal chilo English: one person man-of two sons was/were English: one man-of two son(s) was/were (The dialect of Cooch Behar and Rangpur looks slightly different) English: one man-of two son(s) was/were 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. There are more minor dialects as well. Tribal Bengali is spoken in the bordering districts of Purnea and Singhbhum and among the tribals of the eastern Bangladesh like the Hajong and the Chakma. To a no-bengali speaker the dialects may sound or look different, but they are not so distant from each other. There is a difference in Phonetics but the grammatical difference is not so much. There is a much similarity in the dialects with sādhu bhāshā or ‘pure language’. The dialects give us an idea about the old Bengali language as well. 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 abugida, a Brahmic script similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Hindi, Sanskrit, and many other Indic languages. The Bengali abugida is a cursive script with 12 vowel characters and 52 consonant characters. As in all abugidas, 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 '''m''' 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 (জ and য) and three for the sound (শ, ষ, and স). Conversely, a number of letters now have more than one pronunciation; the letter এ can represent either the low vowel æ 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 স্বাস্থ্য , 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. Meitei, a Sino-Tibetan language used in the Indian state of Manipur, is written in the Bengali abugida for centuries now, though Meitei Mayek (the Meitei abudiga) has been promoted in recent times. For centuries, the Sylheti language used a different script, based on the Devanagari abugida. This script, called Sylheti Nagori, 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. 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. Bengali words are currently Romanized on Wikipedia using 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. 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 gamla. Transcription models would confuse homophonous words such as সাপ (sāpa) and শাপ (śāpa), which are both pronounced shap . 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 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. 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 সহযোগিতা 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 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 সভ্য shob-bho "civilized" carries the primary stress on the first syllable '''shob''', adding the negative prefix ô- creates অসভ্য 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 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 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. For a full inventory, see Bengali consonant clusters. 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. As a consequence, unlike Hindi, Bengali verbs do not change form depending on the gender of the nouns. 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. কি -ki, না -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.chhatro-ţa the student |জুতাটা juta-ţa the shoe |- ! Objective |ছাত্রটাকে chhatro-ţa-ke the student |জুতাটা juta-ţa the shoe |- ! Genitive |ছাত্রটার chhatro-ţa-r the student's |জুতাটার juta-ţa-r the shoe's |- ! Locative | - |জুতাটায় juta-ţa-(t)e on/in the shoe |} | |} 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 -টা -ţa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes (e.g. -জন -jon for humans). Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল aţ biŗal instead of আটটা বিড়াল aţ-ţa biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, omitting the noun and preserving the measure word is commonly encountered: 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 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. Thus "he is a teacher" is সে শিক্ষক she shikkhôk, (literally "he teacher"). In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian or Hungarian). Vocabulary
Phonological variations There are marked dialectal differences between the speech of Bengalis living on the পশ্চিম Poshchim (western) side and পূর্ব 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 tʃ}}, ছ tʃʰ}}, জ dʒ}}, and ঝ dʒʱ}} correspond to Purbo Bangla (Eastern Bengali) ts}}, ছ় s}}, dz}}, and ঝ় z}}. A similar pronunciation is also found in Assamese, a related language across the border in India. The aspirated velar stop খ kʰ}} and the aspirated labial stop ফ pʰ}} of Poshchim Bangla correspond to খ় x and ফ় f in many dialects of Purbo Bangla. These pronunciations are most extreme in the Sylheti dialect of far northeastern Bangladesh -- the dialect of Bengali most common in the United Kingdom. Sylheti is also considered by some to be a separate language. Many Purbo Bangla dialects share phonological features with Assamese, including the debuccalization of শ ʃ}} to হ h or খ় x. 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 ʈ}}, ঠ ʈʰ}}, ড ɖ}}, and ঢ ɖʱ}}, and the lack of distinction between র ɹ}} and ড়/ঢ় ɽ}}. Unlike most Indic languages, some Purbo Bangla dialects do not include the breathy voiced stops ঘ gʱ}}, ঝ dʒʱ}}, ঢ ɖʱ}}, ধ d̪ʱ}}, and ভ bʱ}}. 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: (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 চান chan and গোসল gosol (or নিমন্ত্রণ nimontron and দাওয়াত 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, বাবা baba and মা ma are also heard often in Bangladesh. Though জল jôl, পানি pani, কাকা kaka, and চাচা chacha are all Sanskrit derivatives, পানি pani and চাচা 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): In both India and Bangladesh, the words বাড়ী baŗi and বাসা basha can refer to slightly different meanings; বাড়ী baŗi is often translated to mean বাড়ী "house" or "building", while বাসা basha is often translated to mean "residence". Still, for the basic meaning of "home", Bengalis tend to use বাড়ী baŗi in India and বাসা basha in Bangladesh, however this is complicated further by that bangladeshis in the village use mainly 'bari' to mean residence. There are therefore terms used in the countryside (archiac form) that would not normally be used in the towns. 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. See also Notes | |||||||||||
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