Things to know about Bengali
Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh and several states in India. It is commonly ranked as one of the top five languages in terms of the number of native speakers.
If your Bengali lessons require you to type Bengali characters, follow the instructions immediately below to do so. If your lessons use transliterated Bengali, see the Using Transliterated Bengali Lessons section further down.
Using Bengali Lessons
Bengali is written in a syllabic alphabet that is very different from the English alphabet. It is, however, similar to the Devanagari alphabet used by Hindi. In the Bengali alphabet, all consonants have an inherent vowel sound. Special diacritic marks can be used to change the default vowel sound. In addition to the consonant characters and diacritics, there are separate characters that can be used to write the vowels independently and a large assortment of special conjunct characters that can be used to write consonant clusters.
There are no uppercase or lowercase forms for Bengali letters. The Bengali language is written from left to right, like English. Most Bengali letters have at least a partial bar at the top, which connects to the other letters in a word.
Typing Basic Vowels and Consonants
You can use the virtual keyboard to type Bengali characters. Each of the basic vowels and consonants can be typed directly from the keyboard. To type one of these characters, locate the character on the virtual keyboard, then press the corresponding key on your keyboard or use your mouse to click on the virtual keyboard on the screen. Many additional characters are available by holding down the Shift key, so if you do not immediately see the character you want, try that option.
Typing Vowel Diacritic Marks and Modifier Symbols
In addition to stand-alone vowels and consonants, the virtual keyboard also shows vowel diacritic marks and special modifier symbols (hasanta, anusvara, visarga, chandra-bindu, etc.). To type a diacritic or a modifier along with a Bengali character, press the key for the base character first, then press the key for the diacritic mark. You may need to hold down the Shift key or the Ctrl and Alt keys to see some of the diacritics and modifiers.
Typing Punctuation Marks
You can find punctuation marks on the virtual keyboard, too. For example, the Bengali period, which looks like a vertical line, appears on the period key when you hold down the Shift key. You may need to type punctuation marks when working with certain lists.
Typing Conjunct Characters (Consonant Clusters)
In Bengali, when two or more consonants form part of a consonant cluster, they are written using special conjunct characters. There are many conjunct characters in Bengali. Typing these characters is perhaps the trickiest part of typing in Bengali, but as you learn to do so, you will also be learning the valuable skill of recognizing and reading these common characters.
To type a consonant cluster, start by typing the first consonant, then type the hasanta symbol, 
, which indicates the removal of the consonant's inherent vowel sound. The hasanta is associated with the d key on the keyboard. You will see the hasanta appear under the first consonant. Next, type the second consonant. The first consonant and the hasanta will be replaced by the correct conjunct form for the two consonants. If you need to add a third consonant to the cluster, press the d key to add another hasanta, then press the key for the third consonant. Again, the correct conjunct form for the cluster will appear.
The tricky part is recognizing which consonants make up a cluster, as the combination may not always be obvious from the conjunct form. A chart of some common conjunct characters and the characters used to type them is shown below:
Remember that the English characters shown above are the ones used to type the Bengali characters, but they do not correspond with the pronunciation. If you need to type a conjunct character that is not shown here, listen carefully to the sound of that character to determine the consonants included in it, look to see which keys would be used to type those individual characters, then type the conjunct character according to the instructions above. Note that the application may not allow you to combine characters that are never used together in Bengali.
If you want to learn Bengali without having to type the Bengali characters, you can concentrate on the activities which do not require typing. Alternatively, you can use transliterated Bengali lists instead.
Using Transliterated Bengali Lessons
Some units may include transliterated Bengali lessons in addition to lessons which use the actual Bengali characters. Transliterated lessons can help you master vocabulary and pronunciation before tackling a new writing system.
You do not have to type actual Bengali characters in transliterated Bengali lessons. You can type the transliterations in any activity or assessment that requires typed answers.
The transliterated Bengali content may use special characters such as ś to indicate certain sounds. See Typing accents or special characters for instructions on typing these characters.
Be aware that capital and lowercase letters are used to represent different Bengali characters. For that reason, you may see capital letters in the middle of words, and you will notice that the first word in a transliterated Bengali sentence is not always capitalized. You do not have to match the capitalization when you type answers.