Bengali–Assamese Script
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The Bengali–Assamese script (or Eastern Nagari script) is a modern eastern
Indic script The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
that emerged from the
Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' o ...
.
Gaudi script The Gaudi script (Gāuṛi lipi), also known as the Proto-Bengali script or the Proto-Oriya script is an abugida in the Brahmic family of scripts. Gaudi script gradually developed into the Bengali-Assamese (Eastern Nagari), Odia, and Tirhuta scri ...
is considered the ancestor of the script. It is known as ''Bengali script'' among Bengali speakers, as ''Assamese script'' among Assamese speakers, and ''Eastern Nagari'' is used in academic discourses. Besides
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
and Assamese it is used to write
Bishnupriya Manipuri Bishnupriya Manipuri, also known as simply Bishnupriya, is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Bengali–Assamese languages, Bengali–Assamese linguistic sub-branch. It is a creole language, creole of Bengali language and Meitei languag ...
, Chakma, Meitei (Manipuri), Santali and other languages—historically, it was used for old and middle Indo-Aryan and it is still used for
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. Other languages, such as
Bodo Bodo may refer to: Ethnicity * Boro people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly from Northwest Assam, India * Bodo-Kachari people, an umbrella group from Nepal, India and Bangladesh that includes the Bodo people Culture and language * Boro cu ...
, Karbi, Maithili and Mising were once written in this script. The two major alphabets in this script – Assamese and
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
– are virtually identical, except for two characters, with Assamese differing from Bengali in one letter for the /r/ sound, and an extra letter for the /w/ or /v/ sound.Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, ''The History and Culture of the Indian People: British paramountcy and Indian renaissance'' (Part 2), page 219, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1951Bernard Comrie, ''The World's Major Languages'', page 419, Routledge, 2009, B. P. Mahapatra, ''Constitutional languages'', page 39, Presses Université Laval, 1989,


History

The Bengali—Assamese script was originally not associated with any particular regional language, but was prevalent as the main script in the eastern regions of
Medieval India Medieval India refers to a long period of Post-classical history of the Indian subcontinent between the "ancient period" and "modern period". It is usually regarded as running approximately from the breakup of the Gupta Empire in the 6th cent ...
for Old- and Middle-Indo-Aryan including
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
."(T)he script used today for Assamese and Bengali was, by origin, linked to the region and not any one specific modern language. Historically, it was in fact used for Old and Middle Indo-Aryan. Today it is used not only for other modern languages (e.g. Bishnupriya) but also still for Sanskrit." All of these eastern Magadhan scripts are based on a system of characters historically related to, but distinct from, Devanagari. Brahmi, an ancient Indian syllabary, is the source of most native Indian scripts including the South Indian languages and Devanagari, the script associated with classical Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages. The modern eastern scripts (Bengali-Assamese, Odia, and Maithili) became clearly differentiated around the 14th and 15th centuries from the predecessor Gaudi."This, in turn, gave rise to the modern eastern scripts, namely, Bengali-Assamese, Oriya, and Maithili, which became clearly differentiated around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." While the scripts in Bengal, Assam and
Mithila Mithila may refer to: Places * Mithilā, a synonym for the ancient Videha state ** Mithilā (ancient city), the ancient capital city of Videha * Mithila (region), a cultural region (historical and contemporary), now divided between India and Nepal ...
remained similar to each other the Odia script developed a curved top in the 13th-14th century and became increasingly different. Old Maithili also used a script similar to the Bengali–Assamese script, and Maithili scholars (particularly of the older generation) still write Sanskrit in that script. Modern Bengali–Assamese script saw further standardisations following the introduction of printing.


Printing

Though there were early attempts to cut Bengali types it was the
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
's interest in propagating the
Bengali language Bengali ( ), generally known by its endonym Bangla (, ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. It is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and the second m ...
that ultimately prevailed. It first commissioned Willem Bolt, a Dutch adventurer, to create a grammar for Bengali, but he had to leave India after he ran into trouble with the company. The first significant book with Bengali typography was Halhed's 1778 "A Grammar of the Bengal Language" which he compiled from a meagre set of six Bengali manuscripts. When Halhed turned to Warren Hastings for publishing, he was referred to
Charles Wilkins Sir Charles Wilkins (1749 – 13 May 1836) was an English typographer and Orientalist, and founding member of The Asiatic Society. He is notable as the first translator of '' Bhagavad Gita'' into English, He supervised Panchanan Karmakar to ...
, the type-founder at the Company press at Hoogly. Learned in Sanskrit and Persian, Wilkins singlehandedly cut the most complete set. He was assisted by the Bengali blacksmith, Panchanan Karmakar, who is often erroneously credited as the father of the Bengali type.


