|
Font: Bengali
Info on Script |
Glyph Repertoire |
Font Samples
Belonging to the group of Northern Indic scripts, Bengali script is used primarily for the Bengali, Assamese and Manipuri languages. Closely related to Devanagari script, Bengali resembles it in appearance and structural features. As with all Brahmi-derived Indic scripts, Bengali demonstrates the typical features of that model.1 Its basic unit is the consonant-based syllable which embodies an inherent vowel.
Bengali is written horizontally from left to right and its basic set of symbols consists of 32 consonants and 11 vowels. At the beginning of a syllable, vowels appear in independent form. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or satellite) form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. A group of consonants without intervening vowels form a 'consonant cluster' which can often be written with a special symbol called a 'conjunct', of which Bengali is known to have a rich selection. Often such a cluster is written by concatenating the abbreviated forms (half forms) of its components. In Bengali script, half forms are typically missing the vertical stroke of the full form. Geminate (or long) consonants are written as double consonants which are formed by stacking the repeated character horizontally or vertically.
Taking the shape of a half-circle diacritic with a dot above, the anunasika indicates vowel nasalization. In Bengali, the inherent vowel of a syllable is suppressed by a hasanta which is a small diagonal stroke placed as a subscript mark on the syllable. Traditionally, the end of a sentence is signaled by a vertical stroke. However, in current practice, European punctuation is often used. Likewise, although Bengali has a native set of symbols for numerals, as well as symbols for many fractions, today Arabic numbers are often used.
1 For a fuller description of the features of Brahmi-derived scripts, see 'Devanagari'.
2 The exact number of symbols needed for any particular language can vary.
|
|
