Bengali places its verbs either at or near the end of sentences. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, Bengali is considered a Class III language…meaning that it has “significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.” How to Learn BengaliĪccording to the U.S.

These immigrants, part of the Bangladeshi diaspora, live in countries as diverse as Malaysia and Germany, Saudi Arabia and the United States. There are over 6.5 million Bangladeshis living outside of the Indian subcontinent. Outside of India and Bangladesh, Bengali is spoken by immigrant populations in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.

Bengali speakers can revert to a more formal, neutrally-accented register of the language to be better understood by speakers from other regions. The Bengali of West Bengal is called “Western” Bengali as it’s spoken in Bangladesh is the “Eastern” standard.Īside from variations in spelling and diction, pronunciation differences clearly distinguish the two forms. There are some dialectical differences between the Bengali of India and that of Bangladesh.

Hindi and English-India’s two official languages-dominate in that city. Even so, only a little over half Kolkata’s population speaks Bengali. Bengali plays an important role in Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal. India’s national anthem, “ Jana Gana Mana,” was originally written in Bengali.Ībout 85% of the people in West Bengal speak Bengali. Among state-recognized regional languages in India, only Hindi has more speakers than Bengali. In India, it’s also spoken in the West Bengal state, as well as the states of Tripura and Assam. Known to its native speakers as Bangla, it’s the only national and official language of Bangladesh, where ethnic Bengali peoples comprise 98% of the population. You saw how a letter is written and might be pronounced, but there is nothing better than hearing the sound of the letters in a video or audio.Bengali ranks among the top ten most spoken languages in the world. ষ Sound of ‘sh’ when the tongue touches the roots of the teeth ফ Sound of ‘f’ if pronounced with closed lips ধ sound produced by coupling soft ‘d’ and ‘h’= ‘dh’ ণ Nasal sound when the tongue touches a bit away from teeth ঞ Just like ‘gn’ of gnome with a slight up movement of tongue ঝ This is produced using the naval sounds while the tongue touches the upper part of mouth cavity The better you pronounce a letter in a word, the more understood you will be in speaking the Bengali language.īelow is a table showing the Bengali alphabet and how it is pronounced in English, and finally examples of how those letters would sound if you place them in a word. Without it, you will not be able to say words properly even if you know how to write those words. Learning the Bengali alphabet is very important because its structure is used in every day conversation.

Bengali alphabet pdf