Script

In this and other articles on Wikipedia dealing with the Assamese and Bengali languages, a
Romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
scheme used by linguists specialising in Bengali phonology and a separate Assamese transliteration table used by linguists specialising in Assamese phonology are included along with
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
transcription.


Alphabets

There are three major modern alphabets in this script:
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
, Assamese, and
Tirhuta The Tirhuta or Maithili script is the primary historical script for the Maithili language, as well as one of the historical scripts for Sanskrit. It is believed to have originated in the 10th century CE. It is very similar to Bengali–Assam ...
. Modern Assamese is very similar to modern Bengali. Assamese has at least one extra letter, , that Bengali does not. It also uses a separate letter for the sound 'ro' different from the letter used for that sound in Bengali and the letter is not a conjunct as in Bengali, but a letter by itself. The alphabetical orders of the two alphabets also differ, in the position of the letter , for example. Languages like Meitei and Bishnupriya Manipuri use a hybrid of the two alphabets, with the Bengali and the Assamese . Tirhuta is more different and carries forward some forms used in medieval Assamese.


Vowels and diacritics

The script presently has a total of 11 vowel letters, used to represent the seven vowel sounds of Bengali and eight vowel sounds of Assamese, along with a number of vowel diphthongs. All of these vowel letters are used in both Assamese and Bengali. Some of the vowel letters have different sounds depending on the word, and a number of vowel distinctions preserved in the writing system are not pronounced as such in modern spoken Bengali or Assamese. For example, the script has two symbols for the vowel sound and two symbols for the vowel sound This redundancy stems from the time when this script was used to write Sanskrit, a language that had a short and a long , and a short and a long . These letters are preserved in the script with their traditional names of "short i" and "long i", etc., despite the fact that they are no longer pronounced differently in ordinary speech.


Some language specific usages

In the
Bengali alphabet The Bengali script or Bangla alphabet ( bn, বাংলা বর্ণমালা, ''Bangla bôrṇômala'') is the alphabet used to write the Bengali language based on the Bengali-Assamese script, and has historically been used to w ...
is used when the intended pronunciation would otherwise be ambiguous. Some other languages use a vowel to denote // which is not found in either Bengali or Assamese; and though the vowel diacritic (''matra'', ) is found in Tirhuta the vowel letter itself is absent. Assamese alphabet uses an additional "matra" (ʼ) that is used to represent the phonemes and . Vowel signs can be used in conjunction with consonants to modify the pronunciation of the consonant (here exemplified by , kô). When no vowel Diacritic symbol is written, then the vowel "" (ô) is the default inherited vowel for the consonant. To specifically denote the absence of a vowel, a '' hôsôntô'' (্) may be written underneath the consonant.


Consonants

The names of the consonant letters in Eastern Nagari are typically just the consonant's main pronunciation plus the inherent vowel "" ''ô''. Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself (e.g. the name of the letter "" is itself ''ghô'', not ''gh''). Some letters that have lost their distinctive pronunciation in Modern Assamese and Bengali are called by a more elaborate name. For example, since the consonant phoneme /n/ can be written , , or (depending on the spelling of the particular word), these letters are not simply called ''nô''; instead, they are called "dental nô", "cerebral nô" and ''niô''. Similarly, the phoneme in Bengali and in Assamese can be written as "palatal shô/xhô" , "cerebral shô/xhô" , or "dental sô/xô" , depending on the word.


Digits


In Unicode

There are two
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
blocks for Bengali–Assamese script, called Bengali and Tirhuta. The Bengali block is U+0980–U+09FF: The Tirhuta block is U+11480–U+114DF:


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * *


External links


Omniglot – Assamese Alphabet


{{DEFAULTSORT:Bengali-Assamese script Bengali script Brahmic scripts Officially used writing systems of India