Talk:Bengali alphabet/Archive 1

/ke/ and /kæ/ Flipped?
In the table, aren't the two entries flipped because /ke/ is "ke" and /kæ/ is kê? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.206.94.223 (talk) 02:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Anon editing
A heads up for whoever is maintaining this page that anonymous IPs with the range 66.81.66.* have, on various occasions, tried to add generic advertising links and have refused to respond to requests to stop. Presumably this article will get more. -Rushyo (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 10:05, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Script
I have added the table for Bangla script just now (although due my stupidity, it got registered as anon edit)! I am not sure of the IPA symbols. So if anyone with knowledge of IPA could please go through it, it would be excellent. Also, could someone make sure that all the letters in Assamese script are on the table and the numbers are transliterated properly? Thanks. -- Urnonav 06:22, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

--

I have just (anonymously) edited the IPA transcriptions, along with some other minor points. Please let me know if anyone has any objection to the corrections.

--SameerKhan 07:44, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Bengali vowels
I made some changes to the vowel table yesterday which I thought was fixing a display issue. It seems I was wrong. The following is from my talk page:

Hi Paranoid One

I noticed you changed the vowel placement on the Bengali script page. For me, the vowel placement was working before, and now there is the little Unicode dotted circle carrying each vowel diacritic instead of the kô itself. For me, at least, the vowels no longer work. I don't know if that has to do with the fact that I use Mozilla Firefox. Does it look better now on IE/whatever browser you are using?

If it's just my browser, I'm of course fine with the change! I just want to make sure it's not also more confusing on other browsers.

Thanks! --SameerKhan 19:52, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Eek! Unicode and browser compatibility whackiness. Oh dear.
 * I've looked into it and the results are both interesting, puzzling and ever so slightly frustrating. I'll move this, and my findings, to the Bengali script talk page. Perhaps a wider audience can give some insight. --TheParanoidOne 20:59, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

My primary browser is Opera and the vowel symbols were appearing on the wrong side of the consonant so I thought I would change it. But then differring browser rendering reared its ugly head. I have made screen shots of the table column in question from Opera 8, Mozilla Firefox 1 and MS IE 6 (all under Windows).

On my system it seems that IE is being the rogue. The Firefox result is interesting as it doesn't correlate with what SameerKhan has said.

The ultimate purpose of this long winded passage is to find out what other people are seeing in order to keep the most "correct" version. Which version is correct for you - pre or post? What browser/OS are you using? Do you have any ideas on what can be done to ensure universal correctness (heh!) in the future?

--TheParanoidOne 21:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The thing about unicoded Bangla text occurs because of the browser's different rendering of Bangla/eastern/complex text. IE is correct in rendering the text before your changes. Firefox won't render Bangla script correctly in WindowsXP (Which I assume you are using), unless Service Pack 2 is installed, and ControlPanel->Regional and Language settings->Languages->Support for Eastern/complex script is checked. I guess the same would happen with Opera. Unicode is phonetic, so Ki would be "ka" followed by "Hrossho e". This will show up fine in IE. If you have the support installed, it will show up fine in Opera/Firefox too. For more info on how to enable Bangla rendering support, see this link. Anyway, the bottom line is the post-vowel version is the correct unicode version, and would show up well in all browsers in properly configured systems. Hope this helps. Thanks. --Ragib 06:07, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed with Ragib. I forgot to mention that I had already reset my Windows configurations to read "Eastern/complex scripts". Before doing that, Mozilla would read the characters the way you (TheParanoidOne) display them on your screenshot. You have to go through and fix that on your system to be able to read the vowels correctly. As they stand now, for people who have Eastern/complex scripts turned on, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox both have Unicode dotted circles before the consonants. I am going to go through and fix the vowels, but you won't be able to read them properly unless you switch to "Eastern/Complex". --SameerKhan 20:25, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

uņo versus ungo
OK, the ending of uņo is definitely not uņô. The ņ versus n-g is actually an interesting problem. Once again it goes back to "East Bengal" versus "West Bengal". For example, even in Bangladesh, let's say someone from Jhenaidah (or any other place from Khulna or Rajshahi Division) would say Baņali. However, someone from Borishal would say Ban-gali. I am guessing this has some linguistic implication. Well, whether we like it or not Bangla from the West is considered "standard" and hence, I changed the ng to ņ. However, ng should be left separate because there are cases where n-g is needed like say in Bôngo.

Also I can't think of any place where শ is pronounced as s and not as sh. So I changed that too. -- Urnonav 23:30, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I didn't change the "ņ" to "ng" to mean "ņg". I agree - I don't think anyone says "uņgo" (which I would have transcribed "unggo"). I changed it to "ng" because we've been writing "ng" in transcriptions like "bangla". I haven't seen anyone write "Baņla" yet. I guess I meant the "ng" to mean "ņ" in the same way that I changed the "ş" to "sh" - not a change in pronunciation but a change in simplicity/accessibility.

About শ being pronounced like "s", this is very common in clusters like "bisri", "srabon", "asrôe", "sromik", "sreshtho", etc. I agree that it never gets pronounced "s" when on its own, but its use as "s" in consonant clusters is common enough that it is transcribed as "s"/"sh" on omniglot.com, which is pretty well respected for transcription of orthographies. I am going to change it back to "s/sh" because of this. I will leave the "ņ" alone.

--SameerKhan 08:12, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, I see both your points. I was acting like an idiot in the second case.

