Bengali (Bangla) Alphabet Book

Bengali is an important and beautiful language. Unfortunately, it is not widely appreciated in the English speaking world, and there are a paucity of resources compared to its more widely known cousin, Hindi. That is why you may be tempted to buy this book. Don't. You will be disappointed. Here is what you get. The book is 36 pages. The first 28 pages introduce the letters, two per page. The pronunciation is given for each letter, and usually (but not always) an example of a Bengali word containing that letter. Especially puzzling is that for a handful of letters, the author states that there is no example in Bengali. Huh? Of course there is an example in Bengali, but for reasons unknown, the author decided not to give an example. The last 8 pages consist of tables of conjuncts and the number system. I cannot figure out who this book is intended for. For adults, it's useless. The same information is contained in the first pages of Teach Yourself Bengali or any other Bengali language resource. Of course, those books (for about the same price) also teach the entire language. I suppose the book is intended for children, but what children? Presumably for children of Bengali speakers who want to teach their children the writing system, but I can't see that this would be of much assistance, because anybody who is literate in Bengali can provide the same information without the book. Bottom line, the information in the book is nothing more than what is readily available on the web, and the price is ridiculous for what you get.

Well done to start from zero. The weak point is that the bangla reader is rapidly confronted to complex fusionned letters that are not developed in the book. Just for initiation

Sometimes the words doesn't have the right sound that correlates with the letter its put with, very limited information. If you want to actually know how to speak Bangla then this book definitely isn't the way. The way it explains how to sound out letters, its close to impossible if not just impossible to have the pronunciation right. But there is one good thing about this book and its you could "familiarize" or better yet just memorize how Bangla letters look that's all.

Nice book for kids who want to know bengali alphabets. Few words are wrong but overall the experience is good.

This book does weird things like give you a word that doesn't have the actual letter sound in it! For an English example: giving someone the word Knight to show them how to pronounce the letter K. The k is silent in that word. How is that teaching someone how to pronounce K? The book does that with Bengali words. Not useful at all!