Bengali

Most people in Bangladesh speak Bengali. Having develop from Sanskrit, Bengali is an Indo-Aryan language, spoken in South Asia. With more than 210 million native speaker, it is the seventh most spoken language in the world and second most spoken language in India. Apart from Bangladesh and India, there are significant Bengali-speaking communities in Malawi, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Saudi Arabia, Singapore or Nepal.

Bengali uses the Bengali script with 11 vowels and 40 consonants. Each consonant contains an inherent vowel. Any other consonants are marked with diacritics under, over or behind the respective vowel. There are also independent vowel graphemes at the beginning of the syllable.

The letters run from left to right. No difference is made between uppercase and lowercase letters. Bengali script has a characteristic horizontal line along the tops of the graphemes linking them together. It is called matra. Words are separated by spaces.

Example

Transliteration
Shomosto manush shadhinbhabe shoman morjada ebong odhikar niye jonmogrohon kore. Tader bibek ebong buddhi achhe; shutorang shokoleri ekey oporer proti bhratrittoshulobh monobhab niye achoron kora uchit.

Listen to this text in Bengali

English translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, they should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood . (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1).

The most beautiful sentence in Bengali

Transliteration
Ami tomake bhalobashi

Listen to this sentence in Bengali

English translation
I love you! :-)