![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Back in the before time, in the long, long ago, two people were devising the written script for Bengali.
Person 1: Great, we've come up with symbols for all the vowels and consonants. Since "a" comes after so many consonants, let's call it the "inherent vowel" and just assume it's there after every consonant symbol so we don't have to constantly write it out, thus avoiding needless effort.
Person 2: Okay, but sometimes two or more consonants come together with no "a" sound between them. If we don't write "a", how will we know whether "ght" should be pronounced "gahata," "ghata," "gaht", or "ghta"?
Person 1: Easy. We will create 400+ additional symbols to represent every possible cluster of two or more consonants with no vowels between them.
Person 2: HURRAY WE HAVE AVOIDED NEEDLESS EFFORT?
I realize I am griping about this as a person who learned two syllabaries of 71 symbols and over 2,300 kanji in order to read Japanese at a high school level. This fact does not change my feelings about Bangla script.
これで以上です。
Person 1: Great, we've come up with symbols for all the vowels and consonants. Since "a" comes after so many consonants, let's call it the "inherent vowel" and just assume it's there after every consonant symbol so we don't have to constantly write it out, thus avoiding needless effort.
Person 2: Okay, but sometimes two or more consonants come together with no "a" sound between them. If we don't write "a", how will we know whether "ght" should be pronounced "gahata," "ghata," "gaht", or "ghta"?
Person 1: Easy. We will create 400+ additional symbols to represent every possible cluster of two or more consonants with no vowels between them.
Person 2: HURRAY WE HAVE AVOIDED NEEDLESS EFFORT?
I realize I am griping about this as a person who learned two syllabaries of 71 symbols and over 2,300 kanji in order to read Japanese at a high school level. This fact does not change my feelings about Bangla script.
これで以上です。