However, the first case reminds me of something else. ņ was initially used in the precursor of the scheme now on this page for a very simple reason: so that pronunciations like Baņali do not end up being Bang-gali to non-native speakers even when written as Bangali. It also bears similarity to the IPA symbol for this particular nasal(?) sound.

History aside, we need to use a symbol to express points where two different consonant sounds meet. I am not sure what this is technically called. You'd know better! Examples like "bông-go", "brid-dho", "bôd-dho". The "-" might work, but I'm sure we can think of something slightly less unsightly.

Urnonav 07:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


 * no worries. i understand your concerns and i was thinking someone would bring them up when i initially made my changes.


 * i don't agree on the need for a hyphen or other marking to designate where one sound ends and another begins, however. for the vast majority of cases, this would not make anything clearer. for example, in "briddho", there would be no confusion of whether the sounds break up as "bri-ddho", "bridd-ho", "briddh-o", or "brid-dho", as one would simply know if they understand the phonology of bangla. those who would not care to understand the phonology of bangla would probably not be bothered by the meaning of a hyphen anyhow, i would suspect. the only places where distinctions could theoretically happen (other than your "ņ" vs "ņg" cases) would be between morphemes (the meaningful parts of words) - like "din-guli" (which is neither "ņ" nor "ņg" but actually "ng"). still, i don't think this would show up in our articles enough to make any sort of convention on it. plus, it would be aesthetically unpleasant to break up all consonant-consonant boundaries.


 * still, i agree with you that we should keep the ņ~ņg distinction preserved.

--SameerKhan 11:09, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

-- Okay, first off, I use Mac OSX.4.2 with Safari web browser and Akaash unicode font. I'm having trouble with the Bengali ki (कि), ko, ke, kai, kou, ôntoshtho ô, and shunno's. Usually Mac is really good, I could normally type other Indian scripts straight into the text box, but I'm gonna have to write out the unicode here.

I've been impressed that this is perhaps the most cordial talk page I've ever been to (and noticed how much more you accomplish that way!), so please don't get cross at my ignorance. All I know is that there are standard transliteration conventions. I prefer the IAST, because whether it be Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu, Tamil, whatever, it operates the same. Now I'm not real familiar with Bengali, but I was watching Ghaire Baire and the sounds weren't that different. I'm suspecting this was very formal old style 'Tagore' Bengali because I was recognizing quite a few words! Anyway, to my point (finally!):

Bengali, as I've seen before, has its own conventions, so take these with a grain of salt and opt for the traditional way - I'm not an Hindi imperialist! I can see how 'ô' might represent the sound better than the traditional inherent 'a', thus 'ā' really isn't necessary, so damn convention there. But might tradition be followed for &#2439; and &#2442; though (ī, ū)? I'm not talking about pronunciation but just the mechanics of transliteration here. I don't know, would probably just confuse people.

The following are my humble suggestions, the ones which aren't standardized I've noted:


 * &#2457; - ṅ
 * &#2458; - c
 * &#2459; - ch
 * &#2462; - ñ
 * &#2463; - ṭ
 * &#2464; - ṭh
 * &#2465; - ḍ
 * &#2466; - ḍh
 * &#2467; - ṇ
 * &#2479; - ? have no idea what to do here! ÿ, ǰ?
 * &#2486; - ś
 * &#2487; - ṣ
 * &#2524; - ṛ
 * &#2525; - ṛh
 * &#2453;&#2509; - ' (?, better than dash perhaps?)
 * &#2453;&#2468;&#2509; - ṯ (???! have no idea what this is, reminds me of ة though)
 * &#2453;&#2434; - ṃ (or ṅ, but than what is &#2457;?, ń? Maybe ņ is fine or &#331;).
 * &#2453;&#2435; - ḥ
 * &#2453;&#2433; - ṁ (I like using n though)
 * &#2453;&#2499; - kŗ (since unicode doesn't support the ring)

In Hindi Bengali would be बंगला (or बंगाली) which would be baṅgla, since the &#331; sound doesn't occur on its own, but only when followed by 'g'. But since &#2434; does (?!) and transliteration should represent one character for one character: &#331; is recognizable, but ņ works too! Or 'ng'. I like the ņ~ņg distinction best, if I understand correctly and the situation is similar to other Indian languages. I'm just way, way out of my element here and don't know anything about West/East differences, or Bengali orthography. I also guess I'm spoiled that Hindi has one sound for one character. I would have no idea what to do with the s/sh situation, except explain rules (if there are any). Like the Hindi śrī sounds more like a sibilant sʼ sometimes, which I think just happens naturally, like how in English most 'th' sounds are ð (thee), but when they're followed by 'r' they turn to þ (three). This may be of absolutely no relevance to anyone though, just stream of consciousness writing. I also came into the problem with when to use dashes in my still incomplete wikitravel:Hindi-Urdu phrasebook. I opted out. Just too many problems, and it complicates things more than my brain can handle. Sorry if I've sounded like a long-winded and condescending jackass! Too little sleep + too much coffee is oft a precarious situation. Khirad talk 23:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)


 * First of all, thanks so much for taking the time to read through this article and putting so much work into these suggestions!


