Bengali Language

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This chapter describes the linguistic resources included in the file ben.zip of the lang folder.

The iso-639-3 code of Bengali language is BEN.

List of phonemes

Consonant Plosives

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
b b voiced bilabial
b_h bʰ voiced bilabial aspirated
c c voiceless palatal
c_h cʰ voiceless palatal aspirated
d d voiced alveolar
d_h dʰ voiced alveolar aspirated
d| ɖ | voiced retroflex | | | d_h ɖʰ voiced retroflex aspirated
g g voiced velar
g_h gʰ voiced velar
J\ ɟ voiced palatal
J_h ɟʰ voiced palatal aspirated
k k voiceless velar
k_h kʰ voiceless velar aspirated
p p voiceless bilabial
p_h pʰ voiceless bilabial aspirated
t t voiceless alveolar
t_h tʰ voiceless alveolar aspirated
t` ʈ voiceless retroflex
t`_h ʈʰ voiceless retroflex aspirated

Notice that J and J_h were both in the first version of the pronunciation dictionary but are no longer in the current version. They remain in the acoustic model, so they can be used for Phonetization.

Affricates

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
dZ d͡ʒ voiced postalveolar
dZ_h d͡ʒʰ voiced postalveolar aspirated

Consonant Fricatives

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
f f voiceless labiodental
h h voiceless glottal
s s voiceless alveolar
S ʃ voiceless postalveolar
v v voiced labiodental
z z voiced alveolar
Z ʒ voiced postalveolar

Consonant Nasals

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
m m bilabial
n n alveolar
N ŋ voiced velar

Consonant Liquids

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
l l alveolar lateral
r r alveolar trill
r| ɽ | voiced retroflex flap | | | r_h ɽʰ voiced retroflex flap aspirated

Semivowels

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
j j voiced palatal
w w voiced labiovelar

Vowels

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
@ ə schwa
a a open front unrounded
{ æ near-open front unrounded vowel
e e close-mid front unrounded
i i close front unrounded
O ɔ open-mid back rounded
o o close-mid back rounded
u u close back rounded

Nasal vowels (~)

SPPAS IPA Description Examples
a~ ã open front unrounded nasal vowel
e~ ẽ close-mid front unrounded nasal vowel
i~ ĩ close front unrounded nasal vowel
O~ ɔ̃ open-mid back unrounded nasal vowel
o~ õ close-mid back unrounded nasal vowel
u~ ũ close back unrounded nasal vowel

Fillers

SPPAS Description
laugh laughter
noise noises, unintelligible speech
dummy un-transcribed speech
fp filled pause

Pronunciation Dictionary

The pronunciation dictionary is Copyright 2015, 2016 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved., with a CC-4.0 license. It was downloaded in October 2021, from: https://github.com/google/language-resources/tree/master/bn/data/

The phonemes have been converted to X-SAMPA and the file format to HTK-ASCII by Brigitte Bigi. Pronunciations were revised by Moumita PAKRASHI of Centre for Linguistic Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.

The dictionary is re-distributed under the terms of its original Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License.

Acoustic Model

The model was developed using a Python script available in the SPPAS package: acmtrain.py.

This is the second version of the acoustic model. It was trained with a set of 6 manually time-aligned files (totalling about 18 seconds of speech) and 1,300 orthographically transcribed files (totalling 36 minutes of speech).

The model is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License.