Bengali language

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"Bangla" redirects here. For other uses, see Bangla (disambiguation).
বাংলা Bangla
Bangla Script.svg
The word "Bangla" in Bengali script
Region Bengal
Ethnicity Bengali people
Native speakers
210 million  (2010)[1]
Early forms
  • Old Bengali
    • Bengali
Bengali alphabet
Indian Bengali Braille
Bangladeshi Bengali Braille
Official status
Official language in

 India; in following States and Union territory:

Regulated by Bangladesh Bangla Academy
India Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi
Language codes
ISO 639-1 bn
ISO 639-2 ben
ISO 639-3 ben
Glottolog beng1280[4]
Linguasphere 59-AAF-u
Bengali-speaking area

Bengali /bɛŋˈɡɔːli/[5] or Bangla /bɑːŋlɑː/ (বাংলা Bangla [ˈbaŋla] ( )) is the language native to the region of Bengal, which comprises present-day Bangladesh and the Indian states West Bengal, Tripura and southern Assam. It is written using the Bengali script. With about 220 million native and about 250 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages, ranked seventh in the world.[6][7] The National Anthem of Bangladesh, National Anthem of India, National Anthem of Sri Lanka and the national song of India were first composed in the Bengali language.

Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 CE from eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialects such as the Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, which developed from a dialect or group of dialects that were close, but not identical to, Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.[8] Literary Bengali saw borrowings from Classical Sanskrit, preserving spelling while adapting pronunciation to that of Bengali, during the period of Middle Bengali and the Bengali Renaissance. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a strong case of diglossia, with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language.[9] Standard Bengali in West Bengal and Bangladesh are marked by some differences in usage, accent, and phonetics. Today, literary form and dialects of Bengali constitute the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most commonly spoken language in India.[10][11] Also with a rich literary tradition arising from the Bengali Renaissance, Bengali language binds together a culturally diverse region and is an important contributor to Bengali nationalism.

The Bengali Language Movement was a popular ethno-linguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), which was a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengali people to gain and protect spoken and written Bengali script's recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan. On the day of 21 February 1952 several students and political activists were killed during protests near Dhaka University campus. 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 marking Bengali language the only language in the world to be also known for its language movements and people sacrificing their life for their mother language Bengali. There was a similar Bengali language movement in Assam which was a protest against the decision of the Government of Assam to make Assamese the only official language of the state even though a significant proportion of the population were Bengali speaking.


Like other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialects of Magadhi Prakrit and Pali. The earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and the language of Gautama Buddha, evolved into the Jain Prakrit or ôrdhômagôdhi "Half Magadhi" in the early part of the first millennium CE.[12][13] ôrdhômagôdhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called ôpôbhrôngshô ("Corrupted grammar") languages just before the turn of the first millennium.[14] The local ôpôbhrôngshô language of the eastern subcontinent, Purbi ôpôbhrôngshô or Abahatta ("Meaningless Sounds"), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups of the Assamese-Bengali languages, the Bihari languages, and the Oriya languages. Some argue that the points of divergence occurred much earlier—going back to even 500[15] 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.[16]


Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali language:[14]

  1. Old Bengali (900/1000–1400)—texts include চর্যাপদ Chôrjapôdô, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns আমি Ami, তুমি tumi, etc.; verb inflections -ইলা -ila, -ইবা -iba, etc. The scripts and languages during this period were mainly influenced by the Kamarupi Prakrit as the entire region- Assam, Bengal and parts of Bihar and Orissa[citation needed] was under the Kamrup kingdom (now known as Assam).

Bengali also saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu era) and also during the Bengal Renaissance.[17] The modern Bengali vocabulary contains the vocabulary base from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, also borrowings & reborrowings from Sanskrit and other major borrowings from Arabic, Austroasiatic languages and other languages in contact.

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.[18] 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.[6] Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali reformer,[19] also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832).[20]


Pages from the Chôrjapôdô.

