Bengali Phonology - Consonants and Vowels

Consonants and Vowels

The phonemic inventory of Bangla consists of 29 consonants and 14 vowels, including the seven nasalized vowels. Several conventions exist for romanizing Languages of India, including IAST (based on diacritics), ITRANS (uses upper case letters suited for ASCII keyboards), and the National Library at Calcutta romanization. Bangla words are currently romanized on Wikipedia using a phonemic transcription, where the pronunciation is represented with no reference to the spelling. The Wikipedia Romanization is given in the table below, along with IPA transcriptions above them. Sounds in parentheses are not distinct for all speakers. There are also y and w as predictable intervocalic glides, which are often confused in writing.

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i
i		 u
u
Close-mid e
e		 o
o
Open-mid æ
ê		 ɔ
ô
Open a
a
Consonants
Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Retroflex Palato-
alveolar		 Velar Glottal
Nasal m
m		 n
n		 ŋ
ng
Stop p~ɸ
p		 t̪
t		 ʈ
ṭ		 tʃ~ts
c		 k~χ
k
pʰ~ɸ
ph		 t̪ʰ
th		 ʈʰ
ṭh		 tʃʰ~tsʰ
ch		 kʰ~χ
kh
b~β
b		 d̪
d		 ɖ
ḍ		 dʒ~dz
j		 ɡ~ɣ
g
bʱ~β
bh		 d̪ʱ~d̪
dh		 ɖʱ~ɖ
ḍh		 dʒʱ~dz
jh		 ɡʱ~ɣ
gh
Fricative (f 1)
(f)		 (s2, z3)
(s, z) 		ʃ
sh
ɦ
h
Approximant l
l
Rhotic r4
r		 ɽ4
ṛ

Although Standard Bangla is largely uniform across West Bengal and Bangladesh, there are a few sounds that are produced variably in different pronunciations of Standard Bangla (in addition to the myriad phonological variations in non-standard dialects):

  • ^1 /f/: ফ can be produced as a voiceless aspirated stop or a voiceless labial fricative ~, depending on the speaker.
  • ^2 /s/ is a phoneme for many speakers of Standard Bangla (সিরকা 'vinegar', অস্থির 'uneasy', ব্যস or 'enough').
    • For some speakers, /s/ and /ʃ/ are phonemically distinct (আস্তে 'softly' vs. আসতে 'to come'). For most, there is no difference.
    • For some speakers, can be analyzed as an allophone of either /ʃ/ or /tʃʰ/ ( for সালাম 'greetings' or বিচ্ছিরি for বিশ্রী 'ugly').
    • Some words that originally had /s/ are now pronounced with in Standard Bengali (পছন্দ pochondo 'like', compared to Hindi-Urdu pasand).
  • ^3 /z/: জ and য represent a voiced affricate in Standard Bengali words of native origin, but can also represent in foreign words and names (জাকাত 'zakah charity', আজিজ 'Aziz'). Many speakers replace /z/ with /dʒ/. However, a native s/z opposition has developed in Chittagong Bengali.
    • Some words that originally had /z/ are now pronounced with in Standard Bengali (সবজি 'vegetable', from Persian sabzi).
  • ^4 /ɽ/: In the form of Standard Bengali spoken in Dhaka, /ɾ/ and /r/ are often indistinct phonemically, and thus the pairs পড়ে 'reads'/'falls' vs. পরে 'wears'/'after', and করা 'do' vs. কড়া 'strict' can be homophonous.

The murmured series is missing in the Eastern Bengali of Dhaka and in Chittagong Bengali, where it is replaced by tone, as in Panjabi (Masica 1991:102).

Read more about this topic:  Bengali Phonology

Famous quotes containing the word vowels:

    “As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)