Bangla Alphabet & Letters

Bangla (বাংলা), called Bengali in English, is written in the Bengali script, the eastern branch of the Brahmi family that it shares with Assamese. The Bengali script is an abugida: a consonant on its own normally carries the inherent vowel /ɔ/, so ক is read kɔ, and other vowels are added as signs around it. Schools in Bangladesh teach the alphabet (বর্ণমালা) as 50 letters: 11 vowels (স্বরবর্ণ) and 39 consonants (ব্যঞ্জনবর্ণ). Older primers, such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's Barnaparichay of 1855, also counted ঌ among the vowels and ক্ষ among the consonants.

The vowels are অ আ ই ঈ উ ঊ ঋ এ ঐ ও ঔ. Each except অ has a vowel sign, called kar (আ-কার, ই-কার…), used after a consonant: কা কি কী কু কূ কৃ কে কৈ কো কৌ. Three signs are written before the consonant they follow in speech: ি in কি, ে in কে, ৈ in কৈ; ো and ৌ wrap around it. In Unicode you still type the consonant first and the sign second, and the font moves the sign into place.

The consonants follow the classic order of Indian grammar: five rows of stops (ক খ গ ঘ ঙ, চ ছ জ ঝ ঞ, ট ঠ ড ঢ ণ, ত থ দ ধ ন, প ফ ব ভ ম), then য র ল, then শ ষ স হ, then the dotted letters ড় ঢ় য়, the final t ৎ and the signs ং ঃ ঁ. The CLDR list of Bangla characters leaves out ড় ঢ় য় because Unicode normalisation stores them as a base letter plus the nukta dot ়, but they are full letters of the Bangla alphabet and very common: য় is in নয় (nine), সময় (time) and ভয় (fear), ড় in বড় (big) and বাড়ি (home).

How Bangla letters sound

Bangla spelling keeps the letters of Sanskrit, but several pairs now sound the same. ই and ঈ, উ and ঊ are spelled short or long by tradition and said alike; ণ and ন are both a plain n; শ ষ স are all usually sh, so শাড়ি (sari) and সাপ (snake) start with the same sound, while স keeps an s sound in clusters such as স্ত and স্ন. য at the start of a word sounds like জ: যদি (if) is jodi. The inherent vowel অ is usually ɔ but may be realized as o in context, so a bare ক is read kɔ or ko.

য় writes a light y or just a glide between vowels, as in নয়, মায়া (affection). ড় is a flapped r made with the tongue curled back, the sound of বড় (boro, big) and পড়া (to read); ঢ় is the same sound with breath, and rare (আষাঢ়, the monsoon month). ৎ, khanda ta, is a t with no vowel after it, found at the end of words and before some consonants: হঠাৎ (suddenly), শরৎ (autumn), উৎসব (festival). ঋ is said ri: ঋতু (season), and as a sign in কৃষক (farmer).

The candrabindu ঁ, 'moon dot', nasalises a vowel: চাঁদ (moon), পাঁচ (five). The anusvara ং writes an ng, and it is in the name of the language itself, বাংলা. The visarga ঃ is mostly found in a few words such as দুঃখ (sorrow), where it doubles the next consonant, and in exclamations like উঃ. ঙ is also an ng: রঙ (colour), ব্যাঙ (frog).

Conjuncts, hasanta and the rare signs

The hasanta ্ (হসন্ত) silences a consonant's vowel. Between two consonants it makes a conjunct (যুক্তবর্ণ), which the font draws as one combined shape: ক + ্ + ষ = ক্ষ (said kh at the start of a word, as in ক্ষমা, forgiveness, and kkh inside one, as in পক্ষ, side), জ + ্ + ঞ = জ্ঞ (said gg, as in বিজ্ঞান, science), ন + ্ + ত = ন্ত, স + ্ + ত = স্ত. Three conjunct forms have names of their own: য-ফলা ্য (ব্যাঙ), র-ফলা ্র (প্রেম, love) and the রেফ, the little hook র্ on top (বর্ণ, letter). At the end of a word the hasanta is rarely written, because a final consonant is usually said without its vowel anyway: বাংলাদেশ ends in sh, not sho.

