Bengali language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bengali বাংলা baṅla | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Bangladesh, India and several others | |||
| Region: | Eastern South Asia | |||
| Total speakers: | 232 million | |||
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 | |||
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indic (Indo-Aryan) Eastern Zone Bengali-Assamese Bengali | |||
| Writing system: | Bengali script | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language of: | Bangladesh, India, and Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura | |||
| Regulated by: | Bangla Academy (Bangladesh) Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (West Bengal) | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1: | bn | |||
| ISO 639-2: | ben | |||
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | ben | |||
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Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ['baŋla]) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit.
Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. With nearly 200 million native speakers, Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world (it is ranked between fourth and seventh<ref name="lang4" />). Bengali is the main language spoken in Bangladesh; in India, Bengali is ranked as the second<ref name="secondmost">Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed. (2005). Languages of India. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition.. SIL International. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref><ref name="lang1991">Languages in Descending Order of Strength - India, States and Union Territories - 1991 Census. Census Data Online pp. 1. Office of the Registrar General, India. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref> or third<ref name="thirdmost">Andhra Pradesh. Sainik Samachar. Ministry of Defence, Government of India (May 2001). Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> most spoken language. Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-European languages.
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[edit] History
Like many other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the Magadhi Apabhramsha melting pot of Middle Indic languages, around the turn of the first millennium CE.<ref name="tb">(Bhattacharya 2000)</ref> Some argue for much earlier points of divergence — going back to even 500 CE<ref>(Sen 1996)</ref> but the language was not static; different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Apabhramsha is believed to have evolved into Magadhi Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with Bengali for a period of time.<ref name="abahatta">Abahattha in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref>
Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:<ref name="tb">(Bhattacharya 2000)</ref>
- Old Bengali (900/1000 CE–1400 CE) — texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya and Assamese branch out in this period.
- Middle Bengali (1400–1800 CE) — major texts of the period include Chandidas's Srikrishnakirtan; elision of word-final ô sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods.
- New Bengali (since 1800 CE) — shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar → tar 'his'/'her'; koriyachhilô → korechhilo he/she had done).
Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya era), and also during the Bengal Renaissance. Of the modern Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and others are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.
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.<ref name="firstgram">Rahman, Aminur. Grammar. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref> Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar(A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time.<ref name="huq_sarkar">Bangla language in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali Reformer, also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832).
During 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.<ref name="SKumar">Ray, S Kumar. The Bengali Language and Translation. Translation Articles. Kwintessential. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref>
Bengali was the focus, in 1951–52, of the Language movement (Bhasha Andolon) in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).<ref>(Baxter 1997, pp. 62-63)</ref> 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, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.<ref name="Assam1">Ahsan, MB. All about language. The Daily Star. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref><ref name="Assam2">No alliance with BJP, says AGP chief. The Telegraph. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref>
[edit] Classification
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 closely related to Bengali.<ref name="IAethno">Language Family Trees. The Ethnologue Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref> Assamese, Oriya, and Bengali are cognate languages and are sometimes considered to be nearly mutually intelligible; some local dialects of one language have resemblance to dialects of the other two languages.
Sylheti, Chittagonian, and Chakma are some of the many languages that are often considered dialects of Bengali.<ref name="BDethno">Bengali. The Ethnologue Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref> Although these languages are mutually intelligible with neighboring dialects of Bengali, they would not be understood by a native speaker of Standard Bengali.
[edit] Geographical distribution
Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Around 98% of the total population of Bangladesh speak Bengali as a native language.<ref name="BDFacts">The World Fact Book. CIA. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.</ref> There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in immigrant populations in the West and the Middle East.
[edit] Official status
Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh and one of the 23 national languages recognised by the Union of India.<ref name="secondmost">Languages of India. Ethnologue Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.</ref> 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 peacekeeping force from the United Nations stationed there.<ref name="sierra">"Sierra Leone makes Bengali official language", Daily Times, December 29, 2002. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref> It is also the official language of the three predominantly Sylheti-speaking districts of southern Assam: Silchar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi.<ref>NIC, Assam State Centre, Guwahati, Assam. Language. Government of Assam. Retrieved on 2006-06-20.</ref> The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh were written in Bengali.
