Bengali letter Rha

ঢ় is a Bengali consonant traditionally pronounced as an aspirated retroflex flap: a quick tongue tap curled back, followed by a puff of breath. Many Bengali speakers pronounce it like ড়, and it appears inside words such as গাঢ় and আষাঢ়. Unicode also defines an equivalent sequence using ঢ followed by a Bengali nukta.

Text symbol

What ঢ় means

It spells Bengali words. Its traditional sound is an aspirated retroflex flap: a quick tap of the tongue curled back, followed by a puff of breath. Many Bengali speakers pronounce it like ড়.

During 19th-century orthographic standardization, Bengali established য়, ড়, ঢ় and ৎ to mark pronunciation distinctions. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar included ঢ় in Barnaparichay, an introductory Bengali alphabet primer, in 1855.

Some eastern Bangla dialects do not distinguish ড় and ঢ় in speech, even though the spellings remain distinct.

Part of the collection

অ

Bangla Alphabet & Letters

Who writes ঢ়

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Don't confuse it with

ড়

Bengali Letter Rra

Some Bengali speakers pronounce ড় and ঢ় alike, but they remain distinct spellings. Sound alone may not tell them apart in those varieties, so do not swap them within a word.

Questions people ask

Why does ঢ় show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.