 * I feel that a lot of your transliteration ideas are great for a one-to-one spelling correspondence between Bangla and English, but believe that for the purposes of just spelling out Bangla words in a way that is accurate, easy to understand, and not redundant, there is no need to make as many distinctions as you have proposed. An analogous situation would be if a Wikipedia article written in Bangla about the English language were to make use of a transliteration scheme that preserved silent "k" in "know" or a distinction between the "ee" in "meet" and the "ea" in "meat". These distinctions are only relevant for spelling the language in its native script, not for a transliteration of the language. Thus, differentiating a dental "n", a cerebral "n", and a palatal "n" would ignore the fact that these three letters represent what is now phonologically one sound in Bangla, even if there are slightly different pronunciations given the phonological environment of the letters. Also, differentiating different letters for "sh"/"s" would be trying to reinject the pronunciations of Classical Sanskrit instead of the reality now, where Bengali speakers continue to ask "is it talobbo shô, donto shô, or murdhonno shô?"


 * More on the "sh"/"s" - it's not as simple as a phonological alternation between the two sounds. There are no regular rules. There are simply two phonemes, "s" and "sh", which happen to use three letters in an irregular way. There are minimal pairs like 'aste' "slowly/softly", and 'ashte' "to come" - some dialects have more minimal pairs than others. Phonological rules would not determine which sound would occur where, although there are a few small regularities - e.g. "sh" is not found in clusters, only "s"... "s" cannot occur intervocalically in Standard Bangla, only "sh"... etc.


 * Between borgio jô (borgijjô) and ôntostho jô (ontoste jô), there is no pronunciation difference. The words 'jan' "dear" (written with borgio jô) and 'jan' "you go (formal)" (written with ôntostho jô) are pronounced identically. The difference in spelling is extremely archaic and no distinction is preserved. This is similar to the situation in English where the "g" in "gel" and the "j" in "jelly" are pronounced identically and the distinction is only maintained in English spelling, not in a transcription or transliteration of the language.


 * The khônđo tô, where you said "have no idea what this is", is simply the form of the letter tô when a hôshonto would normally be added to it. This is a peculiarity of the Bangla alphabet, and is mostly stylistic in nature. Many words can be written either with tô or khônđo tô depending on the writer's choice or the font used.


 * I do agree that it would be nice to have a standard underdot for the retroflex sounds ţ, ţh, đ, đh, ŗ, and ŗh (I don't think we need one for ņ, as this letter has lost its distinctive quality). This is something that I think we should adopt, if it proves convenient for the regular contributors to this article.


 * Overall, I see where your concerns are. However, I feel we should stick to the idea of maintaining a one-to-one sound correspondence, and not a one-to-one letter correspondence between Bangla and English for the purposes of this article. I of course love the peculiarities of Bangla spelling, but I feel it is unnecessarily confusing and misleading to artifically inject some of the archaic spelling rules of Bangla into a modern Latin-based transliteration of the language.


 * I hope this has been helpful! It is also pretty late for me (about 3am) so I may also sound either harsh or convoluted. Don't misunderstand! I love the criticism. Thank you so much for your input! --SameerKhan 10:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Assamese script?
Since both the Bengali script and Assamese script pages basically deal with the same information, we could merge these two into the "Bengali-Assamese Script" article. I could definitely, however, imagine that there could be people on both sides of the putative merger who would be vehemently opposed. What do you all think? --SameerKhan 05:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd oppose the merger. I think the Assamese script can redirect to Bangla script. Or even better, we can have a parent article with links to both pages. The reason is that Bangla is more widely used (20 times more), and Bangla script has a only slight difference (some letters) with Assamese script. Bangla script, language etc are more commonly used terms, unlike the Bangla-Assamese script. Thanks. --Ragib 05:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd support the merger. I do not think the number argument is relevant when it comes to something like a script.  The two scripts are nearly identical and they share a common history.  Moreover, for technical reasons, they are considered the same script.  For example, the Unicode has just script one script for both Assamese and Bengali.  So I support a merger. Chaipau 11:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I support the merger, and yesterday made the merge. Chaipau reverted it... but I am not sure why. No one opposed the proposal to move on the Assamese Talk page. Here, I see no real opposition. So, may we merge after all? -- Evertype·✆ 13:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I was earlier of the opinion that they should be merged. I have now changed my opinion.  They should not be merged because this page is language specific.  Even though I tried to reconcile this article to support both the languages I think it is not workable.  I would rather support a parent article as Ragib suggested, which would link to two daughter articles for the script used in the two languages.  Chaipau 04:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't believe that this makes sense. There is only one script here. It's called Bengali. It's used for several languages. Now, the Bengali script has a Bengali alphabet, used for the Bengali language, an Assamese alphabet used for the Assamese language (which differs from the Bengali alphabet in two letters), a Meitei alphabet used (alongside Meitei Mayek) for the Meitei language, and doubtless some more. There is, in fact, no "Assamese script". What advantage to users of the Wikipedia is there for there this article to be split? The basic merge which I propose to re-instate did so pretty reasonably, though it might be possible to re-do the Assamese section to neaten it up. I think this is quite workable. In any case, the article Assamese script is misleading because it is not a separate script, but an alphabet. -- Evertype·✆ 09:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If we're being technical here, none of these are "alphabets" (see Alphabet), but "alphasyllabaries"/"abugidas". But we could have a parent article, as mentioned by Chaipau and Ragib. I agree that trying to merge all the current articles into one would be really difficult, as each language has its own name and pronunciation of the same glyph. --SameerKhan 10:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In this instance, I was using "alphabet" in a different sense. Yes, structurally, there are alphabets, abugidas, and abjads. Here, however, I was using "alphabet" in the sense of "ordered subset of a script used to write a particular language". The Bengali alphabet and the Assamese alphabet are mostly the same, but Assamese uses two additional letters. Honestly, I think the right thing to do is to merge the Assamese script material to this page, and then to rewrite the page so that it first deals with the script as an entity, and then in two subsections describes how the script is used for the Bengali language and the Assamese language. Otherwise, material in the Bengali script should be moved out of this article to a new Bengali alphabet article, and the Assamese script article needs to be renamed Assamese alphabet. Wouldn't it be easier to keep everything here? -- Evertype·✆ 11:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * When you guys mention Meitei, are you talking about the actual Meitei script (extinct since Shantidas Goswami brought Bangla script to Manipur) or are you talking about Bisnupriya? Bisnupriya is nearly identical to Bangla (ask ) while Meitei mayek is more similar to Asian scripts . I'm not too familiar with the differences between Oxomiya and Bangla script, but doesnt Oxomiya have "x" as an actual sound?  Bakaman  Bakatalk 17:14, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I support a parent article as Ragib mentioned. As this script is used to write amny langauges of the Estern India like Bengali, Assamese, Manipuri etc, I propose to rename the script to a more general term like "Easten Neo-Brahmic" in place of "Bengali Script". In my opinion, the term "Bengali Script" is misleading. Bikram98 18:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd support something like what Bikram98 suggested. Articles like Cyrillic alphabet and Latin alphabet are of this type - they are both alphabets used for a wide variety of languages, and so they describe the commonalities along with the language-specific differences. Since the written form of Bengali, Assamese, Manipuri, etc., all use the same basic script ("same" = just as close as English and German, for example, where the latter has the English set of symbols plus ä, ö, ü, and ß) with only very minor differences. Of course, the article would be longer, but comparing with the other articles I've mentioned, I think it would be appropriate. --SameerKhan 18:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * How about this?


