Bengali alphabet

Template:Infobox writing system Template:Contains special characters Template:Culture of Bengal Template:Culture of Bangladesh Template:Brahmic The Bangla alphabet or Bengali alphabet (Template:Lang-bn, Bangla bôrṇômala) is the alphabet used to write the Bengali language based on the Bengali-Assamese script, and has historically been used to write Sanskrit within Bengal. It is one of the most widely adopted writing systems in the world (used by over 265 million people).

From a classificatory point of view, the Bengali writing system is an abugida, i.e. its vowel graphemes are mainly realised not as independent letters, but as diacritics modifying the vowel inherent in the base letter they are added to. Bengali writing system is written from left to right and use a single letter case, which make it a monocameral script, as opposed to bicameral ones like Latin alphabet. It is recognisable, as are other Brahmic scripts, by a distinctive horizontal line known as matra (Template:Lang) running along the tops of the letters that links them together. The Bengali writing system is however less blocky and presents a more sinuous shape than the Devanagari script.