“Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” in Bangla: “প্রেসক্রিপশন ছাড়া কি ওষুধ কেনা যায়?”

When to use it

Use it at a pharmacy in Bangladesh or Kolkata to check whether a medicine is sold without a prescription.

“Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” — The sentence in English

In “Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” ‘Can’ moves before ‘I’ to form the question. ‘without’ is a preposition before ‘a prescription’, and ‘medicine’ takes no article because it is uncountable.

Can

auxiliary verbcan · tense: present · modal verb of ability or permission; it opens the question

I

pronounpersonal pronoun, always written with a capital letter

buy

verbbuy · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · main verb after "can"

medicine

noununcountable noun here, used in a general sense

without

prepositionpreposition

a

determinerindefinite article

prescription

nounnoun; a doctor's written order for medicine

“প্রেসক্রিপশন ছাড়া কি ওষুধ কেনা যায়?” — The sentence in Bangla

In “প্রেসক্রিপশন ছাড়া কি ওষুধ কেনা যায়?” the phrase ‘কেনা যায়’ means ‘can be bought’, with no buyer named, so it asks a general rule. ‘ছাড়া’ (without) is a postposition after ‘প্রেসক্রিপশন’, and the question particle ‘কি’ sits in the middle of the sentence.

প্রেসক্রিপশন

nounnoun from English 'prescription'

ছাড়া

prepositionpostposition 'without', after the noun

কি

particleyes/no question particle; it can sit mid-sentence

ওষুধ

nounnoun 'medicine'

কেনা

verbকেনা · form: verbal noun · কেনা যায় = 'can be bought', with no buyer named

যায়

auxiliary verbযাওয়া · tense: present · mood: possibility · after a verbal noun, যায় means 'it is possible'

English × Bangla: What changes from one language to the other

English asks about ‘I’; Bengali asks impersonally with ‘কেনা যায়’. English ‘without’ comes before the noun, Bengali ‘ছাড়া’ after it, and the particle ‘কি’ does what word order does in English.

Example conversation