Many take advantage of software and hardware accessibility in the English language. However, for non native speakers, this inevitably becomes a problem; specifically for the complex Bangla language which is not easily integrated into the world of technology. Technical Challenges and Design Issues in Bangla Language Processing addresses the difficulties as well as the overwhelming benefits associated with creating programs and devices that are accessible to the speakers of the Bangla language. Professionals, students, and researchers interested in expanding the fields of computing, information and knowledge management, and communication technologies in the non-English realm will benefit from this comprehensive collection of research.

Bangla is spoken as the majority language in Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India, and as a minority language in several other Indian states. With almost 200 million native speakers, it ranks among the top ten languages in the world in number of speakers. Based on both primary and secondary materials, the CASL Bangla grammar provides comprehensive coverage of the phonology, orthography, morphology, and syntax of Bangla. Plentiful examples of naturally-occurring sentences provide native orthography, Romanization, and morpheme-by-morpheme glossing along with free translations. Unlike many Romanizations of Bangla, our system eschews Sanskritic influence and instead reflects actual Bangla phonology. We also offer comparative information of use to linguists, highlighting features of Bangla shared with the South Asian sprachbund, such as light verb constructions, as well as those that differentiate Bangla from its Indo-Aryan relatives; for example, its unique NP structure. Written in an accessible style from a theory-neutral perspective, this work will be of use to linguistic researchers, language scholars, and students of Bangla. A formal grammar focusing on the morphology is an available companion work.

This volume forms a part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series which deals with schools, movements, and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of Bengali or Bangla literature and its critical tradition across a century. The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions, and reinterpretations of primary concepts and categories in Bangla. It presents 32 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Bengal from the middle of the 19th to that of the 20th century, with most of them translated for the first time into English. These seminal essays are linked with socio-historical events and phenomena in the colonial and post-independence period in Bengal, including the background to the Language Movement in Bangladesh. They discuss themes such as integrative aesthetic visions, poetic and literary forms, modernism, imagination, power structures and social struggles, ideological values, cultural renovations, and humanism. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Bangla literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Bengali/Bangla language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Bengali-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Bengal and conservation of languages and culture

Bangla (Bengali), an Eastern Indo-Aryan Language, is the national language of Bangladesh with 150 million speakers and the state language of Paschim Banga (West Bengal) in India with 90 million speakers. There are sizeable communities of Bengalis scattered all over the world. Altogether, the number of native speakers make Bangla the fifth or sixth largest language in the world. Like Hindi and other South Asian languages, Bangla has subject-object-verb word order, postpositions, causative and compound verbs. Unlike Hindi it has no gender. This volume presents a systematic overview of the language, from the sound system to parts of speech, syntactic categories to reduplicative features and some short text passages. The book is written in transliteration throughout to provide ease and convenience to non-Bengali as well as to Bengali linguists and students. In order to connect linguistic analysis with the living language, the book is furnished with plenty of real language examples, demonstrating the spirit, grace and wit of the Bangla language.

This collection presents a holistic picture of the sociolinguistic landscape in Bangladesh, offering a critical understanding of language ideologies and social inequalities in the country, as they connect more widely to dynamics in the Global South. The book seeks to untangle the voices embedded in the language practices of a range of communities and professions in the region, which have been little studied in the literature, and encourage a rethinking of the relationships between language and nationality, class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Highlighting perspectives from established and emerging researchers and drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches and methodologies, the volume is organized around such key themes as bilingualism and diglossia; language variation across domains; language and identity in literature; and the interconnectedness of language, identity, and globalization. Taken together, the collection calls attention to the socially and spatially situated nature of language practices in Bangladesh and in turn, the ways in which scholars in the Global South make sense of the sociolinguistic landscape at both the local and global levels. This book will appeal to scholars working in sociolinguistics, particularly those working on language policy, language and identity, language variation, and in or about the Global South.