Bengali language
Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Bengalis in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, native to Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. There are also a significant number of Bengali speakers in the Indian state of Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley. It is the official and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, behind Hindi. With approximately 228 million native speakers and another 37 million as second language speakers, Bengali is the fifth most-spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by total number of speakers in the world.
The official and de facto national language of Bangladesh is Modern Standard Bengali. It serves as the lingua franca of the nation, with 98% of Bangladeshis being fluent in Bengali as their first language. Within India, Bengali is the official language of the states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. 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 in Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Bengali is also spoken by the significant global Bengali diaspora communities in Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Middle East.
Bengali has developed over the course of more than 1,300 years. Bengali literature, with its millennium-old literary history, has extensively developed since 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 Bengali to 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 Bengali language is the quintessential element of Bengali identity and binds together a culturally diverse region.
History
Ancient languages of Bengal
was practised by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the first millennium BCE. However, the local Buddhists were speaking in some varieties of the Prakrita languages, coined by Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee as an "eastern variety of Magadhi Prakrit". During the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, which influenced the vernacular spoken by the locals. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm. These dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit and was spoken in modern-day Bihar, west of Bengal, and eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi. Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what is known as Apabhraṃśa, at the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language by the course of time.Early
Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 CE from Sanskrit and Magadhi Prakrit. The local Apabhraṃśa of the eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups of the Bengali–Assamese languages, the Bihari languages, and the Odia language. Some argue that the points of divergence occurred much earlier – going back to even 500, many argue the literature was lost during the medieval times, resulting in many words adopting silent letters. Including many vegetables. but 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. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty.Medieval
During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was an official court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the literary development of Bengali. Bengali became the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary. Major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas' Shreekrishna Kirtana.Modern
The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a strong case of diglossia, with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. The modern Bengali vocabulary contains the vocabulary base from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, also tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and other major borrowings from Persian, Arabic, Austroasiatic languages and other languages in contact with.During this period, there were two main forms of written Bengali:
- চলিতভাষা Chôlitôbhasha; colloquial form of Bengali using simplified inflections
- সাধুভাষা Sadhubhasha; Sanskritised form of Bengali.
In 2010, the parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language, though no further action was taken on this matter.
Geographical distribution
The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal, which comprises Indian states of West Bengal and the present-day nation of Bangladesh.in London, which is home to a large Bengali diaspora
Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura, southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Bengali is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand, and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi, Mumbai, Thane, Varanasi, and Vrindavan. There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
Official status
The 3rd article of the Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of the country.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 is a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is also a recognised secondary language in the City of Karachi in Pakistan. The Department of Bengali in the University of Karachi also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature.
The national anthems of both Bangladesh and India were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. 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 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.
After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, the government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali an honorary language in December 2002.
In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali language to be made an official language of the United Nations.
Dialects
Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Linguist Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay grouped these dialects into four large clusters – Rarh, Banga, Kamrupi and Varendra; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects form the basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh, many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as fricatives. Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ, ছ, জ correspond to eastern চ, ছ, জ. 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. Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Rangpuri, Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong 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 center of Bengal was in the city of Kolkata, founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia District, located next to the border of Bangladesh. 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 নুন nun in the west which corresponds to লবণ lôbôn in the east.
Spoken and literary varieties
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:- Shadhu-bhasha was the written language, with longer verb inflections and more of a Pali and Sanskrit-derived Tatsama vocabulary. Songs such as India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana were composed in Shadhubhasha. However, use of Shadhubhasha in modern writing is uncommon, restricted to some official signs and documents in Bangladesh as well as for achieving particular literary effects.
- Cholito-bhasha, known by linguists as Standard Colloquial Bengali, is a written Bengali style exhibiting a preponderance of colloquial idiom and shortened verb forms, and is the standard for written Bengali now. This form came into vogue towards the turn of the 19th century, promoted by the writings of Peary Chand Mitra, Pramatha Chaudhuri and in the later writings of Rabindranath Tagore. It is modelled on the dialect spoken in the Shantipur region in Nadia district, West Bengal. This form of Bengali is often referred to as the "Nadia standard", "Nadia dialect", "Southwestern/West-Central dialect" or "Shantipuri Bangla".
- Madhya Rādhi dialect
- Kanthi dialect
- Kolkata dialect
- Shantipuri dialect
- Maldahiya dialect
- Barendri dialect
- Rangpuriya dialect
- Sylheti dialect
- Dhakaiya dialect
- Jessor/Jessoriya dialect
- Barisal dialect
- Chattal dialect
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 native words respectively whereas Hindus are more likely to use words derived from Sanskrit. For example:
| Predominantly Hindu usage | Predominantly Muslim usage | Translation |
| নমস্কার nômôshkar | আসসালামু আলাইকুম Assalamu-Alaikum | hello |
| নিমন্ত্রণ nimôntrôn | দাওয়াত dawat | invitation |
| জল jôl | পানি pani | water |
| স্নান snan | গোসল gosôl | bath |
| দিদি didi | আপু apu | sister / elder sister |
| দাদা dada | ভাই bhai | brother / elder brother |
| মাসী mashi | খালা khala | maternal aunt |
| পিসি pishi | ফুফু phuphu | paternal aunt |
| কাকা kaka | চাচা chacha | paternal uncle |
| প্রার্থনা prarthona | দুআ dua | prayer |
| প্রদীপ prodeep | বাতি bati | light |
Phonology
The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels. The inventory is set out below in the and romanisation.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | ই~ঈ i | উ~ঊ u | |
| Close-mid | এ e | ও o | |
| Open-mid | অ্যা ê | অ ô | |
| Open | আ a |
Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs, combinations of vowels 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 of the following:
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 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. Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram for গ্রাম gram "village" or ইস্কুল iskul for স্কুল skul "school".Number system
Bengali numbers are written as follows.Writing system
The Bengali script is an abugida, a script with letters for consonants, diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India. The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE. Note that despite Bangladesh being majority Muslim, it uses the Bengali alphabet rather than an Arabic-based one like the Shahmukhi script used in Pakistan. However, throughout history there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in Perso-Arabic. The use of the Sylheti Nagari script also emerged in the Sylhet region of the Bengal.The Bengali script is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower 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.