 * Eastern Neo-Brahmic script is the parent article.


 * Bengali script
 * Assamese script
 * Manipuri script


 * These three are subarticles under the parent article. There is one section for each of these scripts in the parent article, with links to the corresponding sub articles.


 * This will adhere to the summary style. Since there are some differences in the scripts, we can have specific articles for each script, and then combine the whole into a parent article.


 * Thanks. --Ragib 18:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I would support Ragib's plan, although I could go for either Eastern Neo-Brahmic script or Eastern Nagari script. I'm not sure how best to capture a script that covers Bengali, Assamese, and Bishnupriya Manipuri but not Oriya or the Bihari languages (which have used the Tirhuta, Kaithi, Devanagari, and Eastern Brahmi/Nagari scripts at different times in history and for different languages). Linguistically, Bengali, Assamese, and B Manipuri form a subfamily (normally just called Bengali-Assamese), but if we want the script to not have "Bengali" or "Assamese" in the title, I don't know for sure what to use. --SameerKhan 05:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Let us work as per Ragib's plan. For the common name, I donot have any objection/preference for either name. --Bikram98 11:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

If you say Bengali script is used to write Assamese, Meitei etc, you need to include ৰ, ৱ etc to this article. Otherwise, let us remove these langauges from the Infobox. -Bikram98 06:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No one is actually saying that. There is Assamese script. --Ragib 06:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this issue is 4 years old, and now entrenched - but the evidence of an academically accepted category of "Eastern Nagari" seems to be lacking. In fact, it appears this was constructed de novo on this thread. I understand SameerKhan is a trained linguist, and if anyone is qualified to define new categories, it would be him - but that does not mean a new encyclopedic article about a subject which was concocted here by a few editors is appropriate.

I mean, if SameerKhan published papers on the issue and they began to accepted in academia, then there would be a leg to stand on. If I do a Google Scholar search for 'Eastern Nagari', nothing shows up with that exact phrase. If I search 'Proto-Bengali' there is a plethora of paper results. If I search 'Proto-Assamese' there are several hits, so even that would be an appropriate article. Eastern Nagari is not, and falls under WP:OR. The 'Eastern Nagari' article should be removed, and articles should focus the academically defined categories.--Taajikhan (talk) 03:28, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You point out that "each language has its own name and pronunciation of the same glyph"~ but this is also true of the Latin/Roman script and several other scripts used for multiple languages, and so this is basically irrelevant here. One should distinguish between writing systems/scripts/alphabets on one hand and languages on the other and not confuse the two. Chris Fynn (talk) 04:31, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

transliteration
this article needs serious cleanup, it appears to be using some sort of home-grown transliteration scheme at present. Either use the National Library at Kolkata romanization, or some specified official Bengali-specific scheme, but not something we made up ourselves. dab (𒁳) 10:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Names of Letters
The article seems to be giving the names of the consonants ā (aa) sounds rather than a (o) sounds. Surely this is just wrong?? It's certainly not what I was taught by my native Bangla-speaking wife... --Oolong 19:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right, someone very recently changed the names of the letters on the article. I've reverted them back to our normal Romanization. --SameerKhan 21:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Charles Wilkins and Robert B. Wray
This article and also Charles Wilkins say that Sir Charles Wilkins created the first font for Bengali.

The article about Robert B. Wray says that he designed it and cites a source for it, too.

