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Font: Bengali
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.
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