Language Family
The language family of Bangla is Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan Eastern Group, and Bengali-Assamese.
Speakers of Bangla
With approximately 230 million native speakers and another 37 million as second language speakers, Bangla is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by total number of speakers in the world.
Recognition of Bangla
Bangla is the state language of Bangladesh. It is also the second official language recognised in the city of Karachi in Pakistan, and was made an official language of Sierra Leone in order to honour the Bangladeshi peacekeeping force from the United Nations stationed there. Bangla is also one of the 23 official languages currently recognised by Annex VIII of the Indian Constitution. It is the official language of the Indian States of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region in Assam.
Bangla Grammar
The Bangla Alphabet is written from left to right and it is a syllable-based system, known as 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. Each vowel can become nasal with the addition of diacritical signs placed above the horizontal line that covers the vowel.
There are two styles of speaking which exist side-by-side: conservative high-style literary language which frequently uses borrowings from Sanskrit, and informal everyday language.
The Bangla Alphabet Derivation
The Bangla Alphabet, which is the Bangla bornomala or Bangla lipi, was derived from the Brahmi alphabet, and it is closely related to the Devanagari alphabet from which it began to diverge in the 11th century.
The early forms of Bangla were Prakrit, Magadhi Prakrit, Abahattha, and Old Bangla.
Bangla developed around 900 A.D, most likely from Sanskrit.
Cholito Bhasha Today
Cholito Bhasha is the current or colloquial language that has entered literary use since the beginning of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it became the dominant literary language as well as the standard colloquial form among educated people.
Shadhu Bhasha Today
Much of Shadhu Bhasha vocabulary was derived from Sanskrit. Today Shadhu Bhasha is an obsolete form and, apart from the written Constitution of Bangladesh, its use is limited to government communications, legal affairs, and some literal and editorial genres of some newspapers.
Bangla Dialects
Bangla dialects are generally classified in four groups which roughly approximate the ancient political divisions of the Bangla-speaking world, known as Radha (West Bengal proper); Pundra, or Varendra (the northern parts of West Bengal and Bangladesh); Kamrupa (northeastern Bangladesh); and Bangla (the dialects of the rest of Bangladesh).
Information compiled by: Soiree Saif and Niija Zain (V-R)