Can anyone please harmonize these articles?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni 09:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Distinct Bengali letters with the same pronunciation
Just a minor point I would like to bring up for discussion. While I don't deny that that there has been a gradual inclination towards several distinct letters beginning to "sound" similar, I don't believe this has entirely come to pass yet, and suggesting that it has might be misleading. For instance, the rhôshsho i and dirgho i still sound quite distinctive to me (compare say, ঈদ [eid] to any other Bengali word beginning with rhôshsho i). Similarly, the talobbo shô in শালিক (shalik) sounds quite distinguishable (to me) from the donto shô in সাদা (shada), as does the đhôe shunno ŗô in আষাঢ় (ashar - the season) from the bôe shunno rô in আসার (ashar - verb noun meaning coming/arrival).

Again, I am not suggesting that these letters will continue sounding different over time. However, I think that they do sound distinctive at present, at least in Standard Bengali.

--Shaad 15:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * My experience is exactly the opposite, that these sounds have long since merged in standard Bengali and are only distinguished by people who have learned the distinctions from other languages that still preserve them, such as Hindi. In ordinary, colloquial speech, the "i"s, "u"s, shos and, ros are indistinguishable. This issue also makes it particularly inappropriate to transliterate doe shunno ro and dhoe shunno ro as "d," which has become common for the transliteration of Hindi. Acsenray (talk) 20:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

--Nadeem 1:24, 30 July 2014 (UTC) The distinction between the "šo"s depends on the word and the dialect. In the example of "šalik" and "šada" (IPA-D by the way), I have grown up always hearing the former being pronounced starting with the lower teeth behind the upper teeth fully compared to the latter of which the teeth are not as -for lack of a better word- "closed?". Similar observation with rhoššo i and dirgho i, but I have noticed this is is mainly a Bangladeshi feature (perhaps it is a hypercorrection born out of the desire to compensate for lack of vowel length distinction,) where the former can be pronounced with the mouth relaxed and "open" compared to the latter which people tend to draw their teeth together for. Whether or not this jaw position change makes a different in speech also depends on the speaker. You all may be interested to know that the Hajong of Bangladesh (well paternal side and everyone in the surrounding villages) also distinguish rhoššo u and dirgho u when speaking standard Bengali. While rhoššo u remains the same, dirgho u becomes /ɯ/. Hope this helps in any decision making.


 * Surely, in encyclopedia articles, editors should try to stick to a single standard and widely accepted system of transliteration for each language and not just follow their own preferences. Chris Fynn (talk) 04:41, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Size of characters
Unlike all of the other Indian scripts, Bengali (at least on my computer) always appears 10x smaller than everything else. Why is this? YoshiroShin (talk) 03:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I assume you are using Windows XP, right? It appears that the default font supplied with Windows XP (Vrinda) is the culprit here. The problem has reportedly been fixed in Vista, and doesn't occur in Linux. So, you might try installing a font such as "Bangla" or "SolaimanLipi" . Thanks. --Ragib (talk) 05:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I downloaded the Bangla font but it had no top lines, so I tried the Siyam Rupali font at the top of the list and it is working quite nicely. Thanks for the help.YoshiroShin (talk) 15:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Bengali font problem
I installed a new font for viewing Bengali, and for a while it was working well, but now Bengali writing has become smaller again, and whatever I try to do doesn't work. What's going on? YoshiroShin (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Romanization issues
A couple of issues about the romanization of Bengali that came up at Talk:Romanization of Bengali presented for further discussion here. —  AjaxSmack   01:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC).

Merger of Romanization of Bengali article
First, the former article, Romanization of Bengali, was merged with Bengali script without consensus by User:NickPenguin back in January. I'm not against the merge myself but good discussion procedures weren't followed. A section on the old article's talk page had generated one comment so I have pasted the section here. —  AjaxSmack   01:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

 The Romanization issue is basically a subject regarding the script itself and doesn't really carry with it enough information to be worth a separate article. More importantly, splitting the two topics creates a risk of dividing issues and conflicting information in the two articles. 149.79.35.227 (talk) 21:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Merger proposal


 * I disagree. Per summary style, topics should be discussed in detail in child/sibling articles, rather than dumping all the discussion into a single article. Right now, this article is substantially long to be an independent one. Besides, Romanization is a topic quite orthogonal to the discussion of the script, and also this article contains detailed discussion of existing standard romanization schemes. --Ragib (talk) 08:05, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * While sibling articles should be created when they are needed, since this article is mostly a collection of charts, I don't think the split is necessary. I also don't think the subject of romanization of bengali is independantly notable, or at least, not enough that it would need coverage in a seperate article. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 06:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Original research issues with Wikipedia's preferred romanization scheme
A concern about Wikipedia's preferred romanization scheme was raised before at Talk:Romanization of Bengali. —  AjaxSmack   01:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The "Wiki" system?

I'm somewhat concerned by the inclusion of a system labelled the "Wiki" system. I have three specific concerns. First, does it meet our requirements of notability? I.e., is it used widely enough outside Wikipedia to merit inclusion? Secondly, I'm a little concerned about original research. If it's a scheme devised specifically for Wikipedia, it really looks dangerously close to being original research. If it isn't, then it ought to have a proper name, which we should use rather than "Wiki system". Finally, I don't think this is a valid exception to the guideline against self-references on Wikipedia.

