Bengali Note

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 IndoIranian 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 BengaliAssamese 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 2. 3.

pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya and Assamese branch out in this period. 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. 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 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search 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 Daman & Diu Orissa Manipur Sikkim Uttarakhand

1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 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

Language

Family

Ethnologue (2005 estimate)[1]

Mandarin

Sino-Tibetan, Chinese

Hindi/Urdu

366,000,000 Indo-European, Hindi,[5] Indo-Iranian, Indo60,586,800 Aryan Urdu[6]

English

Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic, AngloFrisian, English

873,014,298

328,008,138

Encarta estimate[2]

Other estimates

Ranking[3]

982,000,000 native, 179,000,000 second language = [2] 1,151,000,000 1,210,000,000† 1 total[4] †Encarta estimate includes all Chinese dialects Standard Hindi 325,000,000; A total of 650,000,000 including Urdu 366,000,000 (official language of Hindi, Pakistan ) and 2 60,290,000 Urdu secondary speakers, does not include Maithili. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible.[6] 341,000,000 Possibly well over 3 1,500,000,000 worldwide.[7] Also see List of countries by Englishspeaking population which numbers 850,000,000 worldwide (as a total of first and

4

Spanish

Indo-European, Italic, Romance

328,518,810

322,200,000[8]

Arabic

Afro-Asiatic, Semitic

206,000,000

422,039,637

Bengali

Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo- 207,000,000 Aryan

207,000,000

Portuguese

Indo-European, Italic, Romance

176,000,000

177,457,180

additional language spoken). Total of 417 million including second4 language speakers [9][10] (1999). 200 million native speakers and 250 million non-native speakers[11] It is also 5 one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[12] 196 million native (2004 CIA) (includes 14 million 6 Chittagonian and 10.3 million Sylheti). 220 million native, 20 million second language = 240 7 million total[citation needed]

Russian

Indo-European, Slavic, East Slavic

145,031,551

167,000,000

Japanese

Language isolate, Japonic

122,433,899

125,000,000

German

Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic

95,392,978

100,130,000

Indo-European, Italic, Romance

77,000,000 128,000,000 including second language speakers[14]

78,000,000

French

165 million native, 110 million second 8 language = 275 million total 130 million native, 2 million second 9 language = 132 million total 101 million native (88 million Standard German, 5 million Swiss German, 8 million 10 Austrian German), 60 million second language in EU[13] + 5–20 million worldwide. 128 million “native and real speakers". Without partial speakers, French is the ninth most 11 spoken language in the world when including second language speakers. [15][16][17][18]

Wu

Sino-Tibetan,

77,200,000

—

77 million native

12

5 Chinese

Korean

language isolate, or 75,000,000 Altaic(controversial)

Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, 75,500,000 Sunda-Sulawesi Yue Sino-Tibetan, 71,000,000 Chinese/Cantonese Chinese Javanese

78,000,000

42,000,000 in South Korea (1986). Population total all 13 countries 78,000,000 (1999 WA)

75,600,000

70–75 million

--

Telugu

Dravidian, South Central

69,666,000

69,666,000

Marathi

Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo- 68,000,000 Aryan

68,000,000

Vietnamese

Austro-Asiatic, 67,400,000 Mon-Khmer, Vietic

68,000,000

Tamil

Italian

Dravidian, Tamil Nadu, Southern India, Sri Lanka, Singapore & Malaysia. Indo-European, Italic, Romance

14 15

74,002,856[19] 84 million native, 5 million second 16 language = 89 million total (2001) Indian census:71,936,894 68 million native, 3 17 million second language = 71 million total 70 million native, perhaps up to 16 million second 18 language, = ~86 million total

66,000,000

66,000,000

Indian census:60,793,814 19 78 million [20]

61,696,677

62,000,000

20

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