1

BANGLA, SELECTIVE NOTE:

Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the
Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages.

Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day
Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, southern Assam- also known as Barak Valley, and part of
Tripura. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages (ranking
fifth[2] or sixth[3]) in the world. Bengali is the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second
most spoken language in India.[5][6] Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-
Iranian languages and the most eastern of the Indo-European languages.

With its long and rich literary tradition, Bengali serves to bind together a culturally diverse region. In 1952,
when Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, this strong sense of identity led to the Bengali Language
Movement, in which several people braved bullets and died on February 21. This day has now been
declared as the International Mother Language Day.

History

Like other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages of the
Indian subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit and Maithili, the earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and
the language of the Buddha, evolved into 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 Apabhramsa languages just before the turn of the first millennium.[9] The local Apabhramsa language
of the eastern subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or Apabhramsa Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional
dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Bengali-
Assamese 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 Apabhramsa Abahatta around the
6th century which competed with 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. Oriya and Assamese branch out in this
period.
2. Middle Bengali (1400–1800)—major texts of the period include Chandidas's Srikrishnakirtan;
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"; koriyachhilô → korechhilo he/she had done).

Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali
(Chaitanya era), and also during the Bengal Renaissance.[12][citation needed] Of the modern Indo-European
languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi maintain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and
others such as Punjabi, Sindhi and Gujarati are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.[13]
 2

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

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 Manoel da Assumpcam between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in
Bhawal.[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.[1] Raja 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 Pakistan (now Bangladesh).[17] Although Bengali language was spoken by majority of Pakistan's
population, Urdu was legislated as the sole national language.[18] On February 21, 1952, protesting students
and activists were fired upon by military and police in Dhaka University and three young students and
several other people were killed.[19] Later in 1999, UNESCO decided to celebrate every 21 February as
International Mother Language Day in recognition of the deaths of the three students.[20][21] In a separate
event in May 1961, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that
mandated the use of the Assamese language

States of India by Bengali speakers

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The following is a list of Indian states and union territories with a significant proportion of the population
in these states speaking Bengali (only those states and union territories considered where more than 1% of
the total population speak Bengali).[1]

State / Union Territory Percentage of population speaking Bengali

West Bengal 85%
Tripura 67%
Assam 28%
Andaman & Nicobar Islands 26%
Jharkhand 56%
Arunachal Pradesh 9%
Mizoram 9%
Meghalaya 8%
Nagaland 3%
Delhi 2%
 3

Chhattisgarh 1%
Daman & Diu 1%
Orissa 1%
Manipur 1%
Sikkim 1%
Uttarakhand 1%

This is a list of languages ordered by the number of native-language speakers .

Since the definition of a single language is to some extent arbitrary, some mutually intelligible idioms with
separate national standards or self-identification have been listed separately, depending on conventional
use, including Scandinavian, Urdu/Hindi, Dutch and Afrikaans, Indonesian and Malay.

The relevant estimate for the number of native speakers for the purposes of this list is that of SIL
Ethnologue. Other estimates may vary, and the numbers should not be taken as more than indicating the
rough order of magnitude of a linguistic community.

More than 60 million speakers/Top 20

Ethnologue
Encarta
Language Family (2005 Other estimates Ranking[3]
estimate[2]
estimate)[1]
982,000,000 native,
179,000,000 second
language =
Sino-Tibetan, [2] 1,151,000,000
Mandarin 873,014,298 1,210,000,000† 1
Chinese total[4]
†Encarta estimate
includes all Chinese
dialects
Standard Hindi
325,000,000; A
total of 650,000,000
including Urdu
366,000,000
Indo-European, 366,000,000 (official language of
Hindi,[5]
Hindi/Urdu Indo-Iranian, Indo- Hindi, Pakistan ) and 2
60,586,800
Aryan 60,290,000 Urdu secondary speakers,
Urdu[6]
does not include
Maithili. Hindi and
Urdu are mutually
intelligible.[6]
English Indo-European, 328,008,138 341,000,000 Possibly well over 3
Germanic, West 1,500,000,000
Germanic, Anglo- worldwide.[7] Also
Frisian, English see List of countries
by English-
speaking population
which numbers
850,000,000
worldwide (as a
total of first and
 4

additional language
spoken).
Total of 417 million
Indo-European, including second-
Spanish 328,518,810 322,200,000[8] 4
Italic, Romance language speakers
[9][10]
(1999).
200 million native
speakers and 250
million non-native
Afro-Asiatic, speakers[11] It is also
Arabic 206,000,000 422,039,637 5
Semitic one of the six
official languages
of the United
Nations.[12]
196 million native
(2004 CIA)
Indo-European,
(includes 14 million
Bengali Indo-Iranian, Indo- 207,000,000 207,000,000 6
Chittagonian and
Aryan
10.3 million
Sylheti).
220 million native,
20 million second
Indo-European,
Portuguese 177,457,180 176,000,000 language = 240 7
Italic, Romance
million total[citation
needed]

165 million native,

Indo-European, 110 million second
Russian 145,031,551 167,000,000 8
Slavic, East Slavic language = 275
million total
130 million native,
Language isolate, 2 million second
Japanese 122,433,899 125,000,000 9
Japonic language = 132
million total
101 million native
(88 million
Standard German, 5
million Swiss
Indo-European,
German, 8 million
German Germanic, West 95,392,978 100,130,000 10
Austrian German),
Germanic
60 million second
language in EU[13] +
5–20 million
worldwide.
128 million “native
and real speakers".
77,000,000 Without partial
128,000,000 speakers, French is
Indo-European, including the ninth most
French 78,000,000 11
Italic, Romance second spoken language in
language the world when
speakers[14] including second
language speakers.
[15][16][17][18]

Wu Sino-Tibetan, 77,200,000 — 77 million native 12

 5

Chinese
42,000,000 in South
Korea (1986).
language isolate, or Population total all
Korean 75,000,000 78,000,000 13
Altaic(controversial) countries
78,000,000 (1999
WA)
Austronesian,
Javanese Malayo-Polynesian, 75,500,000 75,600,000 70–75 million 14
Sunda-Sulawesi
Yue Sino-Tibetan,
71,000,000 -- 15
Chinese/Cantonese Chinese
74,002,856[19]
84 million native, 5
Dravidian, South
Telugu 69,666,000 69,666,000 million second 16
Central
language = 89
million total (2001)
Indian
census:71,936,894
Indo-European,
68 million native, 3
Marathi Indo-Iranian, Indo- 68,000,000 68,000,000 17
million second
Aryan
language = 71
million total
70 million native,
perhaps up to 16
Austro-Asiatic,
Vietnamese 67,400,000 68,000,000 million second 18
Mon-Khmer, Vietic
language, = ~86
million total
Dravidian, Tamil
Nadu, Southern Indian
Tamil India, Sri Lanka, 66,000,000 66,000,000 census:60,793,814 19
Singapore & 78 million [20]
Malaysia.
Indo-European,
Italian 61,696,677 62,000,000 20
Italic, Romance

5 Universities and Colleges in UK offer Bengali Language courses

1. King's College London (University of London)

2. School of Oriental And African Studies (University of London)
3. Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College
4. City College Birmingham
5. Newham Sixth Form College