Now you should be able to read basic Bengali words without consonant clusters! Try transliterating this short little ditty (the answer is below, don’t peek): ঁ côndrobindu indicates that a vowel is nasalized.It can indicate abbreviations: ডাঃ for ডাক্তার ḍaktar “doctor”.It can represent an h sound at the end of an exclamation: উঃ uh “oof”.It can double the following consonant: দুঃখ dukkho.ং onusshar is used only at the end of a syllable for the ng sound.ৎ khônḍo tô is used only at the end of a syllable in words derived from Sanskrit.

ৎ khônḍo tô t ( th in think, except with your tongue touching your teeth).At the end of a word after a vowel, it makes the same sound as এ e.After ই hrôssho i or ঈ dirgho i, য় makes the sound (y as in yam).The combination এয়ে eye is pronounced like a doubly long e.For example, shoa “to sleep” is spelled শোয়া, not *শোআ. Because the vowels অ shôre ô, আ shôre a, and এ e cannot occur in the middle of a word, য় is used with vowel diacritics to represent those sounds.Though in formal speech they are pronounced as flaps, most colloquial speakers pronounce them similarly to র bôy shunno rô.

ড় ḍôy shunno ṛo and ঢ় ḍhôy shunno ṛho are forms of ড ḍô and ঢ ḍhô used between vowels. স donto shô also represents the sound in loanwords, especially from Arabic, Persian, and English.

Additionally, শ talobbo shô and স donto shô make the sound before other consonants. All three have the default pronunciation of, like the sh in sham. There are three sibilants, or s-like sounds, in Bengali.

শ talobbo shô sh or s or ( sh in sham or s in sam).

They have the same pronunciation, but the latter is used primarily in words from Sanskrit and in forms of the verb যাওয়া jaoa “to go”.

Bengali has two letters for the sound represented by j in English: জ borgiyo jô and য ôntostho jô.

Welcome to the penultimate Bengali alphabet lesson! We’ll cover the last 14 consonants.įor each consonant, I’ll give the letter itself, its name, its transliteration, the IPA in brackets, and a pronunciation example in parentheses.

Bengali alphabet with english