Bengali phonology is the study of the inventory and patterns of the consonants, vowels, and prosody of the Bengali language. The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Prosody may mean several things: Prosody consists of distinctive variations of stress, tone, and timing in spoken language. ... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of East South Asia, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ...

Consonants and vowels

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. In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

Romanization

Main article: Romanization of Bengali

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. 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. IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. ... ITRANS (Indian languages TRANSliteration) is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari (used for the Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali, Marathi and other languages). ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... The National Library at Calcutta romanization is the most widely used in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. ... A phonemic orthography is a writing system where there is a one-to-one relationship between graphemes in the written form and phonemes in the spoken form of a language. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

Consonant clusters

Main article: Bengali consonant clusters

Native Bengali (tôdbhôb) words do not allow initial consonant clusters;^[1] 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". Consonant clusters in Bengali are very common word-initially due to a long history of borrowing from English and Sanskrit, two languages with a large cluster inventory. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...

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.^[2] 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.

Diphthongs

Magadhan languages such as Bengali are known for their wide variety of diphthongs, or combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable.^[3] 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 [u.a] 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.^[4] In phonetics, a diphthong (in Greek δίφθογγος) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

Prosody

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.^[5] In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis given to certain syllables in a word. ... A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

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.^[5] In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. ... Negation (i. ...

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.^[6] In a simple declarative sentence, most words and/or phrases in Bengali carry a rising tone,^[7] 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. A declaration is a form of statement, which expresses (or declares) some idea; declarations attempt to argue that something is true. ... It has been suggested that Tonal language be merged into this article or section. ... Intonation is a term used to cover particular uses of tones in linguistics and music. ...

In sentences involving focused words and/or phrases, the rising tones only last until the focused word; all following words carry a low tone.^[7] 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.^[8] In linguistics, the focus determines which part of the sentence contributes the most important information. ... Wh-questions are questions that cannot be simply answered by saying Yes or No. They begin with a question word, such as What, Why, Who, Why, How, Where, When, Whose. ...

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",^[9] 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.^[10] 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.^[10] In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ... In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with one or more optional phones (single sounds or phonetic segments). Syllables are often considered the phonological building blocks of words. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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). Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ...

Regional phonological variations

Main article: Bengali dialects

The phonological alternations of Bengali vary greatly due to the dialectal differences between the speech of Bengalis living on the পশ্চিম Poshchim (western) side and পূর্ব Purbo (eastern) side of the Padma River. The dialects of the Bengali language are part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan language group of the Indo-European language family. ... The Padma River is a distributary of the Ganges River in Bangladesh. ...

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) চʻ [ts], ছ় [s], জʻ [dz]~[z], and ঝ় [z]. A similar pronunciation is also found in Assamese, a related language across the border in India. Barisal is a district in southern Bangladesh. ... Chittagong (Bengali: চট্টগ্রাম, Chôţţogram) is the major seaport and second largest city of Bangladesh. ... Dhaka (previously Dacca; Bangla: ঢাকা Đhaka; IPA: ) is the capital of Bangladesh and the Dhaka District. ... Shah Jalal Mazar (Tomb) Sylhet (Sylheti: Silôţ; Bengali: সিলেট, SileÅ£, formerly Srihôţţo) is a major city in north-eastern Bangladesh. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Assamese (অসমীয়া) or Asamiya is the language spoken by some of the natives of the state of Assam in northeast 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. Sylheti (native name Silôţi; Bengali name SileÅ£i) is the language of Sylhet, the North Eastern region of Bangladesh and southern districts of Assam around Silchar. ...

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, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. The Tibeto-Burman linguistic subfamily of the proposed Sino-Tibetan language family is spoken in various central and south Asian countries: Myanmar (the Burmese language as well as the languages of minorities like the Karens and Kachins), Tibet (Tibetan language), northern Thailand (Lahu, Lisu, Akha languages), southern China, Nepal, Bhutan... An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... It has been suggested that Tonal language be merged into this article or section. ...

See also