Virtual Bangladesh: Bengali Primer: Lesson 2

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Basic Bengali Grammar

These are just some basic points of Bengali grammar that non-Bengali speakers must keep in mind when learning Bengali. The grammar will gradually be made clear to you in more details in succeeding lessons. For now, please take to heart the following three very essential points.

Bengali grammar generally follows the SOV form (Subject Object Verb) though in some rare cases SVO forms are allowable. Consider the following sentence:

Lexicon: Ami [I], Am [Mango] khAi [eat, present tense]
Bengali: Ami Am khAi
English: I eat Mango.

Bengali does not require the verb to be in the Subject-Verb Complement types of sentences. Instead of saying I am a student, in Bengali it is grammatically correct to say: I student. The verb to be is inherent in such sentences. An example is given below:

Lexicon: chhAtro [student, masculine]
Bengali: Ami chhAtro
English: I am a student.

Based on the subject of the sentence the, basic root of a verb form is modified by appending a suffix. Examples will be given in a succeeding lesson.