Bengali phonology

The phonology of Bengali, like that of its neighbouring Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, is characterised by a wide variety of diphthongs and inherent back vowels (both /o/ and /ɔ/).

(ʌ)[d] Although the standard form of Bengali is largely uniform across Bangladesh and India, there are a few sounds that vary in pronunciation (in addition to the myriad variations in non-standard dialects): Native Bengali (তদ্ভব tôdbhôbo) words do not allow initial consonant clusters;[10] the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e. one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side).

Sanskrit (তৎসম tôtśômo) words borrowed into Bengali, however, possess a wide range of clusters, expanding the maximum syllable structure to CCCVC.

One example of a final cluster in a standard Bengali word would be গঞ্জ gônj, which is found in names of hundreds of cities and towns across Bengal, including নবাবগঞ্জ Nôbabgônj and মানিকগঞ্জ Manikgônj.

For example, in some Purbo (eastern) dialects, final consonant clusters consisting of a nasal and its corresponding oral stop are common, as in চান্দ chand ('moon').

Magadhan languages such as Bengali are known for their wide variety of diphthongs, or combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable.

[15] For Bengali words, intonation or pitch of voice have minor significance, apart from a few cases such as distinguishing between identical vowels in a diphthong.

The suffix ṭa ('the') can be added to ca to form caṭa ('the tea'), and the long vowel is preserved, creating a minimal pair ([ˈtʃaʈa] vs. [ˈtʃaˑʈa]).

[9] The influence of older substrate and Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology is more observable in eastern Bengali dialects, and becomes increasingly prominent eastwards.

In dialects of the Mymensingh, Sylhet, Chittagong Divisions of Bangladesh (and bordering areas of Dhaka and Barishal Divisions), and Tripura and Barak Valley of India, alveolar stops are realized in place of postalveolar stops ট [t̠], ঠ [t̠ʰ], ড [d̠], and ঢ [d̠ʱ], resembling the equivalent phonemes in Southeast Asian languages such as Thai and Lao.

However, the distinction is often less clear in western and central dialects (unless in careful or conservative speech), and fully lost in eastern dialects, where both tap sounds are realized as either the alveolar tap or the alveolar approximant [ɹ], similar to Assamese ৰ, due to older substrate and Tibeto-Burman influence.

Some variants of the Bengali, particularly the Chittagonian, and Sylheti, have contrastive tone and so differences in pitch can distinguish words.