[edit] Dialects
Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee grouped these dialects into four large clusters — Radh, Banga, Kamarupa and Varendra;<ref name="huq_sarkar">Bangla language in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed.<ref name="morshed">Morshed, Abul Kalam Manjoor. Dialect. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref> The south-western dialects (Radh) form the basis of standard colloquial Bangla, while Bangali is the dominant dialect group in Bangladesh. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and sout-eastern Bengal (Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as fricatives. Western palato-alveolar affricates চ [ tʃ], ছ [ tʃʰ], জ [[dʒ]] correspond to eastern চʻ [ts], ছ় [s], জʻ [dz]~[[z]]. The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels. Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma Bengali, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words.
Rajbangsi, 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.<ref name="hajong">Hajong. The Ethnologue Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref>
During standardization of Bengali in the late 19th and early 20th century, the cultural center of Bengal was its capital Kolkata (then Calcutta). What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia, a district located near Kolkata.<ref name="daniul">Huq, Mohammad Daniul. Chalita Bhasa. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref> 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. For example, nun (salt) is the west corresponds to lôbon in the east.<ref name=Banglabetelco/>
[edit] Spoken and literary varieties
Bengali exhibits strong diglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged:<ref name="daniul">Huq, Mohammad Daniul. Chalita Bhasa. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref><ref name="daniul1"> Huq, Mohammad Daniul. Sadhu Bhasa. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref>
- Shadhubhasha (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language') is the written language with longer verb inflections and more of a Sanskrit-derived (তৎসম tôtshôm) vocabulary. Songs such as India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana (by Rabindranath Tagore) and national song Vande Mātaram (by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay) were composed in Shadhubhasha. However, use of Shadhubhasha in modern writing is waning.
- Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিত cholito = 'current' or 'running') is a written Bengali style exhibiting a preponderance colloquial idiom, 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 (Alaler Gharer Dulal, 1857),<ref name="alal">Huq, Mohammad Daniul. Alaler Gharer Dulal. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref> Pramatha Chowdhury (Sabujpatra, 1914) and in the later writings of Rabindranath Tagore. It is modeled 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".<ref name="morshed">Morshed, Abul Kalam Manjoor. Dialect. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref>
Though formal spoken Bengali is modeled on Choltibhasha, the majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety — often, speakers are fluent in Choltibhasha and one or more Regional dialects.<ref name="SKumar"/>
Even in Standard Bengali, vocabulary items often divide along the split between the Muslim populace and the Hindu populace. Due to cultural and religious traditions, Hindus and Muslims might use, respectively, Sanskrit-derived and Perso-Arabic words. Some examples of lexical alternation between these two forms are:<ref name=Banglabetelco>History of Bangla (Banglar itihash). Bangla. Bengal Telecommunication and Electric Company. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref>
- hello: nômoshkar (S) corresponds to assalamualaikum/slamalikum (A)
- invitation: nimontron/nimontonno (S) corresponds to daoat (A)
- paternal uncle: kaka (S) corresponds to chacha (S/Hindi)
(here S = derived from Sanskrit; A = derived from Arabic, P = derived from Persian)
[edit] Writing system
Bengali is written in the Bengali abugida. It is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE,<ref name="akhor">Bangla Script in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> and is similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Hindi, Sanskrit, and many other Indic languages. The Bengali abugida is a cursive script with eleven vowel characters and thirty-nine consonant characters.<ref name="akhor">Bangla Script in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> As in all abugidas, every consonant in the Bengali script can come with what is called an "embedded" or "inherent" vowel sound.<ref name=it46>Escudero Pascual Alberto (23 October, 2005). Writing Systems/ Scripts (PDF). Primer to Localization of Software. IT +46. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> For example, the simple letter ম can represent the consonant [m] in a word like কম [kɔm] "less". However, in another word, the same letter ম can represent the sequences [mɔ] or [mo], as in মত [mɔt̪] "opinion" and মন [mon] "mind", respectively, with no added symbol for the vowels [ɔ] or [o]. If the consonant sound is followed by some other vowel sound in the pronunciation, this can be written by using 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.