Bengali was the focus, in 1951–52, of the Bengali Language Movement (ভাষা আন্দোলন Bhasha Andolôn) in what was then East Bengal (today Bangladesh).[22] On 21 February 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.[23] Later in 1999, UNESCO declared 21 February as the International Mother Language Day in recognition of the deaths and people sacrificing their life for their mother language Bengali.[24][25] In a separate event on 19 May 1961, police in Barak Valley in Assam killed eleven people who were demonstrating against legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.[26]

Geographical distribution[edit]

  Bengali with native speakers holds sole official and national language status
  Bengali with native speakers holds one of the official languages status
  Large diaspora of Bengali speakers (100,000+)
  Smaller diaspora of Bengali speakers (10,000+)


Besides the native region it is also spoken by the majority of the population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in Middle East, Japan, United States, Singapore,[27] Malaysia, Maldives, Australia, Canada and United Kingdom.

Official status[edit]

Bengali is the national and official language of Bangladesh, and one of the 23 official languages recognised by the Republic of India.[28] It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.[29][30] It is also a major language in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[2][3]

Young Kazi Nazrul Islam, the National Poet of Bangladesh, posing as a soldier during World War I
The Nobel Laureate – Rabindranath Tagore

Bengali is a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is also a recognized secondary language in the City of Karachi in Pakistan.[31][32][33] The Department of Bengali in the University of Karachi also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature.[34] In December 2002, Sierra Leone’s then 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.[35][36]

The national anthems of both Bangladesh and India were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.[37] In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali language to be made an official language of the United Nations.[38]


Main article: Bengali dialects



Spoken and literary varieties[edit]

Bengali exhibits diglossia, though largely contested notion as some scholars proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia[43] between the written and spoken forms of the language.[44] Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged:[41][45]


While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali, spoken dialects (defeated language of the captive speaker[47]) exhibit a greater variety. South-eastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in Standard Colloquial Bengali. Other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh speak in dialects that are minor variations, such as the Medinipur dialect characterised by some unique words and constructions. However, a majority in Bangladesh speak in dialects notably different from Standard Colloquial Bengali. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to Standard Colloquial Bengali.[48] The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis.[48] The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety—often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (Standard Colloquial Bengali) and one or more regional dialects.[21] For some counter-views, one may browse some different articles.[49][50]

Even in Standard Colloquial Bengali, the words may differ based on the speakers's religion. Due to religious traditions Hindus and Muslims might use respectively, Sanskrit-derived and Arabic-derived words.[51] Some examples of lexical alternation between these two forms (here S=derived from Sanskrit, A=derived from Arabic):[42]

  • hello: নমস্কার nômôshkar (S) corresponds to সালাম আলাইকুম salam-alaikum (A)
  • invitation: নিমন্ত্রণ nimôntrôn (S) corresponds to দাওয়াত daoat (A)
  • water : জল jôl (S) corresponds to পানি pani (A)


Main article: Bengali phonology


Front Central Back
Close i
Close-mid e
Near-open æ
Open a
Labial Dental/
Retroflex Palatoalveolar Velar Glottal

Plosive voiceless pɔ~ɸɔ
aspirated ɸɔ~pʰɔ
jô / zô
aspirated bʱɔ~βɔ
Fricative (wɔ)


Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs, combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable.[52]



Consonant clusters[edit]


Writing system[edit]

An example of handwritten Bengali script. Part of a poem written in Bengali (and with its English translation below each Bengali paragraph) by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 in Hungary.

The Bengali script is an abugida, a script with letters for consonants, diacritics for vowels, and in which an "inherent" vowel (অ ô) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked.[54] The Bengali script is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali script is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th – 11th century).[55] The Bengali script with minor variations is shared with Assamese script.

The Bengali script is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs, and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers.[55] There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words. Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra.[56]









Signature of Rabindranath Tagore — an example of penmanship in Bengali.

Orthographic depth[edit]





For a detailed list of these inconsistencies, consult Bengali script.


The Bengali script, with a few small modifications, is also used for writing Assamese. Other related languages in the nearby region also make use of the Bengali alphabet like Meitei language in the Indian state of Manipur, where the Meitei language has been written in the Bengali script for centuries, though Meitei Mayek script has been promoted in recent times.


There are various ways of Romanization systems of Bengali created in recent years which have failed to represent the true Bengali phonetic sound. The Bengali script has often been included with the group of Indic scripts for romanization where the true phonetic value of Bengali is never represented. Some of them are the "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration" or IAST system (based on diacritics),[57] "Indian languages Transliteration" or ITRANS (uses upper case alphabets suited for ASCII keyboards),[58] and the National Library at Calcutta romanization.[59]




Main article: Bengali grammar


Word order[edit]

As a head-final language, Bengali follows subject–object–verb word order, although variations to this theme are common.[60] Bengali makes use of postpositions, as opposed to the prepositions used in English and other European languages. Determiners follow the noun, while numerals, adjectives, and possessors precede the noun.[61]




Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case, including nominative, objective, genitive (possessive), and locative.[14] The case marking pattern for each noun being inflected depends on the noun's degree of animacy. When a definite article such as -টা -ţa (singular) or -গুলা -gula (plural) is added, as in the tables below, nouns are also inflected for number.

