Bengali language facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Bengali |
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Bangla বাংলা |
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"Bangla" in Bengali script
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Region | Bangladesh and India | |||
Ethnicity | Bengalis | |||
Native speakers | 250–300 million (2017) (L1 plus L2 speakers) |
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Language family |
Indo-European
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Early forms: |
Abahattha
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Dialects |
see Bengali dialects
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Writing system | Eastern Nagari script (Bengali alphabet) Bengali Braille |
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Official status | ||||
Official language in | Bangladesh India (in West Bengal, Tripura and Barak Valley) |
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Regulated by | Bangla Academy Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi |
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Linguasphere | 59-AAF-u |
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Bengali speaking region of South Asia
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Bengali is the most eastern Indo-Aryan language from South Asia. It developed from a language called Pali.
Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura.
There are about 220 million native speakers and about 250 million total speakers of Bengali. It is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, ranking seventh.
Almost all of the people in Bangladesh speak Bengali, and many famous books and poems are written in Bengali. Rabindranath Tagore was a famous poet who wrote in Bengali. Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh were written in this language.
Images for kids
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An example of handwritten Bengali. Part of a poem written in Bengali (and with its English translation below each Bengali paragraph) by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 in Hungary
See also
In Spanish: Idioma bengalí para niños