Bengali alphabet might be the coolest I've ever seen
I've been wanting to learn Bengali for some time now. I watched a documentary where it was spoken, and I fell in love with its sound. Now I finally sat down to it. And oh boy, I was in for a nice surprise.
Bangla's writing system, it results, is super complicated. And extremely interesting. They have a ton of consonants (39) and two types of vowels - independent (written separately) and dependent, which are added to the consonant - sometimes in front of it, sometimes after, or above, or below, or... fun!
Also, each consonant comes with an inherent vowel - a. So the "L" letter is actually "LA" (ল). What if you want to add another consonant right after? Well, if you drop the inherent "a", the consonants connect, and create a brand new letter. For example - ল (la) + ক (ka) = ল্ক (lka). And there are hundreds of those!
I installed the Bangla keyboard on my phone, and it's just overwhelming. Trying to type anything feels like solving a crazy puzzle. And it takes a lot of googling, too. For example, who would have thought that this little guy - ્ (hasanta) - erases the inherent vowel (a). Did I already mention it's fun?
Here's how to type the word "kilogram" as an example: কিলোগ্রাম -> কি (ki) + লো (lo) + গ্রা (gra) + ম (ma)
ki - ক (ka) + ি (i) = কি (the vowel "i" is added before the consonant!)
lo - ল (la) + ো (o) = লো (here the "o" is attached around the consonant)
gra - গ (ga) + ્ (hasanta, removes the "a" from the consonant) + র (ra) + া (a) = গ্রা (a new letter is created)
ma - ম (the letter "m" with its inherent vowel)
(wiping the sweat off my forehead) I love it!