Bengali language

Bengali (Bangla) is a language of the Indo-European family, belonging to the eastern branch of Indo-Aryan languages. It is the official language of Bangladesh and is also spoken in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, and parts of Assam.

The number of speakers ranks among the largest in the world, estimated at several hundred million when counting both native speakers and second-language speakers. It has a distinct script called Bengali script, which developed from the Brahmi script.

Script and writing

Bengali script belongs to the abugida systems—meaning that each consonant letter carries an inherent vowel sound, which is modified by diacritical marks. It is written from left to right, with most consonants joined by a horizontal line at the top. The same script is used for Assamese with minor variations.

History and literature

Bengali developed from earlier Indo-Aryan languages, with early written records attested from the medieval period. Bengali literature experienced a flourishing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The writer Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote in Bengali, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

The 1952 language movement

In 1952, in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), protests occurred demanding that Bengali be recognized as an official language on equal standing with Urdu. This event became a foundation for Bangladesh's national identity, and the United Nations has since recognized February 21 as International Mother Language Day.

Dialects and grammar

The language has various dialects across Bangladesh and West Bengal, some of which have limited mutual intelligibility. The sentence structure generally follows the subject-object-verb (SOV) pattern, with the verb appearing at the end of the clause. It lacks grammatical gender distinction for nouns and pronouns, which distinguishes it from other Indo-Aryan languages.