I'm making these points somewhat hesitantly, since I know the main contributors to this page are long-standing editors who know and understand WP's policies well. Nonetheless, it's an issue I've been a little uneasy about for a while, so I'd greatly appreciate it if you could put my mind at rest about this. -- Arvind (talk) 23:06, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This also seems to be an issue for the Assamese language article too. See Talk:Assamese language for previous discussion.  —   AjaxSmack   02:02, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If there is specific content in the merge that is questionable, then it should be removed. My primary aim was to consolidate similar information, from which it could then be trimmed and improved. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 06:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I've asked User:SameerKhan to comment here, as the articles and romanisation systems under discussion were mostly his contribution. -- Arvind (talk) 09:12, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll send him an email too. --Ragib (talk) 09:29, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Arvind, your concerns are quite valid, and I admit we have been unclear on this issue for a long time. The issue is that the primary editors of Bengali-related articles on Wikipedia wanted to use a Romanization scheme for Bengali words that could be useful for English readers. By "useful", I mean that the Romanization would do a good job of rendering the general pronunciation of the Bengali word to the average English reader, while sticking close to established Romanization schemes. Because of the wide variety of established schemes for Bengali Romanization, and because many of the established schemes are in fact quite misleading if one were trying to decipher the Bengali pronunciation (as opposed to Bengali spelling, which many of those schemes were devised to transliterate), this ended up being a controversial issue. In the end, we decided on a compromise between some of the established systems, plus Latin character variants of certain IPA symbols (e.g. ô for /ɔ/). I agree this amounts to original research, in that the scheme we use does not exactly reflect any single established scheme, rather it is an amalgamation of some of the pronunciation-based systems.


 * The chart in the article that compares Romanization schemes for Bengali is hardly complete. I spent the last couple hours expanding it to incorporate additional schemes that have been published in the literature, and it should be clear that there is no obvious scheme that Wikipedians can follow for rendering Bengali into the Latin alphabet. Here is the extended chart, which is still incomplete (there are many, many views on how to transcribe Bengali!).


 * IPA-Ch = (IPA-style transcription) Chatterji, Suniti Kumar (1921). Bengali Phonetics. In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies. University of London.
 * R = Ray, Punya Sloka; Hai, Muhammad Abdul; Ray, L. (1966). Bengali Language Handbook. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
 * IPA-H&L = (IPA-style transcription) Hayes, Bruce and Lahiri, Aditi. (1991). Bengali intonational phonology. In Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9, 47-96.
 * L&F-C = Lahiri, Aditi and Fitzpatrick-Cole, Jennifer. (1999). Emphatic Clitics and Focus Intonation in Bengali. In Kager, R. & Zonneveld, W. (eds.) Phrasal Phonology: 119-144. Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen Press.
 * D = Dasgupta, Probal (2003). Bangla. In Cardona, G. & Jain, D. (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge.
 * IPA-D = (IPA-style transcription) Dasgupta, Probal (2003). Bangla. In Cardona, G. & Jain, D. (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge.
 * IPA-E = (IPA-style transcription)  Esposito, Christina; Khan, Sameer ud Dowla; Hurst, Alex (2007). Breathy Nasals and /Nh/ Clusters in Bengali, Hindi, and Marathi. Indian Linguistics 68 (3-4), pp. 275-299. Pune: Linguistic Society of India.
 * IPA-Kh = (IPA-style transcription) Khan, Sameer ud Dowla (to appear). The Intonational Phonology of Bangladeshi Standard Bengali. Jun (ed.) Prosodic Typology II: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. Oxford University Press.


 * Basically, I don't know what should be done about this issue. We can arbitrarily choose one of the established systems, although I can imagine it would be difficult to decide on one. As a linguist, I think it would be most helpful to continue to use a system that reflects the pronunciation, although I would stop short of full-blown IPA if possible, to spare the reader too many unfamiliar symbols. However, if it comes down to a choice between IPA and something like ITRANS or NLK (which can only be interpreted by someone fully literate in both the English and Bengali scripts), I would prefer IPA as it requires less knowledge of the peculiarities of the Bengali script, even though it exposes the reader to unfamiliar symbols. --SameerKhan (talk) 06:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know either. Tamil has similar problems when it comes to the adequacy of existing schemes to represent how words are actually sounded - we'd tried to come up with a rational transcription scheme for Tamil, but it foundered for similar reasons.  And whilst using IPA works for the first line of an article, it's not really suitable for article titles, and it definitely won't work for the text of articles.  Basically, the issue here is that all "traditional" academic romanisation schemes have transliteration as their goal, and don't really aim to give a sense of how the word is actually pronounced. For Tamil, we've more or less made the decision to go with ISO 15919, despite the problems, because that is the academic standard.  But it isn't a very satisfactory solution. -- Arvind (talk) 17:56, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Transliterating the letter following 'po'
In standard Bengali, the letter is 'pho' not 'fo.' 'Fo' is a dialectical variant. You will note that the vast majority of scholarly transliterations use 'pho' and this is the pronunciation that is standard. Acsenray (talk) 17:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You are right, but the wiki transliteration scheme for Bengali has used 'phô' for nearly half a decade now. 'fô' is only used on occassions to describe regional dialects and pronunciation variants for, e.g., foreign workds like হরফ (hôrôf and hôrôph both are valid). urnonav (talk) 21:10, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