Since the Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments, but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic 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 hôsôntô, may be added below the basic consonant grapheme. 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.
A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures. These allographs, called কার kar, are diacritical 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 ি 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. 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. 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, the postposed ônusbar indicating the velar nasal and the postposed bisôrgô indicating the voiceless glottal fricative or the gemination of the following consonant.
The Bengali consonant clusters 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. 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 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 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. The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height.
There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem.
Orthographic depth
The Bengali script in general has a comparatively shallow orthography, i.e., in most cases there is a one-to-one correspondence between the sounds and the letters of Bengali. But grapheme-phoneme inconsistencies do occur in certain cases.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 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 retains the voiceless retroflex sibilant sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in কষ্ট "suffering", গোষ্ঠী "clan", etc. Similarly, there are two letters 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 , although the spelling does not reflect this change. The open-mid 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 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 or or even , depending on the position of the cluster in a word. The Bengali writing system is, therefore, not always a true guide to pronunciation.
Uses
The script used for Bengali, Assamese and other languages is known as Bengali script. 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 alphabet like the Meitei language in the Indian state of Manipur, where the Meitei language has been written in the Bengali alphabet for centuries, though the Meitei script has been promoted in recent times.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, "Indian languages Transliteration" or ITRANS, and the National Library at Kolkata romanisation.In the context of Bengali romanisation, it is important to distinguish transliteration from transcription. Transliteration is orthographically accurate, whereas transcription is phonetically accurate.
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 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.
Grammar
Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives. However, nouns and pronouns are moderately declined into four cases while verbs are heavily conjugated, and the 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 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 tone of the final syllable in the utterance is replaced with a falling tone. Additionally, optional particles are often encliticised 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, 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 -টা -ṭa or -গুলো -gulo is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number.In most of the Bengali grammar books, cases are divided into 6 categories and an additional possessive case. But in terms of usages, cases are generally grouped into only 4 categories.
When counted, nouns take one of a small set of measure words. Nouns in Bengali cannot be counted by adding the numeral directly adjacent to the noun. An appropriate measure word, a classifier, must be used between the numeral and the noun. Most nouns take the generic measure word -টা -ṭa, though other measure words indicate semantic classes. There is also the classifier -khana, and its diminutive form -khani, which attach 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 would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, when the semantic class of the noun is understood from the measure word, the noun is often omitted and only the measure word is used, e.g. শুধু একজন থাকবে। Shudhu êk-jôn thakbe. 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 mass nouns. VerbsThere are two classes of verbs: finite and non-finite. Non-finite verbs have no inflection for tense or person, while finite verbs are fully inflected for person, tense, aspect, and honour, 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. Bengali differs from most Indo-Aryan Languages in the zero copula, where the copula or connective be is often missing in the present tense. Thus, "he is a teacher" is সে শিক্ষক se shikkhôk,. In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian and Hungarian. Romani grammar is also the closest to Bengali grammar. VocabularyBengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 are considered Tadbhavas, 21,100 are Tatsamas and the remainder loanwords from Austroasiatic and other foreign languages.However, these figures do not take into account the large proportion of archaic or highly technical words that are very rarely used. Furthermore, different dialects use more Persian and Arabic vocabulary especially in different areas of Bangladesh and Muslim majority areas of West Bengal. Hindus, on the other hand, use more Sanskrit vocabulary than Muslims. While standard Bengali is based on the Nadia dialect spoken in the Hindu majority states of West Bengal, about 90% of Bengalis in Bangladesh and 27% of Bengalis in West Bengal and 10% in Assam are Muslim and speak a more "persio-arabised" version of Bengali instead of the more Sanskrit influenced Standard Nadia dialect. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly of tadbhavas, while tatsamas comprise only 25% of the total. Loanwords from non-Indic languages comprise the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature. According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji, dictionaries from the early 20th century attributed about 50% of the Bengali vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Prakrit words, corrupted forms of Aryan words, and non Indo-European languages. About 45% percent of Bengali words are unmodified Sanskrit, and the remaining words are from foreign languages. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms. More recent studies suggest that the use of native and 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. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. After close contact with several indigenous Austroasiatic languages, and later the Mughal invasion whose court language was Persian, numerous Chagatai, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed into the lexicon. Later, East Asian travellers and lately European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and most significantly English during the colonial period. Sample textThe following is a sample text in Bengali of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:Bengali in the Bengali alphabet Bengali in phonetic Romanization Bengali in the International Phonetic Alphabet Gloss Translation |