History
The Portuguese missionaries stationed in Bengal in the 16th century were the first people to employ the Latin alphabet in writing Bengali books, the most famous of which are the Crepar Xaxtrer Orth, Bhed and the Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, both written by Manuel da Assumpção. But the Portuguese-based romanization did not take root. In the late 18th century Augustin Aussant used a romanization scheme based on the French alphabet. At the same time, Nathaniel Brassey Halhed used a romanization scheme based on English for his Bengali grammar book. After Halhed, the renowned English philologist and oriental scholar Sir William Jones devised a romanization scheme for Bengali and for Indian languages in general, and published it in the Asiatick Researches journal in 1801.This scheme came to be known as the "Jonesian System" of romanization, and served as a model for the next century and a half.
Transliteration vs Transcription
The Romanization of a language written in a non-Roman script can be based on transliteration (orthographically accurate, i.e. the original spelling can be recovered) or transcription (phonetically accurate, i.e. the pronunciation can be reproduced). This distinction is important in Bengali as its orthography was adopted from Sanskrit, and ignores sound change processes of several millennia. To some degree, all writing systems differ from the way the language is pronounced, but this may be more extreme for languages like Bengali. For example, the three letters শ, ষ, and স had distinct pronunciations in Sanskrit, but over several centuries, the standard pronunciation of Bengali (usually modeled on the Nadia dialect), has lost these phonetic distinctions (all three are usually pronounced as IPA [ʃ]) while the spelling distinction nevertheless persists in orthography.
In written texts, it is easy to distinguish between homophones such as শাপ shap "curse" and সাপ shap "snake". Such a distinction could be particularly relevant in searching for the term in an encyclopedia, for example. However, the fact that the words sound identical means that they would be transcribed identically; thus, some important meaning distinctions cannot be rendered in a transcription model. Another issue with transcription systems is that cross-dialectal and cross-register differences are widespread, and thus the same word or lexeme may have many different transcriptions. Even simple words like মন "mind" may be pronounced "mon", "môn", or (in poetry) "mônô" (e.g. the Indian national anthem, Jana Gana Mana).
Often, different phonemes (meaningfully different sounds) are represented by the same symbol or grapheme. Thus, the vowel এ can represent both [e] (এল elo [elo] "came"), or [ɛ] (এক êk [ɛk] "one"). Occasionally, words written in the same way (homographs) may have different pronunciations for differing meanings: মত can mean "opinion" (pronounced môt), or "similar to" (môto). Thus, some important phonemic distinctions cannot be rendered in a transliteration model. In addition, when representing a Bengali word to allow speakers of other languages to pronounce it easily, it may be better to use a transcription, which does not include the silent letters and other idiosyncrasies (e.g. স্বাস্থ্যshastho, spelled , or অজ্ঞান ôggên, spelled ) that make Bengali orthography so complicated.
Comparison of Romanizations
Comparisons of standard romanization schemes for Bengali are given in the table below. Two standards are commonly used for transliteration of Indic languages including Bengali. Many standards (e.g. NLK / ISO), use diacritic marks and permit case markings for proper nouns. Newer forms (e.g. Harvard-Kyoto) are more suited for ASCII-derivative keyboards, and use upper- and lower-case letters contrastively and forgo normal standards for English capitalization.
§ "NLK" stands for the diacritic-based letter-to-letter transliteration schemes, best represented by the National Library at Kolkata romanization or the ISO 15919, or IAST. This is the ISO standard, and it uses diacritic marks (e.g. ā, ) to reflect the additional characters and sounds of Bengali letters.
§ ITRANS is an ASCII representation for Sanskrit; it is one-to-many, i.e. there may be more than one way of transliterating characters, which can make internet searching more complicated. ITRANS representations forgo capitalization norms of English so as to be able to represent the characters using a normal ASCII keyboard.
§ "HK" stands for two other case-sensitive letter-to-letter transliteration schemes: Harvard-Kyoto and XIAST scheme. These are similar to the ITRANS scheme, and use only one form for each character.
§ XHK or Extended Harvard-Kyoto (XHK) stands for the case-sensitive letter-to-letter Extended Harvard-Kyoto transliteration. This adds some specific characters for handling Bengali text to IAST.
§ "Wiki" stands for a phonemic transcription-based romanization. It is a sound-preserving transcription based on what is perceived to be the standard pronunciation of the Bengali words, with no reference to how it is written in Bengali script. It uses diacritics often used by linguists specializing in Bengali (other than IPA), and is the transcription system used to represent Bengali sounds in Wikipedia articles.
[edit]Examples
The following table includes examples of Bengali words Romanized using the various systems mentioned above. Example words In orthography Meaning
NLK XHK ITRANS HK Wiki IPA মন mind mana mana mana mana mon [mon] সাপ
Notes
1. As of Unicode version 6.0
Bengali keyboard layouts
The Bijoy keyboard layout was commercialized by Mostafa Jabbar as part of the Bengali software package Bijoy Ekushe.
Inscript keyboard layout
The InScript keyboard layout was designed by the Indian government to standardize the inputting of Indic scripts.
Probhat keyboard layout
People used to typing Romanized forms of Bengali will find it easier to use a more phonetic layout such as the Probhat layout shown below, which is one of several Bengali input methods available.