রেফ (reph) rendering
My Bengali fonts (good ones from Ekushey) do not render reph correctly when preceded by a space. This is fine for normal language, since reph always occurs in the middle of a word, but it means the examples in the text (the 3rd bullet under Variant forms) appear wrong. I get rô+hôshonto র্ instead of reph. The only way I have found to show reph as an example is to precede it with some other printing Bengali character, e.g. another hôshonto [ ্র্ক = rkô]. Preceding it with a non-breaking space or other non-printing characters (even if set to a Bengali font) doesn’t work. And making the prepended character print white or transparent doesn’t work, because the HTML markup makes the string start over again with র. The only other idea I have is to use vocabulary words instead of isolated syllables for the reph examples (which would be inconsistent with the rest of the examples and probably make people ask why). I’m wondering whether readers on other platforms are already seeing these examples correctly (and what fonts you have), and if anyone has any other suggestion for more universal proper rendering of those examples. MJ (t • c) 19:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hunterian for Bangla
The "Wiki" system is definitely OR as it stands and not permissible. It should absolutely be replaced, but there's a way to do it that preserve most of its features without becoming OR. I recommend replacing that by falling to the Hunterian transliteration method (that's a work in progress with more characters and refs being added) and crafting a Bengali specific article for it (Hunterian transliteration for Bengali or something). By reviewing literature, it should be possible to discover some diacritics to provide the distinctiveness needed. Among other things it will help handle hoshonto (or non-usage of it with schwa deletion), which is pretty vexing if you apply Sanskrit-schemes to other Indic languages (though Bengali is closer to Sanskrit than many other). I am working towards something similar for Hindi. Failing this, we're headed towards stuff like বাংলা = Baṃla. I plan on making significant changes here and to other Bengali-relevant articles, so would like to hear from folks active on this article. I will also ping a few on their talk pages. --Hunnjazal (talk) 09:27, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

...and presents a more sinuously shaped
The current introduction ends The Bengali script is, however, less blocky and presents a more sinuously shaped.

Syntactically, I would expect a noun or nominal phrase at the end, but I don't know enough about Indian scripts to guess what.

- Tournesol (talk) 12:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Done: "a more sinuous shape" --Thnidu (talk) 20:17, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Comparison
The Comparison section is poorly formed, with large GIF images and no text at all. Is it necessary to have this comparative study here? Lets go for a Remove/Keep pole maybe? --»  nafSadh did say 05:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Remove comparison of Brahmic_scripts is addressed in its own article, no need to illustrate here; rather a link will do. --»  nafSadh did say 05:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Alphabet
Bengali writing system is not an Alphabet, rather an Abugida. So far I remember once the article was named Bengali script, since when and why this article is Bengali alphabet? Why should it be? --»  nafSadh did say 05:35, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Naming Convention seems a bit confusing, the Georgian Alphabet example is might not be an appropriate analogy for non-alphabet scripts! »  nafSadh did say 05:40, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Why is it named alphabet instead of script. What&#39;s in my name (talk) 05:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Voiced or voiceless aspiration
In the table of consonants, those that are voiced and aspirated are marked with voiced aspiration. In my experience (living in North Bengal) the aspiration is always voiceless. The voicing of the consonant is dropped for the aspiration. This is what makes these aspirated voiced consonants so hard to distinguish from their voiceless counterparts for L1 speakers of English. I have carefully observed this as a linguist in the speach of many L1 Bengali speakers.

I propose the IPA column in the table of consonants be changed to reflect this. Toby wan kenobi (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * To my limited experience (mostly one native speaker, from Dhaka) that seems like a regional variant, rather than the norm for all speakers. I have noticed the effect you describe, but only occasionally. Anyone else? MJ  (t • c) 19:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Move
BijoyChakrabarty had moved the article to Bangla alphabet and I have reverted the same. The reason for this - a) The language is known as Bengali language and not as Bangla per WP:Common name b) This is the English language wikipedia and we shall use the nomenclature as prevalent in English. Please do not unilaterally move again. Thanks. Shovon (talk) 05:35, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge!!!
Merge the Bengali script and Assamese script articles as Bengali-Assamese script, As Bengali language and Assamese language shares the same writing script (with exception of three alphabets in difference), both language scripts have the same origin and style of use. Both articles can be merged as Bengali-Assamese script as only Bengali and Assamese (and related influenced minor languages like Bishnupriya Manipuri and Kokborok) use this script, and is unique in it's use in Bengali and Assamese, and hence also does'not have a specific name as Devanagari script has. So it shall be as Bengali-Assamese script, The same script shall not be separated in to two. As Bengali-Assamese script article is created it can have a note on the three letter variations. Hope for Positive thoughts. Thank you. BijoyChakrabarty (talk) 16:18, 16 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose: This has been tried before and it did not work.  Look at the past discussions in the two talk pages.  Chaipau (talk) 16:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: Look at Eastern Nagari script, which additionally includes usage in Maithili and Manipuri, as well as others like Hajong languages. Chaipau (talk) 16:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 03 November 2014

