History of Bengali language

Bengali is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language that originated from the Middle Indo-Aryan language by the natives of present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh in the 4th to 7th century.^[1]

Timeline of the Bengali language
200 — – 300 — – 400 — – 500 — – 600 — – 700 — – 800 — – 900 — – 1000 — – 1100 — – 1200 — – 1300 — – 1400 — – 1500 — – 1600 — – 1700 — – 1800 — – 1900 — – 2000 — –	Old Bengali Early Middle Bengali Later Middle Bengali Modern Bengali ↓Middle Indo-Aryan languages ↑Future	← 6th century CE: Aryan influence ← 1204: Tughlaq invasions; many words influenced by the Arabic, Persian, and Turkic languages

After the conquest of Nadia in 1204 AD, Islamic rule began in Bengal, which influenced the Bengali language.^[2][3] The middle or late 14th century is marked as the end of Old Bengal and the beginning of Middle Bengal.

Modern Bengali dates back to 1800 AD. It marked the renaissance of Bengali, as well as incorporating borrowings from European languages. Significant changes in verbs and pronouns occurred during this period, which marked the contraction of most verbs and pronouns.

Proto-Bengali

Although the Bengali language is an Indo-Aryan language, it also has pre-Aryan roots. In the past, Bengal was far from Vedic or Aryan culture. Bengal, except for some parts in the south-east, was part of the Magadha Empire.

The languages spoken primarily by the native people of Bengal were part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Aryan language family. These included dialects of the Magadhi (or Gaudī) group, which were primarily spoken in the region between Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam.

The development of the Bengali language from Curésenter was influenced mainly by Sanskris. This influence, in a contact situation has an impact primarily in the vocabulary of Bengali language and as a result not only tatsama words are accumulated in the Bengali vocabulary but also this lexical diffusion resulted in diachronic change by developing ardhatatsama and tadbhava words.

Old Bengali

The people of ancient Bengal initially spoke a Prakrit language, which was known as Magadhi, or on the contrary, Gaudi.^[4] Later, it evolved into Old Bengali. Most Bengali-speaking people today consider Old Bengali to be intelligible to a certain extent, although most of the words most commonly used in modern Bengali have their roots in Old Bengali.

Middle Bengali

Middle Bengali is a form of the Bengali language that was used roughly from 1200 to the end of the 18th century.

Following the conquest of Nadia by the Turks in 1204 and subsequent centuries of Islamic rule, the Bengali language was influenced by the languages of the Middle East. Of whom the Persian was the most influential.

There are no examples of Bengali literature between 1200 and 1350, which is known as the Dark Age in Bengali literature. The period of Middle Bengali after 1350 is characterized by two periods—the Early Middle and the Late Middle.

Modern Bengali

Modern Bengali began around 1800 AD; the prose literature of this period is found in the books of Fort William College, Calcutta (now Kolkata). The first prose written in the colloquial variety of Bengali language was Hootum Pyanchar Naksha (1862 AD), which was based on the speech variety of Calcutta.

During this period, the Bengal or Bengal region was under the control of European colonial powers, and the Bengali language adopted many foreign words. The two main varieties of the language—Central Bengali (Radhi) and Eastern Bengali (Baṅgālī)—are spoken by most people. The total number of Bengali speakers worldwide may exceed 280 million.

Grammatical changes

First person personal pronouns

	Old Bengali	Early Middle Bengali	Late Middle Bengali	Modern Bengali
Singular	amhe/ma	amhi/mai	ami/mui	ami/mui (I)
		amhake	amake	amake (to me)
Plural	amheloa	amhara	amra/mora	amra/mora (we)
		amhader	amader	amader (our)

Second person personal pronouns

	Old Bengali	Early Middle Bengali	Late Middle Bengali	Modern Bengali
Singular	tumhe	tumhi	tumi	tumi (you)
			apni	apni
Plural	tumheloa	tomhara	tomra	tomra
			Apnara	apnara

Third person personal pronouns

	Old Bengali	Early Middle Bengali	Late Middle Bengali	Modern Bengali
Singular	se/sa	se	se	se (he/she)
Plural	ta/te	tara	tara/tahara	tara/tahara (they)