Some abbreviations have no marking at all, as in ঢাবি ḍhabi for ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় Ḍhaka Bishshobiddalôe 'Dhaka University'. For example, ডঃ ḍôh stands for ডক্টর ḍôkṭor 'doctor' and নং nông stands for নম্বর nômbor 'number'. ঃ -h and ং -ng are also often used as abbreviation marks in Bengali, with ং -ng used when the next sound following the abbreviation would be a nasal sound, and ঃ -h otherwise. isn't pronounced, but geminates the following consonant, as in দুঃসময়.pronounced as syllable-final voiceless breath, as in উঃ.Modifiers and others Modifier and other graphemes in Bengali Symbol with (ক) We will inform you when this is different. ^5 In most cases, শ represents /ʃ/ while স represents /s/. Very often this will be transliterated with a 'y' never pronounce this as in yard unless preceded by an ই or ঈ. ^4 Usually this does not have a sound between vowels. It is still important to recognize the difference. ^3 ড় and ঢ় usually sound like র in spoken Bangla. z/ only occurs only in foreign words.Ĭonsonants are referred to by their sound followed by ô (ক = kô), with some exceptions, namely: Of the consonants in Bengali, ten are aspirated-that is, they sound as if an 'H' was appended to it.

Here are the ones that will fit in one syllable: But in actual practiced Bangla, there are more diphthongs that are written by putting the vowels together or attaching them to the consonant য় ('ya' pronounced /yɔ/ and called the 'semi-vowel অ'). The Bangla alphabet has only two single vowels representing diphthongs (ঐ and ঔ). Moreover, depending on context, the graphs অ and এ can sound like o and â, respectively. There is no symbol for the vowel sound â (like the a in English bat) in the basic inventory of Bengali script, so the ligature অ্যা is used instead. ঐ and ঔ are used to denote two diphthongs, although there are many more diphthongs in use in Bengali. Although ঋ is a vowel in Sanskrit, it is pronounced in Bengali as /ri/, a consonant-vowel combination. These vowel letters were initially adopted from the Devanagari script that is used to write Sanskrit and Hindi. You must try to use the IPA whenever possible. ^2 This letter is obsolete: now the character for it represents the number 9.Īlways keep in mind that the English pronunciations are only approximations. ^1 In theory they should be lengthened /iː/ and /uː/, but in spoken Bangla this is not the case. However, ই and উ also have prefix 'hrôshsho', and ঈ and ঊ suffix 'dirgho'. Vowels are referred to by their sound and are suffixed by '-kar' when referring to a conjunct.

Bengali alphabet chart