LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 6 : 1 January 2006

Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Associate Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.

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Copyright © 2004
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A SIMPLE SCRIPT FOR BANGLA AND THE IPA MAPPING THEREOF
Shah M. Musa, Ph.D.

The conjuncts (or ligatures) are a fundamental issue for the Bangla (Bengali) script (or lipi), as it is for any other Brahmi script (e.g., Devanagari, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, etc). The conjuncts make the script unnecessarily complex and difficult to learn and to use. The conjuncts not only engender an exponentially large number of total characters for the script, but also render the character set to stay undefined and open ended. For example, one is unable to definitively answer the question, exactly how many conjunct characters are there in the Bangla script? By doing away with the conjuncts we not only make the script simpler, complete, and more elegant, but also open up a whole new world of opportunities where any complex sounding foreign word (e.g. words like Tsunami, Ptolemy, etc, which possess complex affricate sounds) can easily be imported or any new word can easily be coined and represented without redefining the character set of the script.

In this paper, a complete script of a conjunct-free writing system of Bangla, named as Nobobangla, is presented. The alphabet set of the Nobobangla script and the rules to convert any Bangla word into Nobobangla format is described. Nobobangla is simple, direct, and easy to use in computing and in any other use. An efficient and easy-to-memorize mapping of the QWERTY keyboard for the Nobobangla characters is illustrated.

A phonetic analysis of the Nobobangla script is presented in this paper, for the richness and the completeness of its sounds. An exhaustive list of the Nobobangla phonemes are presented using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabets) symbols. A number of example Nobobangla words are analyzed showing syllables, stresses, and phonemic pronunciations.

The concepts and the ideas of Nobobangla are equally applicable to other Brahmi scripts, as named earlier. In designing, developing, grouping and ordering the alphabets of the Nobobangla script, we put significant effort to make sure that each character (in both the vowel and the consonant tables, as illustrated below) has (or potentially has) a phonetically identical character in any Brahmi script (with 1:1 mapping), though the artistic rendering of the character may be different for different Brahmi scripts. In other words, in our new simple and enhanced scripting proposal below, the Nobobangla character set generically represent the alphabet set of any Brahmi script, except the artistic rendering.

This paper is presented as a PDF file, because of numerous Bangla characters and the alternatives suggested. Please click the link given below to access the complete paper in a printer-friendly format.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PRINTER-FRIENDLY COMPLETE ARTICLE.

TSUNAMI AFTER-SHOCKS- SOME JAPANESE WORDS IN ENGLISH | A SOCIO-LINGUISTC STUDY OF CODE SWITCHING AMONG THE COCHIN TAMILS | PRACTICING LITERARY TRANSLATION - A SYMPOSIUM BY MAIL -- FOURTH ROUND | TEXT FAMILIARITY, READING TASKS, AND ESP TEST PERFORMANCE: A STUDY ON IRANIAN LEP AND NON-LEP UNIVERSITY STUDENTS - A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION | ADVANCED WRITING - A COURSE TEXTBOOK | A SIMPLE SCRIPT FOR BANGLA AND THE IPA MAPPING THEREOF | EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE POLICY - BRITISH CABINET MISSION TO CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY - CHANGING POLICIES OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS AND THE ALL INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE | NAYANAGARI - A SIMPLE CONJUNCT-FREE SCRIPT FOR DEVANAGARI | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

Shah M. Musa, Ph.D.
Intel Corporation
Santa Clara, CA, USA
shah.musa@intel.com
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