Bangla Alphabet

Vowels and vowel diacritics

Consonants

A selection of conjunct consonants

 

Modifier symbols

  

Numerals

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Brief History of Bangla Language

Bangla  is the state language of Bangladesh and one of 18 languages listed in the Indian Constitution as well. Today Bangla speakers number about 230 million. Bangla the seventh language in the earth. It is perhaps the only language on the basis of which an independent state was created.The International Mother Language day 21st February that is observed each year because of Bangla Language. Only the Bangladeshi in the history of world who martyrdom for sake of mother tongue.
 
The Bangali (or Bengali) alphabet is derived from the Brahmi alphabet. It is also closely related to the Devanagari alphabet, from which it started to diverge in the 11th Century AD. The current printed form of Bangali alphabet first appeared in 1778 when Charles Wilkins developed printing in Bangali. 


Bangali has two literary styles: one is called Sadhubhasa (or chaste) and the other Chaltibhasa (colloquial or spoken). The Sadhubhasa is the traditional literary style based on Middle Bengali of the sixteenth century, while the Chaltibhasa is a 20th century creation and is based on the speech of educated people in Kolkata, India. The differences between the two styles are not enormous  and involve mainly forms of pronouns and verb conjugations. For example: কিরয়া (kariya; to do) কের (kare); তাহার (tahar; his/hers) তার (tar). 

The morphology of Bangla language is accidence-based, although its analytical nature has gradually evolved. The accidence of verbs is fairly complex. Finite verbs are mainly split into two groups based on the verb inflections: indicative and imperative. In addition to the second-person imperative, Bangla has another mood called the third-person imperative.The indicative mood has three tenses: present, past and future. The present and the future tenses have three and four aspects respectively.The order of words in Bangla is left branching, ie, adjectives are placed on the left of nouns; and adverbs precede the verbs. The sequence of words in a bangla sentence is as follows: subject + temporal phrase + locative phrase + indirect object + direct object + adverbial phrase + verb: ami kal steshane runake kathata kane kane balechhi (অািম কাল েੈশেন রઔনােক কথাটা কােন কােন বেলিছ, I uttered the words into Runa's ear yesterday at the station).

At present Bangla is the country's state language  of Bangladesh and is used extensively except in some isolated tribal habitations in the western part. Most of the official works within the country are done in Bangla, but English is used in diplomatic communications, trade contacts and in higher education and research. People speak in dialect at home, but will generally use spoken Bangla outside and standard colloquial Bangla for academic and literary purposes. Usually, standard Bangla is used in literary and artistic work, plays and mass communication, but currently the use of dialects in these activities has increased enormous.