In spite of some modifications in the nineteenth century, the Bengali spelling system continues to be based on the Sanskrit alphabet, <ref name="huq_sarkar">Bangla language in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref>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 [dʒ] (জ and য) and three for the sound [ʃ] (শ, ষ, and স). Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the dadi (|), or full stop, have been adopted from Western languages.<ref name="huq_sarkar">Bangla language in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref>
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, has been written in the Bengali abugida for centuries, though Meitei Mayek (the Meitei abudiga) has been promoted in recent times. The script has been adopted for writing the Sylheti language as well, replacing the use of the old Sylheti Nagori script.<ref name="sylnagri">Islam, Muhammad Ashraful. Sylheti Nagri. Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.</ref>
[edit] Romanization
Several conventions exist for writing Indic languages including Bengali in the Latin script, including "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration" or IAST (based on diacritics),<ref name=IAST1>Learning International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration. Sanskrit 3 - Learning transliteration. Gabriel Pradiipaka & Andrés Muni. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> "Indian languages Transliteration" or ITRANS (uses upper case alphabets suited for ASCII keyboards),<ref name=ITRANS1>ITRANS - Indian Language Transliteration Package. Avinash Chopde. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> and the National Library at Calcutta romanization.<ref name=NatLib>Annex-F: Roman Script Transliteration (PDF). Indian Standard: Indian Script Code for Information Interchange - ISCII pp. 32. Bureau of Indian Standards (1 April, 1999). Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> 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 found under the heading "Sounds".
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[edit] 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 International Phonetic Alphabet.
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[edit] Diphthongs
Magadhan languages such as Bengali are known for their wide variety of diphthongs, or combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable.<ref>(Masica 1991, pp. 116)</ref> 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.<ref>(Chatterji 1926, pp. 415-416)</ref>
| IPA | Transliteration | Example |
|---|---|---|
| /ij/ | ii | nii "I take" |
| /iw/ | iu | biubhôl "upset" |
| /ej/ | ei | nei "there is not" |
| /ee̯/ | ee | khee "having eaten" |
| /ew/ | eu | đheu "wave" |
| /eo̯/ | eo | kheona "do not eat" |
| /æe̯/ | êe | nêe "she takes" |
| /æo̯/ | êo | nêo "you take" |
| /aj/ | ai | pai "I find" |
| /ae̯/ | ae | pae "she finds" |
| /aw/ | au | pau "sliced bread" |
| /ao̯/ | ao | pao "you find" |
| /ɔe̯/ | ôe | nôe "she is not" |
| /ɔo̯/ | ôo | nôo "you are not" |
| /oj/ | oi | noi "I am not" |
| /oe̯/ | oe | dhoe "she washes" |
| /oo̯/ | oo | dhoo "you wash" |
| /ow/ | ou | nouka "boat" |
| /uj/ | ui | dhui "I wash" |
[edit] 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 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.<ref name="suniti_stress">(Chatterji 1921, pp. 19-20)</ref>
Adding prefixes to a word typically shifts the stress to the left; for example, while the word shob-bho "civilized" carries the primary stress on the first syllable [shob], adding the negative prefix [ô-] creates 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.<ref name="suniti_stress">(Chatterji 1921, pp. 19-20)</ref>
[edit] 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.<ref>(Chatterji 1921, pp. 20)</ref> In a simple declarative sentence, most words and/or phrases in Bengali carry a rising tone,<ref name="inton0">Hayes & Lahiri 1991, pp. 56</ref> 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.<ref name="inton0">Hayes & Lahiri 1991, pp. 56</ref> 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.<ref name="inton1">Hayes & Lahiri 1991, pp. 57-58</ref>
[edit] 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",<ref name>(Bhattacharya 2000, pp. 6)</ref> 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.<ref name="munier">(Ferguson & Chowdhury 1960, pp. 16-18)</ref> 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.<ref name="munier">(Ferguson & Chowdhury 1960, pp. 16-18)</ref>
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).