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 08:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Bengali alphabet → Bengali script – Bengali is a Abugida and so it is a "script" just like "Tamil script", not alphabet system. – বব২৬ (talk) 03:21, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). বব২৬ (talk) 03:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:NCWS. Abugidas are alphabets in the wider sense. We only use "script" for writing systems not specific to a particular language. Contrast Latin alphabet (used only for Latin) with Latin script (for many languages). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:58, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Bengali script is used for Bengali language as well as Meitei language, Bishnupriya Manipuri language and Kokborok. Does is still not make sense to rename to script then? বব২৬ (talk) 04:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Does the Bengali script have variants adapted to these languages, as in different canonic character sets? If yes, the article must be separated into Bengali script and its variants, i. e., Bengali alphabet, Meithei alphabet, Kokborok alphabet (which should get their own articles too in this case), etc. If no, it's no different from the way the ancient Romans rendered foreign words in their own alphabet without extra letters. For example, the English alphabet is different from the Latin alphabet by the addition of the letters J, U and W, the German alphabet adds Ä, Ö, Ü and ß to this, the Danish alphabet adds Æ, Ø and Å instead, etc. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Bengali Alphabet was previously renamed from Bengali script, when a writing system related standard was adopted. NCWS still holds in same rationale. However an article Bengali script or Bengali-Assamese script can be created to discuss about earlier Bengali script which includes all letters of Bengali and Assamese alphabet and some extra like ঌ, ঌৢ, ঋৃ, ৺ etc. –  nafSadh did say 20:21, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't Old Bengali alphabet be a better title for this subject? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:48, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It begs some question. The subject probably need some research. Still, it should be Script, not alphabet. As you said, alphabet directly correlate to language. The script we are talking about probably existed in the era of Bongo-Kamrupi and is same as Eastern Nagari script. –  nafSadh did say 22:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Rename Eastern Nagari script to Bengali-Assamese script would solve it? বব২৬ (talk) 04:11, 4 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

IPA
IPA for শ/ষ/স should be for what those letters originally sounds like. While often স and almost always ষ is pronounced like শ /ʃ/, it does not mean the letter's corresponding IPA is /ʃ/. Letters are pronounced differently than ideal sound; notes are there for that. –  nafSadh did say 03:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Standard Romanization
Romanization column should follow one standard, i.e. Bangla Academy. Other recommendations are listed in detail in Romanization of Bengali. Though, transliteration do not reflect actual pronunciation, but the idea of transliteration is that it should work both way, i.e. if you Romanize a Bengali words, you can retrieve Bengali spelling from it. –  nafSadh did say 03:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This very article and the separate article on Romanization make the very point that there is no single standard for Romanization of Bengali. Saying that it "should follow one standard, i.e. Bangla Academy," is not a reflection of the facts of how Bengali is Romanized in the real world. It is pretending that the Bangla Academy standard is a universally accepted and used standard, when it is not, and this makes the article counter-factual, misleading, and less than informative.
 * Second, this: "Though, transliteration do not reflect actual pronunciation, but the idea of transliteration is that it should work both way, i.e. if you Romanize a Bengali words, you can retrieve Bengali spelling from it" is merely your opinion. Whether or not it is a better method for approaching transliteration, it is again not a universally accepted standard for how transliteration should be structured.
 * You are basically trying to encode your opinion of what is best--and I'm not saying that your opinion is wrong, but it is still an opinion--into a factual article. Acsenray (talk) 17:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We can refer the reader to the main article (as see also) and keep only one standard here. Keeping multiple options in same column is misleading. –  nafSadh did say 17:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keeping multiple options in the same column is the opposite of misleading—it is indicating that there is no single standard. Offering only one option is misleading—it implies that there is a generally agreed-upon standard, which is false. Acsenray (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That makes no sense. It is misleading to imply that there is a single standard by showing only one option. 149.79.50.1 (talk) 20:06, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If we have to show different options, we can put them in different columns (one for each of BA, NLK etc.). However, we can't put arbitrary standard here without source. There is no room for WP:OR. –  nafSadh did say 20:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Then don't claim any particular option as a "standard." The best way to do that is to display multiple options. Acsenray (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Generally only the de-facto romanization scheme is in the alphabet article, while other schemes are discussed in romanizations/transliteration article(s). Now, the problem for Bengali is, there is no de-facto standard. The de-jure is Bangla Academy, being the legislated authority for Bengali. NLK had long been used, and slightly differs from BA. A widely pushed "de-facto"! is the so-called "Wiki" standard favored by many Wikipedia editors. I personally somewhat like the Wiki "standard!"; but as it is not endorsed nor devised by any authority, I cannot use it in Wikipedia.
 * All the Romanizations schemes are "de facto." And there is no "de jure" scheme. Acsenray (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Covering whole scope of romanization in this article gives it a undue weight.
 * That makes no sense. Furthermore, simple listing multiple options is neither the "whole scope" of Romanization, nor does it take up more than a small number of pixels on the screen. Acsenray (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * So, my recommendation is use either one authoritative standard here or SIMPLY use NONE. –  nafSadh did say 21:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Fallacy of the excluded middle. Offering multiple options reflects more faithfully the facts of the matter. Acsenray (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Please stop replacing consonant table with a less informative bulleted list
This is in reference to Debjitpaul10's repeated deletion of the consonant table (recitation order). If you are going to make changes, please make sure that your new version is not less informative than the old version. Please do not change again without discussion.Acsenray (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Please include language template when adding Bengali text
When adding Bengali text, please wrap the text with text in Bengali language here as said in this page

If this lang template is not included, the text would be seen as broken for some fonts.. --Version365 (talk) 09:51, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Bengali script: dab page
Bengali script has been turned into a disambiguation page. Is this desirable? Regardless, this has resulted in people rushing to fix links, resulting in a lot of piping from Bengali script to Bengali script. I suspect there's likely to be quite a bit of cleanup needed: here's a search that should come up with articles containing such links. – Uanfala (talk) 14:58, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Krishka
Kriska 2409:4042:E03:E8FD:D86C:8308:5464:976F (talk) 15:56, 22 November 2021 (UTC)