Singular noun inflection
Animate Inanimate
Nominative ছাত্রটা
the student
the shoe
Objective ছাত্রটাকে
the student
the shoe
Genitive ছাত্রটা
the student's
the shoe's
Locative জুতাটায়
on/in the shoe
Plural noun inflection
Animate Inanimate
Nominative ছাত্ররা
the students
the shoes
Objective ছাত্রদের(কে)
the students
the shoes
Genitive ছাত্রদের
the students'
the shoes'
Locative জুতাগুলা/জুতোগুলোতে
on/in the shoes


Measure words
Bengali Bengali transliteration Literal translation English translation
নয়টা গরু Nôy-ţa goru Nine-MW cow Nine cows
কয়টা বালিশ Kôy-ţa balish How many-MW pillow How many pillows
অনেকজন লোক Ônek-jôn lok Many-MW person Many people

Measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. আট বিড়াল aţ biŗal instead of আটটা বিড়াল aţ-ţa biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, when the semantic class of the noun is understood from the measure word, the noun is often omitted and only the measure word is used, e.g. শুধু একজন থাকবে। Shudhu êk-jôn thakbe. (lit. "Only one-MW will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one person will remain.", given the semantic class implicit in -জন -jôn.







Sources of modern literary Bengali words
  67% তদ্ভব Tôdbhôbô (native)
  25% তৎসম Tôtsômô (Sanskrit reborrowings)
Main article: Bengali vocabulary



Due to centuries of contact with Europeans, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, The Bengali language has absorbed countless words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary.

The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. After close contact with several indigenous Austroasiatic languages,[65] centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, particularly under the Mughal Empire, numerous Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed and fully integrated into the lexicon.


Sample text[edit]


Bengali in Bengali alphabet


Bengali in phonetic Romanization


Bengali in IPA






See also[edit]


  2. ^ a b "Profile: A&N Islands at a Glance". Andaman District. National Informatics Center. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
  9. ^
  10. ^ "Languages of India". Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  12. ^ Shah 1998, p. 11
  13. ^ Keith 1998, p. 187
  14. ^ a b c (Bhattacharya 2000)
  15. ^ (Sen 1996)
  16. ^ Abahattha in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003
  17. ^ Tagore & Das 1996, p. 222
  18. ^ Rahman, Aminur. "Grammar". Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 2006-11-19. 
  19. ^ Wilson & Dalton 1982, p. 155
  20. ^ Rammohan Roy’s Goudiya Grammar
  22. ^ Baxter 1997, pp. 62–63
  23. ^ "Dhaka Medical College Hostel Prangone Chatro Shomabesher Upor Policer Guliborshon. Bishwabidyalayer Tinjon Chatroshoho Char Bekti Nihoto O Shotero Bekti Ahoto". The Azad (in Bengali). 22 February 1952. 
  27. ^ Bangla Language and Literary Society, Singapore
  30. ^ Bhattacharjee, Kishalay (30 April 2008). "It's Indian language vs Indian language". Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
  34. ^ "Karachi Department of Bengali". Retrieved April 2, 2013. 
  35. ^ "Sierra Leone makes Bengali official language". Retrieved 29 December 2002. 
  43. ^ 'Triglossia in Bangla'
  47. ^ Robert Phillipson. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism.]
  48. ^ a b Ray, Hai & Ray 1966, p. 89
  49. ^ Colony’s Burden: A Case of Extending Bangla
  50. ^ Indian Linguistic Nation State: A Report
  51. ^ Ray, Hai & Ray 1966, p. 80
  52. ^ (Masica 1991, pp. 116)
  53. ^ (Masica 1991, pp. 125)
  55. ^ a b Bengali Script in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003
  56. ^
  60. ^ (Bhattacharya 2000, pp. 16)
  63. ^ Tatsama in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003
  64. ^ Tatbhava in Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 2003


External links[edit]