How this course works
Bengali — বাংলা bangla — is the sixth most spoken language in the world, with around 270 million speakers. It is the national language of Bangladesh and the official language of West Bengal, Tripura, and parts of Assam in India.
What you will be able to do
By the end you will read and write the Bengali script, pronounce it accurately, greet people, introduce yourself, count, shop, ask directions, and build your own simple sentences. You will not be fluent — that takes years — but you will be past the barrier that stops most beginners, and able to keep learning from real material.
How the course is arranged
| MODULE | WHAT IT COVERS |
|---|---|
| The script | Vowels, consonants, vowel signs, and conjuncts |
| Words and sentences | Pronouns, word order, postpositions, present tense |
| First conversations | Greetings, introductions, questions, negation |
| Everyday Bengali | Numbers, family, food and shopping, time and directions |
| Reading practice | Putting it together, and where to go next |
A quiz closes each module. You need 70% to pass and may retake it freely.
How to study
Write every letter by hand. Bengali letters are distinguished by small differences, and the hand learns them faster than the eye. Ten repetitions each.
Say everything aloud. Bengali has aspirated consonants and a retroflex series that English does not, and they only become reliable through the mouth.
Thirty to forty minutes per lesson is the intended pace. There is no prize for rushing the script — everything afterwards rests on it.
ABOUT THE TRANSLITERATION Roman spellings of Bengali vary widely. This course writes what is easiest to pronounce for an English speaker and marks the inherent vowel as o, because that is what it actually sounds like — কম is kom, not kam.