Bengali language

Bengali language, member of the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by more than 210 million people as a first or second language, with some 100 million Bengali speakers in Bangladesh; about 85 million in India, primarily in the states of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura; and sizable immigrant communities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Middle East. It is the state language of Bangladesh and one of the languages officially recognized in the constitution of India.

History

There is general agreement that in the distant past Oriya, Assamese, and Bengali formed a single branch, from which Oriya split off first and Assamese later. This is one reason that the earliest specimens of Bengali language and literature, the Charyapadas (Buddhist mystic songs), are also claimed by speakers of Oriya and Assamese as their own.

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The Bengali linguists Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen suggested that Bengali had its origin in the 10th century ce, deriving from Magahi Prakrit (a spoken language) through Magahi Apabhramsha (its written counterpart). The Bengali scholar Muhammad Shahidullah and his followers offered a competing theory, suggesting that the language began in the 7th century ce and developed from spoken and written Gauda (also, respectively, a Prakrit and an Apabhramsha).

Although Bengali is an Indo-European language, it has been influenced by other language families prevalent in South Asia, notably the Dravidian, the Austroasiatic, and the Tibeto-Burman families, all of which contributed to Bengali vocabulary and provided the language with some structural forms. In the 1960s and ’70s, Chatterji examined dictionaries from the early 20th century and attributed slightly more than half of the Bengali vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Sanskrit words, corrupted forms of Sanskrit words, and loanwords from non-Indo-European languages), about 45 percent to unmodified Sanskrit words, and the remainder to foreign words. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms. More recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style.

Varieties

There are two standard styles in Bengali: the Sadhubhasa (elegant or genteel speech) and the Chaltibhasa (current or colloquial speech). The former was largely shaped by the language of early Bengali poetical works. In the 19th century it became standardized as the literary language and also as the appropriate vehicle for business and personal exchanges. Although it was at times used for oration, Sadhubhasa was not the language of daily communication.

Chaltibhasa is based on the cultivated form of the dialects of Kolkata (Calcutta) and its neighbouring small towns on the Bhagirathi River. It has come into literary use since the early 20th century, and by the early 21st century it had become the dominant literary language as well as the standard colloquial form of speech among the educated. The pronouns and verb forms of the Sadhubhasa are contracted in Chaltibhasa. There is also a marked difference in vocabulary.

Although distinctions in the use of Bengali are associated with social class, educational level, and religion, the greatest differences are regional. The four main dialects roughly approximate the ancient political divisions of the Bengali-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; see also Bangladesh: history). In addition, two cities, Sylhet and Chittagong, have developed dialects with lexical and phonological characteristics that are mostly unintelligible to other speakers of Bengali.

Grammar

A simple Bengali sentence usually follows subject–object–verb word order. When present, the negative particle comes at the end of the sentence. The copula, or verb linking the subject and predicate, is often omitted. Six cases are generally recognized. Compound verbs, comprising a stem or root and a suffix, are a special feature. There are 3 verb tenses, but their subdivisions make them 10. There are two moods, indicative and imperative, and two numbers, singular and plural. The first, second, and third persons are expressed through six forms because they have both ordinary and honorific referents. Gender is natural, and there is no special declension for feminine and neuter. Adjectives are usually not modified according to the number or case of the nouns they qualify.

Writing systems

The Bengali script is derived from Brahmi, one of the two ancient Indian scripts, and particularly from the eastern variety of Brahmi. Bengali script followed a different line of development from that of Devanagari and Oriyan scripts, but the characters of Bengali and Assamese scripts generally coincided. By the 12th century ce the Bengali alphabet was nearly complete, although natural changes continued to take place until the 16th century. Some conscious alterations were also made in the 19th century.

Bengali is written from left to right. There are no capital letters. The script is characterized by many conjuncts, upstrokes, downstrokes, and other features that hang from a horizontal line. The punctuation marks, save one, are all taken from 19th-century English.

Bengali spelling was more or less standardized through a set of reforms that were initiated by the University of Calcutta in 1936. However, the standardization process continued throughout the 20th and into the early 21st century. For instance, the Bangla Academy in Dhaka prefers a set of alternatives offered by the 1936 reforms, while the Bangla Academy in West Bengal has proposed new reforms. Visva-Bharati, the university founded by the Bengali poet and Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore, has also effected several spelling variations. Finally, some newspapers and publishers have their own house styles. Not surprisingly, these independent efforts to standardize Bengali orthography have helped to create a degree of confusion.