Just be patient and kind to yourself, and you’ll get there. But you do get a sense for it as you engage with the language. How do you know when to pronounce the inherent vowel at the end of a word? Great question! You just have to know, lol. মত – Moto (like, as in a comparison, ম ◌ত ◌ ) Sometimes the inherent vowel shows up at the end of words, too. To read/write Bengali with fluency, you need to train your eye to see the inherent vowel between consonants like this: ক ◌ল ◌ম, “K aw-L awm”, pen! Remember when I said that vowels have two forms–lower and uppercase? Welp, here’s the first exception: this bad boy is called the “inherent vowel” because it’s the vowel you assume when no vowel is present between consonants, as is the case with many Bengali words. It’s not like the sound you make when you see a kitten (“AAmericans don’t open their mouths too much when speaking, and I’ve found that I make more of an O-shape with my lips and lower my jaw a bit more than I do when making this vowel sound in my American-accented English. I wrote “aw” in the header up there, but that’s pretty exaggerated and not quite right. If you are a native Bangla speaker or a linguist, and you think I’ve made a mistake, let me know in the comments! অ – “aw”Ī lot of times this letter is represented as “a” in transliterations, which I think is a little misleading because to me it sounds more like the letter “o”, like in the English word “ on”.

*Another Disclaimer* – I do not in any way pretend to be an expert here. BUT let’s not over complicate things just yet. *Disclaimer* – alas, there are exceptions to pretty much everything I’m about to explain. Unlike Bangla consonants, though, they are represented by two different symbols depending on whether they are the first letter in a word or attached to a consonant–in my humble opinion, it’s easier to think of it as uppercase and lowercase vowels. The good news is all these suckers make sounds that are used in English too, which is always helpful. The very foundation of your Bengali education begins with these very basic vowel sounds.

*Note* for those who are thinking “ I don’t need your commentary, just give me a nice chart.”Īlrighty, here we go.

Bengali alphabet fill in the gaps