english alphabet with bangla pronunciation

Rahman discussed the English phonemes (sounds) such as, ,, ,, , which are not directly present in Bangla language. He ran a three day workshop at Teachers’ Training College, Dhaka from 3rd to 5th September last to introduce the idea of BPA and to train 12 teacher trainers and secondary English teachers from across the country with a hope that these trainers will disseminate BPA among the English teachers and students. In order to help Bangladeshi English speakers to learn better pronunciation, Amin Rahman, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Australia has innovated a way which is believed to contribute to improve the English pronunciation of the native Bangla speakers.

However, right pronunciations of some words of a foreign language become challenging when a sound is absent in native language of a learner. It is a rule of a language that a word must be pronounced in a way as written in a standard dictionary of that particular language. Besides, wrong pronunciations hamper understanding a speaker and sometimes the incorrect pronunciation may convey misleading meaning. However, if not uttered properly, it becomes a matter of laughter among the erudite listeners and the use of bad language, whether diction or pronunciation, tells others about the education and personality of a speaker. Not only the sounds, but also the meanings are also arbitrary, illogical in the sense that there is no reason why we say ‘BOI’, the Arabs call the same thing ‘KITAB’, and the English call it ‘BOOK’. The definition of oral language says that a language is an arbitrary vocal sound that the people of a certain community use for communication among the members.

For example, Japanese does not have ‘l’/ল/ sound, and that is why they cannot pronounce ‘Bangladesh’ as we do they utter it like ‘Bangradesh’ or similar to it. Moreover, every single language does not have all the sounds used by the speakers of different languages of the world. It happens in case of all the languages of the world. For example, the pronunciation of ‘But’/bʌt/ and ‘Put’/p t/ is different where there is no reason why they are dissimilarly pronounced. Learners and speakers of a native or a foreign language have to use a standard dictionary and thus have to learn the right pronunciation of a particular word. It is interesting that no language is pronounced as it is written. We have to use IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) to notate the pronunciation of any oral languages.

BPA stands for Bangla Phonetic Alphabet which, it is believed, can be used for improving English pronunciation of the native Bangla speakers.

English alphabet with bangla pronunciation