Like others in its language family, Bangla’s vowels are special in that they have a whole form and a diacritic form, meaning they can stand alone as whole letters, or they merely exist as markings accompanying nearby consonants. Generally, vowels are whole at the beginning of a syllable/word, and they are simply attachments in every other instance. The diacritic form of a vowel can be represented before, after, above, or below the consonant they accompany.
I will include the Bengali character, the corresponding phonetic letter(s) with an Anglicized pronunciation (to the best of my ability) in parentheses, and examples of the sounds in words familiar in English:
অ | ɔ (ah), ô (oh) | hot, bone
আ | a (ah) | samba, llama
ই | i (ih/ee) | hit, bee
ঈ | ī (ih/ee) | hit, bee
উ | u (uuh/oo) | put, rude
ঊ | ū (uuh/oo) | put, rude
ঋ | ṙ (ri) | n/a
এ | e (eh/ay), æ (n/a) | met, fiancée, cat
ঐ | oi (oy) | boy
ও | o (oh) | comb
ঔ | ou (ow) | found
The diacritic forms of the above vowels will be attached to the default character ক (ka) to demonstrate how they operate when attached to a consonant. Below is a picture with the diacritic vowels highlighted in red to clearly illustrate this partnership. In order from left to right are the following letters in their diacritic forms: * অ, আ, ই, ঈ, উ, ঊ, ঋ, এ, ঐ, ও and ঔ.
* Notice how অ in the first example is essentially invisible in its diacritic form. It is what we call an “inherent vowel,” meaning that unless another vowel is explicitly present, a consonant always carries the secret vowel অ with it. For example, the word খবর (khɔbôr --meaning “news”) is spelled “kh+b+r” on paper. However, অ sits in between each consonant in its invisible diacritic form to give us the ɔ and ô sounds when the word is spoken aloud. Despite how it may sometimes appear, all Bengali consonants have a partner, even if it’s an imaginary friend.
Hopefully this is helpful to others who are learning Bangla, like me, and if anyone has any questions, comments, or corrections, please let me know in a comment or in my ask box!
Most of the information in this post comes from Hanne-Ruth Thompson’s Bengali-English Dictionary, and the diacritic model was borrowed from Wikipedia.
