Bengali
বাংলা Bangla
The word "Bangla" in Bengali script
Spoken in	Bangladesh, India (mainly in West Bengal); significant communities in UK, USA, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Burma, Canada
Native speakers	193 million  (2001)[1] Total: 230 million (2003)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Eastern Assamese–Bengali Bengali
Writing system	Bengali script
Official status
Official language in	Bangladesh,  India (West Bengal, Tripura and Barak Valley) (comprising districts of south Assam- Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi)
Regulated by	Bangla Academy (Bangladesh) Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (West Bengal)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	bn
ISO 639-2	ben
ISO 639-3	ben
Linguasphere	59-AAF-u (including Sylheti etc), 30 varieties: 59-AAF-ua...59-AAF-uk
Bengali-speaking area
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Bengali (Bengali: বাংলা Bangla [ˈbaŋla] ( listen)) is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script. With about 193 million native and about 230 million total speakers,^[2] Bengali is one of the most spoken languages (ranked sixth^[3]) in the world. The National song and the National anthem of India, and the National anthem of Bangladesh were composed in Bengali.

Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from the Magadhi Prakrit, which developed from a dialect or group of dialects that were close to, but different from, Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.^[4] It is now the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second most commonly spoken language in India.^[5][6]

With a rich literary tradition arising from the Bengali Renaissance, Bengali binds together a culturally diverse region and is an important contributor to Bengali nationalism. In former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), the strong linguistic consciousness led to the Bengali Language Movement, during which on 21 February 1952, several people were killed during protests to gain its recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan and to maintain its writing in the Bengali script. The day has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh, and was proclaimed the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO on 17 November 1999.

Rabindranath Tagore

History[link]

Shaheed Minar, or the Martyr's monument, in Dhaka, commemorates the struggle for the Bengali language.

Pages from the Charyapada.

Bengali belongs to the eastern group of the Indo-Aryan languages, here marked in yellow.

Like other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, the earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and the language of the Buddha, evolved into the Jain Prakrit or Ardhamagadhi "Half Magadhi" in the early part of the first millennium CE.^[7][8] Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa ("Corrupted grammar") languages just before the turn of the first millennium.^[9] The local Apabhraṃśa language of the eastern subcontinent, Purvi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta ("Meaningless Sounds"), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Assamese-Bengali languages. Some argue that the points of divergence occurred much earlier—going back to even 500^[10] but the language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Prakrit is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for a period of time.^[11]

Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:^[9]

1. Old Bengali (900/1000–1400)—texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc.; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Assamese (Ahomiya) branches out in this period and Oriya just before this period (8th century-1300). The scripts and languages during this period were mainly influenced by the Kamrupi language (script-Kamrupa Prakrit) as the entire region- Assam, Bengal and parts of Bihar and Orissa was under the Kamrupa kingdom (now known as Assam).
2. Middle Bengali (1400–1800)—major texts of the period include Chandidas's Shreekrishna Kirtana; elision of word-final ô sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods.
3. New Bengali (since 1800)—shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar → tar "his"/"her"; koriyachilô → korechilo he/she had done).

Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu era) and also during the Bengal Renaissance.^{[12][citation needed]} Of the modern Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and its neighbors, Oriya and Assamese (Ahomiya), in the east maintain a largely Pali/Sanskrit vocabulary base, as doesMarathi in the center-west. Standard Hindi and others such as Punjabi, Sindhi and Gujarati are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.^[13]

One should note that spoken Hindi and spoken Urdu are identical at base. However, the current standard literary form of Hindi employs a great deal of imported Sanskrit vocabulary, while the literary form of Urdu is replete with borrowings from Arabic and Persian.

Until the 18th century, there was no attempt to document Bengali grammar. The first written Bengali dictionary/grammar, Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, was written by the Portuguese missionary Manuel da Assumpção between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal Estate.^[14] Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar (A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time.^[2] Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali reformer,^[15] also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832).

During this period, the Choltibhasha form, using simplified inflections and other changes, was emerging from Shadhubhasha (older form) as the form of choice for written Bengali.^[16]

Bengali was the focus, in 1951–52, of the Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolon) in what was then East Bengal (today Bangladesh).^[17] Although the Bengali language was spoken by the majority of East Bengal's population, Urdu was legislated as the sole national language of the Dominion of Pakistan.^[18] On February 21, 1952, protesting students and activists were fired upon by military and police in the University of Dhaka and three young students and several other people were killed.^[19] Later in 1999, UNESCO declared 21 February as the International Mother Language Day in recognition of the deaths.^[20][21] In a separate event on May 19, 1961, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.^[22]

Geographical distribution[link]

The extent of Bengali inside Bangladesh.

Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal and parts of Assam and Tripura. Besides this region it is also spoken by majority of the population in the union territory Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in:

• the Middle East (namely, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait)
• Europe
• North America
• South-East Asia
• Pakistan (Karachi; see Bangladeshis in Pakistan)^[23]

Official status[link]

Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh, and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India.^[24] It is the official language of the states of West Bengal and Tripura.^[25] It is also a major language in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.^[26][27] It is also the co-official language of Assam, which has three predominantly Sylheti-speaking districts of southern Assam, Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi^[28] Bengali is a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand from September 2011. It is also a recognized secondary language in the City of Karachi in Pakistan. In December 2002, Sierra Leone’s President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah also named Bengali as an "official language" in recognition of the work of 5,300 troops from Bangladesh in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone peacekeeping force.^[29][30] The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.^[31] In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations.^[32]

Dialects[link]

Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee grouped these dialects into four large clusters—Rarh, Banga, Kamarupa and Varendra;^[2] but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed.^[33] The south-western dialects (Rarh) form the basis of standard colloquial Bengali, while Bangal is the dominant dialect group in Bangladesh. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh (Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as fricatives.^{[citation needed]} Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [tɕ], ছ [tɕʰ], জ [dʑ] correspond to eastern চʻ [ts], ছ় [s], জʻ [dz]~[z]. The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels.^{[citation needed]} Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma Bangla, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Rajbangsi, Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects.^[34]