[edit] Consonant clusters
Native Bengali (tôdbhôb) words do not allow initial consonant clusters;<ref>(Masica 1991, pp. 125)</ref> 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.<ref>(Masica 1991, pp. 126)</ref> 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.
[edit] Grammar
Bengali nouns are not assigned gender, which leads to minimal changing of adjectives (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.
[edit] Word order
As a Head-Final language, Bengali follows Subject Object Verb word order, although variations to this theme are common.<ref name="tb16">(Bhattacharya 2000, pp. 16)</ref> 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.<ref name=UCLA1>Bengali. UCLA Language Materials project. University of California, Los Angeles. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref>
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.
[edit] Nouns
Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case, including nominative, objective, genitive (possessive), and locative.<ref name="tb">(Bhattacharya 2000)</ref> The case marking pattern for each noun being inflected depends on the noun's degree of animacy. When a definite article such as -টা -ţa (singular) or -গুলা -gula (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number.
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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).
| Bengali | Bengali transliteration | Literal translation | English translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| নয়টা গরু | Nôe-ţa goru | Nine-MW cow | Nine cows |
| কয়টা বালিশ | Kôe-ţa balish | How many-MW pillow | How many pillows |
| অনেকজন লোক | Ônek-jon lok | Many-MW person | Many people |
| চার-পাঁচজন শিক্ষক | Char-pañch-jon shikkhôk | Four-five-MW teacher | Four or five teachers |
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.
[edit] 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.
Bengali differs from most Indo-Aryan Languages in the zero copula, where the copula or connective be is often missing in the present tense.<ref name="huq_sarkar">Bangla language in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> Thus "he is a teacher" is she shikkhôk, (literally "he teacher").<ref name="hacche-bangali">Among Bengali speakers brought up in neighbouring linguistic regions (e.g. Hindi), the lost copula may surface in utterances such as she shikkhôk hochchhe. This is viewed as ungrammatical by other speakers, and speakers of this variety are sometimes (humorously) referred as "hochchhe-Bangali".</ref> In this respect, Bengali is similar to Russian and Hungarian.
[edit] Vocabulary
Bengali has as many as 75,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered tôtshôm (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are tôdbhôb (native Bengali vocabulary), and the rest being bideshi (foreign) and deshi (indigenous Austroasiatic) words.
However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a large proportion of these words are archaic or highly technical, minimizing their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of tôdbhôb words, while tôtshôm only make up 25% of the total.<ref name="bhoumick">Tatsama in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref><ref name="bhoumick1">Tatbhava in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003</ref> Deshi and Bideshi words together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.
Due to centuries of contact with Europeans, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, Bengali has borrowed many words from foreign languages. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from Hindi, Assamese, Chinese, Burmese, and several indigenous Austroasiatic languages of Bengal. After centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, numerous Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed into Bengali. Portuguese, French, Dutch and English words were later additions during the colonial period.
[edit] Sample
- A Bengali poem (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- A section of the poem Abani Bari Achho by Shakti Chattopadhyay read by a male native speaker.
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.
[edit] See also
| Topics related to the Bengali language |
| Grammar • Phonology • Vocabulary • Dialects • Consonant clusters • Script • Romanization • Literature • Language Movement • International Mother Language Day |
[edit] Notes
<references />
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
- English to Bengali Dictionary English to Bengali Dictionary.
- Swadesh 207-Word List in Bengali
- Ethnologue report for Bengali
- Bengali Language: A Brief Introduction
- Transliterator Transliterate online from Romanised (English alphabets) to Unicode Bengali
- Samsad Bengali-English dictionary. 3rd ed. online. Requires unicode enabled browser (such as Firefox).
- Online Bengali Type Pad Easy Bengali Typing with English Keyboard.
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