the Bengali script

the Bangladeshi flag

the Indian flag

Bengali, or Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken predominantly in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura by approximately 200 million people. After Hindi, Bengali is the second most spoken language in the Indian subcontinent, and among the top 10 most spoken languages in the world. The language has a rich literary heritage and underwent a renaissance in the late 19th century.

Preliminaries

The examples of Bengali words, phrases, clauses and sentences used in this book are generally presented simultaneously in three written forms: one using the Bengali script, a transliterated version using Latin letters, and an English translation. A phonetic transliteration using the IPA, as well as recorded audio samples are also being used.

The Bengali-to-Latin transliteration scheme is the one followed in the English Wikipedia and can be seen here.

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