A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. To represent a vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent \u0254 is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures. Since the Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments, but carry an “inherent” vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side).<\/p>\n
In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. The Bengali consonant clusters (\u09af\u09c1\u0995\u09cd\u09a4\u09ac\u09cd\u09af\u099e\u09cd\u099c\u09a8 jukt\u00f4b\u00eanj\u00f4n) are usually realised as ligatures, where the consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing h\u00f4s\u00f4nt\u00f4, three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation.<\/p>\n
The same \u09b9\u09cd\u09af is pronounced as ‘h\u00e6’ as in \u09b9\u09cd\u09af\u09be\u0981 (meaning “yes”) (written as hy\u0101m\u0310 but pronounced as nasalised “h\u00e6”). For example, ‘\u09b9\u09cd\u09af’ as in \u0990\u09a4\u09bf\u09b9\u09cd\u09af (meaning “heritage”) where hy is pronounced as jjh (written as aitihya but pronounced as \u014ditijjh\u014d). Examples are \u09b2\u0995\u09cd\u09b7\u09cd\u09ae\u09a3 (written as lak\u1e63ma\u1e47a but pronounced as lokkh\u014dn “Lakshman”), \u09ac\u09bf\u09b6\u09cd\u09ac\u09be\u09b8 (written as bi\u015bb\u0101sa but pronounced as bi\u015b\u015ba\u015b “belief”), \u09ac\u09be\u09a7\u09cd\u09af (written as b\u0101dhya but pronounced as baddh\u014d “obliged”) and \u09b8\u09cd\u09ac\u09be\u09b8\u09cd\u09a5\u09cd\u09af (written as sb\u0101sthya but pronounced as \u015basth\u014d “health”). Many consonant clusters have different sounds than their constituent consonants. Another kind of inconsistency is concerned with the incomplete coverage of phonological information in the script. The letter \u09b7 also, sometimes, retains the voiceless retroflex sibilant \u0282 sound when used in certain consonant conjuncts as in \u0995\u09b7\u09cd\u099f k\u0254\u0282\u0288o “suffering”, \u0997\u09cb\u09b7\u09cd\u09a0\u09c0 \u0261o\u0282\u0288\u02b0i “clan”, etc.<\/p>\n