Romanisation of Bengali is the representation of written
Bengali language
Bengali, also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Bangla (, , ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. ...
in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...
. Various romanisation systems for Bengali are used, most of which do not perfectly represent Bengali pronunciation. While different standards for
romanisation
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...
have been proposed for Bengali, none has been adopted with the same degree of uniformity as
Japanese or
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
.
[In Japanese, some debate exists as to whether to accent certain distinctions, such as Tōhoku vs Tohoku. Sanskrit is well standardized, as it has few speakers, and ]sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
is not a large concern.
The
Bengali script
The Bengali script or Bangla alphabet (, Romanization of Bengali, romanized: ''Bāṅlā bôrṇômālā'') is the standard writing system used to write the Bengali language, and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. ...
has been included with the group of
Indic script
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
s whose romanisation does not represent the phonetic value of Bengali. Some of them are the "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration" or
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...
system (based on diacritics),
"Indian languages Transliteration" or
ITRANS (uses upper case alphabets suited for
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
keyboards),
and the
National Library at Calcutta romanisation.
In the context of Bengali romanisation, it is important to distinguish
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
from
transcription. Transliteration is orthographically accurate (the original spelling can be recovered), but transcription is phonetically accurate (the pronunciation can be reproduced). English does not have all sounds of Bengali, and pronunciation does not completely reflect orthography. The aim of romanisation is not the same as phonetic transcription. Rather, romanisation is a representation of one ''writing system'' in
Roman (Latin) script. If Bengali script has "ত" and Bengalis pronounce it /to/ there is nevertheless an argument based on writing-system consistency for transliterating it as "त" or "ta." The writing systems of most languages do not faithfully represent the spoken sound of the language, as famously with English words like "enough", "women", or "nation" (see "
ghoti").
History
Portuguese missionaries stationed in Bengal in the 16th century were the first people to employ the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
in writing Bengali books. The most famous are the ''Crepar Xaxtrer Orth, Bhed'' and the ''Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes'', both written by
Manuel da Assumpção. However, the Portuguese-based romanisation did not take root. In the late 18th century, Augustin Aussant used a romanisation scheme based on the French alphabet. At the same time,
Nathaniel Brassey Halhed used a romanisation scheme based on English for his Bengali grammar book. After Halhed, the renowned English philologist and oriental scholar
Sir William Jones
Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was a British philologist, orientalist, Indologist and judge. Born in Westminster, London to Welsh mathematician William Jones, he moved to the Bengal Presidency where Jones served as ...
devised a romanisation scheme for Bengali and other Indian languages in general; he published it in the ''Asiatick Researches'' journal in 1801.
[Jones 1801] His scheme came to be known as the "Jonesian system" of romanisation and served as a model for the next century and a half. Professor Lightner of Lahore Government College opposed it.
[ Bashir Al Helal]
History of the Language Movement, forthcoming publication, February 1995, pp. 685-692
/ref>
100 years after that i.e. at the beginning of the 20th century, Drew, an assistant professor at Eton College
Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
recommended that Indian languages be written in Roman script and for this purpose the magazine called Roman Urdu was launched.[
Abul Fazal Muhammad Akhtaru-d-Din, in an article titled "Bangla Bornomalar Poribortton" (বাংলা বর্ণমালার পরিবর্ত্তন, Changes in the Bengali Alphabet) published in Daily Azad on April 18, 1949, said, ]Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...
once advocated the Roman alphabet for Bengali, but later he changed his opinion.[
]
Bengali language movement
During the Bengali Language Movement
The Bengali language movement was a political movement in East Bengal (modern-day Bangladesh) in 1952, advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as a co-lingua franca of the then-Dominion of Pakistan to allow its use in government ...
of the 1940s–50s, Romanization of Bengali was proposed along with other proposals regarding the determination of the state language of the then Pakistan, but like other proposals it also failed, by establishing Bengali as one of the state languages of Pakistan at that time, with its traditional letters. After 1947, many other East Pakistani academics, including Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda
Muhammad Qudrat-A-Khuda (1 December 1900 – 3 November 1977) was a Bangladeshi Organic chemistry, organic chemist, educationist and writer. He is most notable for publishing ''Qudrat-a-Khuda Education Commission Report'' in 1973 as a chairman ...
and Nazirul Islam Mohammad Sufian, supported the idea of writing Bengali in Roman script.[ In 1948, Mohammad Ferdous Khan opposed it in his pamphlet "The language problem of today".][
Abul Fazl Muhammad Akhtar-ud-Din supported the Roman alphabet in his article entitled "Bangla Bornomalar Poribortton" (বাংলা বর্ণমালার পরিবর্ত্তন, Changes in the Bengali Alphabet) published in Daily Azad on 18 April 1949.][
At 1949, Language Committee of the East-Bengal Government conducted a survey among teachers, intellectuals, high civil servants, members of the Legislative Council, according to which, out of 301 respondents, 96 favored the introduction of the Arabic script, 18 the Roman script and 187 the retention of the Bengali script. Besides, many people did not give any answer.][
]
After language movement
In 1957, the East Pakistan Education Commission recommended the use of the revised Roman script in adult education.[
Around 1957-58, there was a significant demand for the use of Roman letters again. At that time Muhammad Abdul Hai and Muhammad Enamul Haque opposed it.][
]
Transliteration and transcription
Romanisation of a language written in a non-Roman script can be based on either transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
( orthographically accurate and the original spelling can be recovered) or transcription (phonetically accurate, and the pronunciation can be reproduced). The distinction is important in Bengali, as its orthography was adopted from Sanskrit and ignores several millennia of sound change. All writing systems differ at least slightly from the way the language is pronounced, but this is more extreme for languages like Bengali. For example, the three letters শ, ষ, and স had distinct pronunciations in Sanskrit, but over several centuries, the standard pronunciation of Bengali (usually modelled on the Nadia dialect) has lost the phonetic distinctions, and all three are usually pronounced as IPA . The spelling distinction persists in orthography.
