Bangla The Bangla ( , , ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Eastern Indo-Aryan branch spoken in the Indian subcontinent. It is one of the two official languages of the Republic of Bangladesh, and is closely related to Assamese, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Chakma, Chittagonian, Kokborok, Magahi, Meitei, Mizo, Marwari, Nepali, Rajbanshi, Rohingya and Santali languages. It is also spoken as a second language in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, the Comilla District of Bangladesh, and Tripura State of India by Bengali Hindu community in those regions. It is the most widely spoken of the languages of the eastern Indo-Aryan family. Bengali is spoken in both Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. Bangladeshi Bengali is based on West Bengal Bengali, while Bangladeshi Bengali has the addition of some vocabulary from the other South-Eastern Indo-Aryan languages spoken in Bangladesh. Bengali is written in the Bengali script, which is based on Devanagari. History Traditionally, the Bhasa language was thought to have originated from a language spoken in eastern Bengal. The earliest form of the language known today has been traced back to sometime between the 7th and 13th centuries. The word Bhasa is generally believed to have originated from the Sanskrit word Vibhasha (), which means language. From this evolved the name Vibhasa. The first use of the term for a writing system was in the 11th century by the Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali. He referred to the script as "Bhaṇḍāli". The term Vibhaṅga seems to be from this name and a reference to the region around Varanasi, which was at one time the centre of the development of writing in Eastern India. The Bengali literature is of two types: the classical and the folk literature. In the classical tradition, the first poet associated with the Bengali language is the 14th century Vidyapati. Among his works is the Laghurijay, considered by some scholars to be one of the finest works of Indian literature. Following the rise of Alauddin Husain Shah, Kamalakanta, Bipradas and Jayadeva flourished in the 15th century. Jayadeva’s lyric poetry in Sanskrit was a significant influence on the subsequent development of Bengali poetry. Modern Bengali literature started with the songs of Ramprasad Sen, considered to be the father of modern Bengali poetry. The Bengali language has also contributed to the development of Assamese, Bodo, Oriya, Maithili, Nepali, Rajbongshi and Sylheti languages, and is the source of most borrowed words in languages such as Sanskrit and Persian. Phonology Bengali uses the same 36 letters of the Devanagari script as Hindi and Sanskrit, with the addition of a few specific letters that represent sounds not found in Hindi or Sanskrit. Because of its common origin with the related Ahom language, Bengali has shared many linguistic characteristics with it. Bengali shares phonetic features common to several Indo-Aryan languages. Consonants may appear as bilabial approximant before or as retroflex flap before a vowel. is palatalized to before a consonant. In native words, intervocalic is frequently devoiced to . Intervocalic and are frequently nasalized to and respectively. and are subject to final-syllable lengthening. is found only in loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items. is found only in loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items. Vowels The open back unrounded vowel is represented by three separate letters: (short), (reduced), and (long). In native words, can optionally be realized as (reduced) or (open back rounded) in all positions except for the initial syllable, in which it always appears as . Similarly, can be realized as (reduced) or (open back rounded) in all positions except for the final syllable, in which it always appears as . In loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items, is optionally found in all positions. In loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items, is optionally found in all positions. Phonetic Realisation According to the phonological analysis of Bengali pronunciation suggested by Rajeshwari Raychaudhuri (1917–2002), are realized as , , and respectively. The vowels have the following allophones: In native words, final vowels are reduced: a > , e > , o > . Final consonants preceding non-initial syllables are voiceless: b, d, g > p, t, c respectively. When a final consonant is followed by another consonant, the second consonant is devoiced: s > (e.g. is pronounced as in , ), bh > (e.g. is pronounced as in , ) and d/j > (e.g. is pronounced as in , ). The labialisation of velars occurs in native words, which leads to the pronunciation of labio-velar sequences such as kk > ck and ch > jc. Initial is often devoiced to . When a vowel is preceded by a schwa, a nasal sound is inserted: ā > , e.g. bā = . In loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items, initial is occasionally realised as . The unrounded front vowel is realised as in all positions except for the initial syllable: ā > a, ī > i, ū > u. The close-mid front vowel is realised as before all consonants except for (due to the retroflexion of before it), except for and (due to final-syllable lengthening), and in monosyllables (e.g. ā > a, ī > i). The open front unrounded vowel is realised as in all positions except for the final syllable: ā > a, ī > i. The open back rounded vowel is realised as in all positions except for the initial syllable: ā > a, ī > i. The long open vowel is realised as in all positions except for the initial syllable: ā > a, ī > i. The close back rounded vowel is realised as in all positions except for the initial syllable: ā > a, ī > i. The open back unrounded vowel is realised as in all positions except for the initial syllable: ā > a, ī > i. The two close vowels are often reduced to a single one (e.g. ā = , ī = ). In loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items, front rounded vowels are pronounced as before the initial consonants of syllables other than the first and before palatal vowels , , . All consonant clusters consist of the same vowel, with the sole exception of ch + sh, which consists of . Bengali usually deletes doubled consonants when they are suffixed to words: pa > pala, dāta > dēta, śūnya > shūnya. In native words, double consonants are pronounced as double (e.g. ā is pronounced as , a is pronounced as , ī is pronounced as ), while in loanwords or Sanskrit-derived lexical items, they are realised as single (e.g. sh is pronounced as , s is pronounced as , ā is pronounced as , etc.). However, the (ch) sound is often realised as (jh), especially before intervocalic sibilants and in native words. Furthermore, the (t) sound is often realised as (th) in borrowed words, as well as being frequently used to represent th in native words (e.g. bhai = bhī = , ātā = etc.). Grammar Basic grammatical terms Gender Bengali is a language that uses the gender distinction. In Bengali, the animate genders are feminine (aunt, sister, daughter) and masculine (brother, mother, father). The inanimate genders are neuter (book, glass, etc.). There are several words that are used in general Bengali which don't have definite grammatical gender as a result of the natural gender distinction. However, words are assigned their gender according to the person who uses them or by their usage in context. Case Bengali is an example of an analytic language, where most cases are expressed by affixation instead of grammatical case marking. The nouns of most Bengali noun phrases are classified as in other Indo-European languages into genitive case (nominative singular being omo), accusative case