Rangpuri Alphabet & Letters

Rangpuri (রংপুরী) has no script of its own. Its speakers write it with the Bengali–Assamese script, used for Bangla and Assamese; Assamese also uses ৰ and ৱ, which are not standard Bangla letters. There is no separate Kamtapuri or Rajbanshi script in Unicode; when people search for the 'Kamtapuri script' or the 'Rajbanshi language script', this is the answer.

The script is an abugida: a consonant on its own carries a short vowel, so ক is read kô, and other vowels are added as signs called kar: কা কি কী কু কূ কৃ কে কৈ কো কৌ. The vowel letters অ আ ই ঈ উ ঊ ঋ এ ঐ ও ঔ are used at the start of a word or after another vowel. The consonants run in the classic order of five stop rows (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, শ ষ স হ, the dotted letters ড় ঢ় য় and the final t ৎ.

Two extra letters matter on the Assam side. In Goalpara, Dhubri and neighbouring districts of Assam, where Assamese is the language of school, the language is often written in Assamese spelling, which writes ra as ৰ instead of র and has a letter ৱ for wa. Both are in the Bengali block of Unicode, under the names Bengali Letter Ra With Middle Diagonal (U+09F0) and Bengali Letter Ra With Lower Diagonal (U+09F1).

Rangpuri, Kamtapuri, Rajbanshi: one language, several names

The language is called Rangpuri in Bangladesh, after the city and division of Rangpur, and Kamtapuri or Rajbanshi (রাজবংশী, also spelled Rajbongshi) in India, the second name after the Rajbanshi people who speak much of it. Kamtapuri recalls Kamatapur, the medieval Kamata kingdom of the region that is now Cooch Behar and lower Assam. In Assam the closely related speech of Goalpara is known as Goalpariya. The international code ISO 639-3 rkt covers all of these names; the Rajbanshi of eastern Nepal has a code of its own, rjs.

Whether it is a language or a dialect is argued about. George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India, early in the twentieth century, treated it as a form of Bengali, and many speakers in Bangladesh still call it anchalik bhasha, 'the local language', or simply the regional speech of Rangpur. Linguists also point to features it shares with Assamese, and speakers' organisations in India have long campaigned for its recognition as a language in its own right; West Bengal recognizes Kamtapuri and Rajbanshi as official languages in specified districts, subdivisions, blocks or municipalities where speakers make up more than 10% of the population. Everyday words show the difference from standard Bangla at once: speakers say মুই for 'I' and হামরা for 'we', where Bangla has আমি and আমরা.

Spelling Rangpuri: signs, conjuncts and dotted letters

Rangpuri has no single standard spelling. Writers in Bangladesh and West Bengal usually follow Bangla spelling habits, writers in Assam often follow Assamese ones, and dialogue, song lyrics and social media posts are spelled by ear. That makes the signs below the ones you need most: the candrabindu ঁ for a nasal vowel, the anusvara ং for ng, as in the name রংপুর itself, and the visarga ঃ, which is rare.

The hasanta ্ silences a consonant's vowel and, between two consonants, makes a conjunct that the font draws as one shape: ক + ্ + ষ = ক্ষ, ন + ্ + ত = ন্ত, ব + ্ + দ = ব্দ. The dotted letters ড় and য় are common: ড় is in জলপাইগুড়ি (Jalpaiguri) and গাড়িয়াল, the bullock-cart driver of the bhawaiya songs, য় in ভাওয়াইয়া (bhawaiya) itself. Fonts and keyboards sometimes store them as a base letter plus the nukta ়; both forms look the same, but a search for one may not find the other.

Numbers are written with the Bengali digits ০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯ or with 0–9, and a sentence ends with the danda । (U+0964), not a full stop. Prices in Rangpur are in taka, ৳ (U+09F3); across the border in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri they are in rupees, ₹.

How to type Rangpuri (Kamtapuri) on a phone or computer

Gboard offers a Rangpuri (Bengali) option; a Bangla keyboard types the common Bengali-script letters. On Android, Gboard's Bangla keyboard includes a layout that turns English letters into Bangla as you type; Ridmik Keyboard is popular in Bangladesh. On an iPhone, go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → Bangla. On a computer, the free phonetic Avro Keyboard turns mui into মুই and rongpur into রংপুর; Windows and macOS include Bangla layouts as well.

For the Assamese-style letters ৰ and ৱ, add an Assamese keyboard (Gboard, Windows and macOS all have one), or copy them from this page. In MS Word you can type the code and press Alt+X: 09F0 gives ৰ, 09F1 gives ৱ, 09F3 gives ৳. In HTML they are ৰ, ৱ and ৳. Use a Unicode font such as Nirmala UI, Vrinda or Noto Sans Bengali; text set in older non-Unicode Bangla fonts turns into Latin letters when it is copied anywhere else.

Where Rangpuri is spoken, and the songs it is known for

Rangpuri is spoken across northern Bengal on both sides of the border. In Bangladesh 🇧🇩 it is the home speech of much of Rangpur Division, from Rangpur and Kurigram to Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat and Panchagarh; in India 🇮🇳 it is spoken in Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and nearby districts of North Bengal, and as Goalpariya in western Assam. The CLDR estimates about 17 million speakers in all, some 11 million in Bangladesh and 6 million in India. Many of them also speak Bangla or Assamese, which they learn at school.

The language is best known to outsiders through bhawaiya (ভাওয়াইয়া), the folk song of Rangpur and Cooch Behar, sung to the dotara lute with a break in the voice that singers learn as part of the style. Its classic subjects are the gariyal, the bullock-cart driver who leaves and does not return, as in ও কি গাড়িয়াল ভাই, and the mahout who goes off with his elephant 🐘. Abbasuddin Ahmed, born in Cooch Behar in 1901, made bhawaiya famous across Bengal with his records.

Its neighbours each have a collection here: Bangla, Assamese, Sylheti, Maithili and Nepali, as well as the country pages for Bangladesh and India.