In written texts, distinguishing between homophones, such as শাপ ''shap'' "curse" and সাপ ''shap'' "snake", is easy. Such a distinction could be particularly relevant in searching for the term in an encyclopaedia, for example. However, the fact that the words sound identical means that they would be transcribed identically, so some important distinctions of meaning cannot be rendered by transcription. Another issue with transcription systems is that cross-dialectal and cross-register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), ...
differences are widespread, so the same word or lexeme
A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms ta ...
may have many different transcriptions. Even simple words like মন "mind" may be pronounced "mon", "môn", or (in poetry) "mônô" (as in the Indian national anthem, " Jana Gana Mana").
Often, different phonemes
A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...
are represented by the same symbol or grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...
. Thus, the vowel এ can represent either (এল ''elo'' "came") or (এক ''êk'' "one"). Occasionally, words written in the same way (homograph
A homograph (from the , and , ) is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also be pronounced differently, while the Oxford English Dictionar ...
s) may have different pronunciations for differing meanings: মত can mean "opinion" (pronounced ''môt''), or "similar to" (''môtô''). Therefore, some important phonemic distinctions cannot be rendered in a transliteration model. In addition, to represent a Bengali word to allow speakers of other languages to pronounce it easily, it may be better to use a transcription, which does not include the silent letters and other idiosyncrasies (স্বাস্থ্য ''sbasthyô'', spelled , or অজ্ঞান ''ôggên'', spelled ) that make Bengali romanisation so complicated. Such letters are misleading in a phonetic romanisation of Bengali and are often a result of inclusion of the Bengali script with other Indic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
for romanisation, but the other Indic scripts lack the inherent vowel ô, which causes chaos for Bengali romanisation.
A phenomenon in which romanisation of Bengali unintentionally leads to humorous results when translated is known as Murad Takla.
Comparison of romanisations
Comparisons of the standard romanisation schemes for Bengali are given in the table below. Two standards are commonly used for transliteration of Indic languages, including Bengali. Many standards (like NLK/ISO), use diacritic marks and permit case markings for proper nouns. Schemes such as the Harvard-Kyoto one are more suited for ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
-derivative keyboards and use upper- and lower-case letters contrastively, so forgo normal standards for English capitalisation.
* "NLK" stands for the diacritic-based letter-to-letter transliteration schemes, best represented by the National Library at Kolkata romanisation or the ISO 15919
ISO 15919 is an international standard for the romanization of Indic scripts. Published in 2001, it is part of a series of romanization standards by the International Organization for Standardization.
Overview
Relation to other systems
...
, or IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...
. It is the ISO standard, and it uses diacritic marks like ā to reflect the additional characters and sounds of Bengali letters.
* ITRANS is an ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
representation for Sanskrit; it is one-to-many: more than one way of transliterating characters may be used, which can make internet searches more complicated. ITRANS ignores English capitalisation norms to permit representing characters from a normal ASCII keyboard.
* "HK" stands for two other case-sensitive letter-to-letter transliteration schemes: Harvard-Kyoto and XIAST scheme. Both are similar to the ITRANS scheme and use only one form for each character.
Vowels
Consonants
Additional Consonants
Examples
The following table includes examples of Bengali words romanised by using the various systems mentioned above.
A detailed example is given below by the lyrics of the "" as written by Rabindranath Tagore, the first ten lines of this song currently constitute Bangladesh's national anthem.
See also
* Dobhashi
* Roman Urdu
Roman Urdu is the name used for the Urdu language written with the Latin script, also known as Roman script.
According to the Urdu scholar Habib R. Sulemani: "Roman Urdu is strongly opposed by the traditional Arabic alphabet, Arabic script lo ...
* Romanization of Arabic
The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of Modern Standard Arabic, written and varieties of Arabic, spoken Arabic language, Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of na ...
* Devanagari transliteration
Devanagari is an Indic script used for many Indo-Aryan languages of North India and Nepal, including Hindi, Marathi and Nepali, which was the script used to write Classical Sanskrit. There are several somewhat similar methods of translite ...
* Maltese language
Maltese (, also or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language derived from Siculo-Arabic, late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance languages, Romance Stratum (linguistics), superstrata. It is the only Semitic languages, Semitic language pred ...
- a romanised language form of Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...
language
* Fiji Hindi
Fiji Hindi (Devanagari: ; Kaithi: ; Perso-Arabic: ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is considered to be a ''koiné'' language based on Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by other Eastern Hindi ...
- a romanised language form of Hindi language
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and is the ''li ...
Notes
References
{{writing systems
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
Languages of Bangladesh
Bengali