Bengali Language Guide

Official language in
Bangladesh, India
Script
Bangla

Where it's spoken

Bangladesh's constitution says that the state language of the Republic is Bangla. In India, the West Bengal Official Language Act is described in its own title as an Act to provide for the adoption of the Bengali language as the language to be used for the official purposes of the State of West Bengal, including purposes of legislation. The Act provides that, from a date the State Government appoints by notification, Bengali and Nepali are to be the languages for those purposes in the three hill subdivisions of the Darjeeling district (Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong), and Bengali alone elsewhere in the state.

A description of Bengali in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association says that Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and eastern India, and that the standard variety it illustrates is widely spoken in Dhaka and other urban areas of Bangladesh. The same description contrasts that variety with Kolkata Standard, noting that, unlike Kolkata Standard, Bangladeshi Standard keeps the sounds s and sh apart at the start of a word, in medial clusters and at the end of a word.

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Script & pronunciation

Bengali is written in the Bengali script; in its own text the Unicode Standard calls it Bangla, because users of the script in West Bengal and Bangladesh prefer that name. The same script is also used for other languages, such as Assamese and Santali. It is written from left to right.

A consonant letter stands for a consonant sound or for that consonant followed by an inherent vowel, and a vowel directly after a consonant is written with a vowel sign. Some vowel signs are written after the consonant letter, some before it, some under it and some around it, even though all of them indicate a vowel sound right after the consonant sound, as in কি (Ki). Consonant letters can also be joined into conjuncts with the hasant, the Bengali name for the virama, as in the card ধন্যবাদ (dhonyobad, "Thank you"), where ন and য are joined. Some conjuncts are difficult to recognize from their parts and have to be memorized. The card হ্যাঁ ("Yes") ends with the nasal sign ঁ, which makes the vowel it follows nasal.

The Latin-letter spelling the app shows under the Bengali text is not uniform: the card আপনি is written "apni", while the card আপনি কেমন আছেন? writes the same word "A-po-ni", and আছে is written "achhe" on one card, "ache" on another and "āche" on a third. The Bangla pages of the University of Texas at Austin use yet other symbols, such as kæmɔn achen? for কেমন আছেন?.

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Grammar essentials

Bengali is described as a Subject-Object-Verb language, as in the card আমি মাংস খাই না ("I do not eat meat"), which has the verb খাই at the end, followed by না. A Bengali verb is described as a verb root followed by an aspect marker, a tense marker and a person marker, in that order. Verbs change for person and level of honour but not for number, and a Bengali verb has no gender marker.

The negative particle না is typically placed after the finite verb, as in the card আমি বুঝতে পারছি না (ami bujhte parchhi na, "I don't understand"). Sentences that use the verb আছে (achhe), which is described as used for existential, locative and possessive predicates, are instead negated with নেই (nei), one of two negative verbs described in an article on Bengali negation. The cards আমার বুকিং আছে ("I have a reservation") and আমার বুকিং নেই ("I don't have a reservation") are a pair.

Bengali is considered a zero-copula language in some respects: in the simple present tense there is no verb connecting the subject to the predicate, as in the card আমি জাপানি ("I'm Japanese").

On the app's cards, the question word can come last, as in আপনার নাম কী? ("What is your name? (formal)"). A yes/no question may contain কি, as in আপনি কি ইংরেজি বলতে পারেন? ("Do you speak English?"), or may not, as in এখানে লিফট আছে? ("Do you have an elevator / lift?").

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Politeness & etiquette

Bengali has three words for the second person: আপনি, described as polite, তুমি, described as familiar, and তুই, described as very familiar, and verbs are inflected for honour as well as for person. The app's own note on the compliment card আপনার বাংলা খুব ভালো gives the same three levels, calling আপনি formal, তুমি familiar and তুই intimate, and the English translation of the card আপনি is "You (polite)".

The pronoun goes with matching verb endings. In the chart on the University of Texas at Austin's grammar page, verbs of the second and third person honorific take -en in the present, past and future, while the second person takes -o in the present and -e in the past and future. The app's polite questions show the honorific ending: in আপনি কি ইংরেজি বলতে পারেন? ("Do you speak English?") and আপনি কেমন আছেন? ("How are you? (formal)"), the verbs পারেন (paren) and আছেন (a-chen) end in -en. Commands also have separate forms: in one description's table each verb has different imperative forms for তুই, তুমি and আপনি, and for "to say" the polite form is bolun, the form on the card একটু আস্তে বলুন ("Please speak slowly").

Greetings depend on community: the University of Texas at Austin's page says that greetings, farewells and terms of address are often community- or religion-specific, and it lists the greeting the app has as আসসালামু আলাইকুম under Muslim greetings and নমস্কার under Hindu greetings. The app has both as cards: আসসালামু আলাইকুম (As-sa-la-mu a-lai-kum, "Peace be upon you (Islamic greeting)") and নমস্কার (No-mos-kar, "Hello / Greetings (Hindu greeting)").

The same page's conversation starters address a person as ভাই ("brother") or আপু ("sister") before asking a question, and in all of them the second-person pronoun is আপনি or a form of it, such as আপনার; তুমি and তুই do not appear on the page. The app has cards for ভাই (bhai, "Bro") and আপু (apu, "Big sister").

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