The Bengali alphabet is an abugida, which means that each letter has an inherent vowel sound. There are also four independent vowels and two dependent vowels.

There are 52 letters in the Bengali alphabet: 19 vowels and 33 consonants. (circa 4000 Mb Book Scans, devanagari fonts):ĭownload free devanagari fonts & transliteration macros.In the Bengali language, the alphabet is known as “বাংলা বর্ণমালা” (pronounced ), which means “Bengali letters”. More information about the Devanagari Script Languages written with the Devanāgarī alphabetĪn archive of Sanskrit dictionaries, readers & grammars in German, English & Russian. There are also some with four-consonant conjuncts and at least one well-known conjunct with five consonants. There are about a thousand conjunct consonants, most of which combine two or three consonants. Some letters are two forms: the Classical, Northern or Kalikata (Calcutta) form is used in the north of India while the Modern, Southern or Mumbai (Bombay) form is used in the south India and has become the standard form.

The order of the letters is based on articulatory phonetics.

When consonants occur together in clusters, special conjunct letters are used.

This feature is common to most of the alphabets of South and South East Asia.

Vowels can be written as independent letters, or by using a variety of diacritical marks which are written above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to.

Consonant letters carry an inherent vowel which can be altered or muted by means of diacritics or matra.

Script family: Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Brāhmī, Gupta, Siddham, Nāgarī, Devanāgarī.

Writing direction: left to right in horizontal lines.Type of writing system: Abugida / Syllabic Alphabet.The name is variously translated as 'script of the city', 'heavenly/sacred script of the city' or ' city of the Gods or priests'. The name Devanāgarī is made up of two Sanskrit words: deva, which means god, brahman or celestial, and nāgarī, which means city. This script was starting to resemble the modern Devanāgarī alphabet by the 10th century, and started to replace Siddham from about 1200. Devanāgarī (देवनागरी लिपि) Advertisementsĭeveloped from eastern variants of the Gupta script called Nāgarī, which first emerged during the 8th century.

Bengali alphabet vouls