The alphabet in Unicode also holds signs that everyday Bangla does not use. ৠ ঌ ৡ and their vowel signs ৄ ৢ ৣ are Sanskrit vowels, kept for Sanskrit printed in Bengali script. The avagraha ঽ marks an elided vowel in Sanskrit. The isshar ৺, short for ঈশ্বর (God), is written before the name of a person who has died, much like 'the late'. ৗ, the au length mark, is the right-hand half of ৌ: Unicode treats ৌ as ে + ৗ, the same way ো is ে + া.

How to type Bangla on a laptop, in MS Word and on a phone

Avro Keyboard, a free program first released in Bangladesh in 2003, is one of the most popular ways to type Bangla on a computer: it is phonetic, so typing ami tomake bhalobashi gives আমি তোমাকে ভালোবাসি. Windows 10 and 11 also include Bangla keyboards: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Bangla, then switch with Windows + Space. macOS has Bangla layouts under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. Text typed this way is Unicode and works in MS Word, browsers and email; Windows shows it with Vrinda or Nirmala UI, and free Unicode fonts such as Kalpurush, SolaimanLipi and Noto Sans Bengali are widely used.

Many offices in Bangladesh still use Bijoy, the layout Mustafa Jabbar released in 1988, often with older non-Unicode fonts such as SutonnyMJ. Text typed in those fonts is stored as English letters drawn to look like Bangla, so copied anywhere else it turns into Latin gibberish; it has to be converted to Unicode, or retyped, before it can be pasted into a website, Facebook or a search box. Everything on this page is Unicode.

Phones: Android's Gboard has a Bangla keyboard, including a layout that turns English letters into Bangla as you type, and Ridmik Keyboard is a popular choice in Bangladesh. On an iPhone, go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → Bangla. WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS then take Bangla directly. HTML: অ for অ, ্ for the hasanta ্, । for the danda । and ৳ for ৳.

Bangla numbers, punctuation and the taka sign ৳

Bangla digits are ০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯, the same characters Assamese uses. Counting to ten: এক, দুই, তিন, চার, পাঁচ, ছয়, সাত, আট, নয়, দশ, and zero is শূন্য. Two look-alikes catch people out: ৪ (four) looks like an 8, and ৯ (nine) can look very like the old vowel letter ঌ in some fonts. In Bangladesh they are in everyday use, on prices, dates, newspapers and car number plates.

A sentence ends with the danda ।, called দাঁড়ি (dari), not with a dot: আমি বাংলায় কথা বলি। (I speak Bangla.) Unicode has one danda for all the scripts of North India, U+0964; the double danda ॥ ends verses. The Bengali character ৷ (U+09F7) looks the same but is an old currency fraction sign; search engines treat it as a different character, so a search for the real danda will not find it. Commas, question marks, exclamation marks and quotation marks “ ” ‘ ’ are the same as in English.

৳ is the taka sign, U+09F3, the currency of Bangladesh since 1972: ৳৫০০ or Tk 500. Its Unicode name is Bengali Rupee Sign, and in Bangla the word টাকা also means the Indian rupee; in West Bengal and Tripura prices are written with ₹. Copy them here, or look for them among the symbols of your keyboard; the Money Symbols collection has the other currency signs of the world.

Where Bangla is spoken

Bangla is the state language of Bangladesh 🇧🇩 and, in India 🇮🇳, the official language of West Bengal and Tripura and of the Barak Valley in Assam. The CLDR estimates about 280 million speakers in all, some 165 million in Bangladesh and 114 million in India; other estimates put first-language speakers at about 240 million, which usually places Bangla around seventh among the world's languages. The United Kingdom 🇬🇧 has a large Bengali-speaking community; England and Wales's 2021 census counted about 200,000 residents aged three and over in the “Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya)” main-language category, many with family roots in Sylhet; there are large Bangladeshi communities in the Gulf states, the United States, Canada and Italy too.

On 21 February 1952 police in Dhaka opened fire on students demanding that Bangla be a state language of Pakistan, and several were killed. The day, Ekushey February, is remembered at the Shaheed Minar monument, with the month-long Ekushey Book Fair of the Bangla Academy, and since UNESCO's decision of 1999 worldwide as International Mother Language Day.

Bangla's closest relatives are Assamese and Odia, which grew from the same eastern branch of Indo-Aryan; Sylheti and Chittagonian are close regional languages. Assamese, Odia, Sylheti, Hindi and Nepali each have their own collection on this site, as do Bangladesh and India.