Bengali, also called Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language, the official language of Bangladesh and of the Indian state of West Bengal, and among the most-spoken languages in the world by native speakers. It has its own script, the Bengali-Assamese script, descended like Devanagari from the ancient Brahmi script but distinct from it, not a variant of Devanagari itself.
Facts
ISO 639-3 Code Speaker CountFigure is for first-language speakers across Bangladesh and India; estimates vary by several tens of millions depending on how second-language speakers in the wider Bengali-speaking diaspora are counted. RegionBangladesh and India's West Bengal; Barak Valley in Assam and Tripura 3 Disputed
Attested From (Year)8th century CE; a Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary compiled in 782 CE contains 51 Bengali words, the earliest documented evidence, though whether this represents a fully differentiated language is not certain. Classification
Official Status Connections
In Family
Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Written In
Source Wikipedia: Bengali-Assamese Script
Sources
1. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010Official status, Bengali entity page
Bengali, also called Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language, the official language of Bangladesh and of the Indian state of West Bengal, and among the most-spoken languages in the world by native speakers.
- In Family: Indo-European
2. Ethnologue: Languages of the World
3. Wikipedia: Bengali Language
Wikipedialead section
also known by its endonym Bangla
infobox
Native to Bangladesh and India
Quote
A Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary compiled by the Chinese poet Li-Yen in 782 CE shows the presence of Bengali
View the Source Wikipedia: Bengali-Assamese Script
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