A (Very) Brief Comparison of Bengali and English Phonological Systems

2021-12-01
Geographic distribution of Bengali language
Geographic distribution of Bengali language. NikosLikomitros, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bengali (বাংলা ভাষা, Bangla-bhasha) is an Indo-European language widely spoken in Bangladesh and neighboring areas in India. A language with a rich history of music and literature, Bengali is the mother language of many influential figures in South Asian arts and culture, such as Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. The language also has a special place in the modern history of linguistic human rights: The Bengali Language Movement of the early 1950s, particularly the events of 21 February 1952 in East Bengal, advocated official recognition of Bengali alongside Urdu. The movement and the sacrifices of Bengali language activists were subsequently commemorated through UNESCO's establishment of International Mother Language Day (United Nations, 2021).

Bengali can be considered a diglossic language. While the modern literary form, Cholito-bhasha (based on the Nadia dialect), is relatively consistent across Bengali communities, colloquial Bengali varies considerably in phonology and, according to Behrman et al. (2021), can be grouped into six major dialects. In this paper, I will describe the basic phonetics and phonology of the standard forms of Bengali (the Bengali dialect spoken in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the West Bengali dialect spoken in the West Bengal region of India) and compare them with the phonological system of General American English. I will first analyze the consonant system, the vowel system, and the syllable structure. Bengali’s notable prosody patterns will be discussed briefly in the last section.

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References

  • Behrman, E., Santra, A., Sarkar, S., Roy, P., Yadav, R., Dutta, S., & Ghosal, A. (2021). Dialect Identification of the Bengali Language. In Tyagi A. K. (Ed.), Data Science and Data Analytics (1st ed., pp. 142–170). Chapman and Hall/CRC.

  • United Nations. (2021). International Mother Language Day. United Nations. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://www.un.org/en/observances/mother-language-day