Like many languages with venerable literary traditions, the Bengali script has not kept pace with changes in the language over the last millennium. For example,

• There are separate letters for long and short vowels, even though the spoken language doesn't distinguish vowel length.
• There is no letter for one of the main vowel sounds, the one romanized as æ.
• Several non-native sounds, for example f s z, have entered Bengali, but there are no letters for them.
• There are several letters inherited from the common Indo-Aryan stock (represented by Sanskrit) that represent sounds that don't exist in modern Bengali, or whose sounds have merged so that one sound may be spelled with multiple letters.
• Conversely, several letters are used for multiple sounds.

In addition, like many languages with lots of speakers, there is considerable dialectical variation. When writing Bengali in Musa, as with all writing, we write to a standard, even though all of us speak slightly differently. But Musa can write several different standards of Bengali, for example West Bengali (e.g. Nadia or Choltibhasha), Bangal (Dhaka), Chittagong or even Shadhubhasha. If stops are pronounced as fricatives, or if murmured voice is pronounced as a tone, then Musa can and should write it. The presentation here is based on the Standard Colloquial Bengali of Kolkata.

Musa writes Bengali in the Akshara gait, in which vowels are written attached below the previous consonant, and words are united by a midline. Independent vowels and consonants with no following vowel - the first consonant of a cluster or a final consonant - are simply written alone.

Consonants

Here are the consonants of Bengali, with IPA and Musa transcriptions.

				
ক k k	চ ʧ ch	ট ʈ tr	ত ৎ t̪ t	প p p
				
খ kʰ kx	ছ ʧʰ chx	ঠ ʈʰ trx	থ t̪ʰ tx	ফ pʰ px
				
গ g g	জ য ʤ dj	ড ɖ dr	দ d̪ d	ব b b
				
ঘ gʰ gx	ঝ ʤʰ djx	ঢ ɖʰ drx	ধ d̪ʰ dx	ভ bʰ bx
				
ঙ ং ŋ ng		ঁ ˜ -xn	ন ণ n̪ n	ম m m
				
হ ঃɦ hh	শ ষ স ʃ sh		শ স s s	ফ f f
				
			জ য z z	ব v v
				
	ল l l	ড় ঢ় ɽ rh	র ɾ r	ব w w

The letters on a blue background spell alternative readings of the indicated Bengali letters.

Vowels

Bengali has seven vowels:

		
ই ঈ i i		উ ঊ u u
		
এ e ee		ও o oh
		
অ্যা ɛ e		অ ɔ o
	
	আ a a

Nasalized vowels use the Nasal suffix , while diphthongs use  -i ,  -e,  -o and  -u as offglides.

				
অঁ  ã a~	অয়ি  ay ay	অয়ে  ae̯ ahy	অয়ো  ao̯ ahw	অয়ু  aw aw

Three Bengali letters correspond to a pair of Musa letters:

		
ৠ ri ri	ঐ oy oy	ঔ ow ow

As with other Indo-Aryan languages, Musa writes the stressed syllables with a high vowel.

Samples

Now that you know the letters, why not try to read some Bengali written in Musa?



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