cover image

Bengali language

Indo-Aryan language in Bengal region / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Bengali Language?

Summarize this article for a 10 years old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

Bengali (/bɛnˈɡɔːli/ ben-GAW-lee),[5][6] generally known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, Bengali pronunciation: [ˈbaŋla]), is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With approximately 300 million native speakers and another 40 million as second language speakers,[1] Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world.[7][8] Bengali is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language.

Quick facts: Bengali, Pronunciation, Native to, Regio...
Bengali
Bangla
বাংলা
%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%82%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE.svg
The word "Bangla" in Bengali script
Pronunciation[ˈbaŋla] (Loudspeaker.svglisten)
Native toBangladesh and India
RegionBengal
EthnicityBengalis
Native speakers
300 million (2011–2021)[1][2]
L2 speakers: 40 million[1]
Early forms
Dialects
Bengali signed forms[3]
Official status
Official language in
  • Bangladesh (national)
  • India
Regulated byBangla Academy (in Bangladesh)
Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (in India)
Language codes
ISO 639-1bn
ISO 639-2ben
ISO 639-3ben
Glottologbeng1280
Geographic_distribution_of_Bengali_language.png
Map of Bengali language in Bangladesh and India (district-wise). Darker shades imply a greater percentage of native speakers of Bengali in each district.
Bengali-world.svg
Bengali-speaking diaspora Worldwide.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Close

Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh,[9][10][11] with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language.[12][13] It is the second-most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, and is the official language of the states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011.[4] It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal,[14] and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand.[15] Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas (Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and other countries.[16]

Bengali has developed over more than 1,300 years. Bengali literature, with its millennium-old literary history, was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement.[17][18]