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The Bengali alphabet is derived from the
Brahmi alphabet.
Bengali belongs to the easternmost branch, called Aryan or Indo-Iranian, of the
Indo-European family of languages. Its direct ancestor is a form of Prakrit or
Middle Indo-Aryan which descended from Sanskrit or Old Indo-Aryan. Bengali
is the English word for the name of the language (as well as the people speaking
the language); in the language itself the tongue is called Bangla, a term
now finding more usage in English. From this point forward, Bangla will
be used to refer to the language.
Bangla is native to the region of eastern
South Asia
known as
Bengal,
which comprises
Bangladesh
and the
Indian
state of
West Bengal.
Bangla is spoken by about 70 million people in the province known as West
Bengal. With nearly 200 million speakers it ranks fifth in the world
in the number of first language speakers.
Bangla is the second most commonly spoken language in India (after Hindi). As
a result of the Bengali renaissance in the 19th
and 20th centuries, much of
India's
most famous literature, poetry, and songs are in Bangla: the works of
Rabindranath Tagore (the first Asian to
be awarded a
Nobel Prize),
for example, were written in Bangla.
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