Bangla Keyboard :Bijoy
Grapheme frequency
According to Bengali linguist Munier Chowdhury, the following 9 graphemes are the most frequent in Bengali texts
Grapheme
Percentage
আ 11.32 এ 8.96 র 7.01 অ 6.63 ব 4.44 ক 4.15 ল 4.14 ত 3.83 ম 2.78
Collating sequence
There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both India and Bangladesh are currently working towards a common solution for this problem.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Bengali in Bengali alphabet
ধারা ১: সমস্ত মানুষ স্বাধীনভাবে সমান মর্যাদা এবং অধিকার নিয়ে জন্মগ্রহণ করে। তাঁদের বিবেক এবং বুদ্ধি আছে; সুতরাং সকলেরই একে অপরের প্রতি ভ্রাতৃত্বসুলভ মনোভাব নিয়ে আচরণ করা উচিত।
Bengali in Romanization
Dhara êk: Shômosto manush shadhinbhabe shôman môrjada ebong odhikar nie jônmogrohon kôre. Tãder bibek ebong buddhi achhe; shutorang shôkoleri êke ôporer proti bhrattrittoshulôbh monobhab nie achoron kôra uchit.
Bengali in IPA
d̪ʱara æk ʃɔmost̪o manuʃ ʃad̪ʱinbʱabe ʃɔman mɔrdʒad̪a eboŋ od̪ʱikar nie dʒɔnmoɡrohon kɔre. t̪ãd̪er bibek eboŋ bud̪ʱːi atʃʰe; ʃut̪oraŋ ʃɔkoleri æke ɔporer prot̪i bʱrat̪ːrit̪ːoʃulɔbʱ monobʱab nie atʃoron kɔra utʃit̪.
Gloss Clause 1: All human free-manner-in equal dignity and right taken birth-take do. Their reason and intelligence exist; therefore everyone-indeed one another's towards brotherhood-ly attitude taken conduct do should.
Translation
Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, they should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
1. ^ Ancient Scripts
2. ^ Different Bengali linguists give different numbers of Bengali diphthongs in their works depending on methodology, e.g. 25 (Chatterji 1939: 40), 31 (Hai 1964), 45 (Ashraf and Ashraf 1966: 49), 28 (Kostic and Das 1972:6-7) and 17 (Sarkar 1987).
3. ^ a b The natural pronunciation of the grapheme অ, whether in its independent (visible) form or in its "inherent" (invisible) form in a consonant grapheme, is /ɔ/. But its pronunciation changes to /o/ in the following contexts:
§ অ is in the first syllable and there is a ই /i/ or উ /u/ in the next syllable, as in অতি oti "much" /ot̪i/, বলছি bolcchi "(I am) speaking" /ˈboltʃʰi/
§ if the অ is the inherent vowel in a word-initial consonant cluster ending in rôfôla "rô ending" /r/, as in প্রথম prothom "first" /prot̪ʰom/
§ if the next consonant cluster contains a jôfôla "jô ending", as in অন্য onno "other" /onːo/, জন্য jonno "for" /dʒonːo/
4. ^ In Japanese there exists some debate as to whether to accent certain distinctions, such as Tōhoku vs Tohoku. Sanskrit is well standardized, because the speaking community is relatively small, and sound change is not a large concern
5. ^ Jones 1801
6. ^ See Chowdhury 1963
Bibliography
§ Ashraf, Syed Ali; Ashraf, Asia (1966), "Bengali Diphthongs", in Dil A. S., Shahidullah Presentation Volume, Lahore: Linguistic Research Group of Pakistan, pp. 47–52
§ Chatterji, Suniti Kumar (1939), Vasha-prakash Bangala Vyakaran (A Grammar of the Bengali Language), Calcutta: University of Calcutta
§ Chowdhury, Munier (1963), "Shahitto, shônkhatôtto o bhashatôtto (Literature, statistics and linguistics)", Bangla Academy Potrika(Dhaka) 6 (4): 65–76
§ Kostic, Djordje; Das, Rhea S. (1972), A Short Outline of Bengali Phonetics, Calcutta: Statistical Publishing Company
§ Hai, Muhammad Abdul (1964), Dhvani Vijnan O Bangla Dhvani-tattwa (Phonetics and Bengali Phonology), Dhaka: Bangla Academy
§ Jones, William (1801), "Orthography of Asiatick Words in Roman Letters", Asiatick Researches (Calcutta: Asiatick Society)
§ Sarkar, Pabitra (1987), "Bangla Dishôrodhoni (Bengali Diphthongs)", Bhasha (Calcutta) 4-5: 10–12
External links
§ Omniglot – Bengali Alphabet
digital encoding and rendering
§ Free Unicode Compliant Bangla Typing Software
§ Free Unicode Bangla Computing Solutions
§ Free Bangla Unicode Fonts
§ Ankur – Supporting Bangla (Bengali) on GNU/Linux
§ Open source Bangla Transliteration Library
আজ আমার দুটি কারনে খুব কাঁদতে ইচ্ছে করছে। একটি আর মহান একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারী অথচ প্রাণ খুলে গান গাইতে পারবো না। আর একটি হচ্ছে আনন্দাশ্র আমার স্কুলের প্রিন্সিপাল স্যার আজ আমার দেশের মহান ভাষা আন্দোলনের কাহিনী এসেম্বিতে বর্ণনা দিলেন এবং উল্লেখ করলেন সে ১৯৫২ ভাষা আন্দোলনের মহান ভাষা সৈনিকদের আত্ত্বদানের কথা এবং যে কারনে আজকের এই দিনটিকে মাতৃভাষা দিবস হিসেবে জাতি সঙ্ঘ ঘোষণা দিয়েছেন, তা' ব্যাখ্যা করলেন ছাত্র/ছাত্রীদের উদ্দেশ্যে ইংরেজীতে। খুব ভালো লাগছে। আমি নিজেকে একজন গর্বিত বাঙ্গালী হিসেবে প্রিন্সিপ্যাল স্যারের নিকট গিয়ে দাড়ালাম। তিনি আমাকে উইস করলেন এবং আমার সৌজন্যে অনেক কথা বললেন। ধন্যবাদ আমাদের স্কুলে কর্তৃপক্ষকে ।
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