Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What language is spoken by Bengali Hindus?
Bengali Hindus (Bengali: বাঙালি হিন্দু) are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious population who make up the majority in the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. In Bangladesh they form the largest minority. They are Bengalis adherents of Hinduism, and are native to the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Bengali Hindus speak Bengali, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and adhere to the Shakta and Vaishnava traditions of their native religion, Hinduism.[9][10] There are significant numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus in different Indian states.[11][12]
The official and "de facto" national language of Bangladesh is Modern Standard Bengali (Literary Bengali). It serves as the "lingua franca" of the nation, with 98% of Bangladeshis being fluent in Bengali (including dialects) as their first language. Within India, Bengali is the official language of the states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley in the state of Assam. It is also spoken in different parts of the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. It is also the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant minorities in other states including Jharkhand, Bihar, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Odisha. With approximately 250300million total speakers worldwide, Bengali is usually counted as the seventh most spoken native language in the world by population.
In 1948 the Government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, starting the Bengali language movement. The Bengali Language Movement was a popular ethno-linguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), which was a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis to gain and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan. On the day of 21 February 1952 five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka. In 1956 Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. The day has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and is also commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000.
Regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Linguist Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay grouped these dialects into four large clusters – Rarh, Banga, Kamarupa and Varendra; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects (Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form the basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh (Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal are pronounced as fricatives. Western alveolo-palatal affricates , , correspond to eastern , , . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalized vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of West Bengal). Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Rangpuri, Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects.
The language spoken by majority of the population of the district is Bengali. The spoken dialect (called Rarhi) is more or less the same as spoken in South Bengal, with some occasional local accents. A small dialect of Bengali language, Maldaiya (also known as Jangipuri, Shershahbadiya) is prevalent among the population of Jangipur subdivision of the district. Moreover, a dialect of Hindi-Urdu language influenced by Bengali language, the Khotta Bhasha (largely spoken in Malda, some parts of Murshidabad and Birbhum and also in some areas of Midnapore) is also spoken by a substantial amount of population in the northern regions (specially Farakka, Samserganj, Suti, Jangipur areas) of Murshidabad district.
The dialects of the Bengali language (বাংলা উপভাষাসমূহ "Bangla Upobhashashomuho") are part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan language group of the Indo-European language family widely spoken in the Bengal region of South Asia. Although the spoken dialects of Bengali are mutually intelligible with neighbouring dialects, they sometimes lack mutual intelligibility with the Standard Bengali language and sometimes would not be understood by a native speaker of Standard Bengali. However, the Standard Bengali emerges from the West-Central or Rarhi dialect spoken mainly in Kolkata and Nadia districts.
There is also a significant number of Bengali Hindus residing in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, estimated approximately 100,000 comprising 26% of the population. Bengali is also the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, despite it lacking official status.
According to the provisional results of the 2011 national census, West Bengal is the fourth-most-populous state in India with a population of 91,347,736 (7.55% of India's population). Bengalis, consisting of Bengali Hindus, Bengali Muslims, Bengali Christians and a few Bengali Buddhists, comprise the majority of the population. The Marwari, Maithil and Bhojpuri non-Bengali minorities are scattered throughout the state; various indigenous ethnic Buddhist communities such as the Sherpas, Bhutias, Lepchas, Tamangs, Yolmos, and ethnic Tibetans can be found in the Darjeeling Himalayan hill region. Native Magahi speakers are found in Malda district. Surjapuri; a language that is considered to be a mix of Maithili and Bengali, is spoken across northern parts of the state. The Darjeeling district also has a large Nepali immigrant population, making Nepali a widely spoken language in this region. West Bengal is also home to indigenous tribal Adivasis such as Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Bhumij, Lodha, Kol, and Toto tribe. There are a small number of ethnic minorities primarily in the state capital, including Chinese, Tamils, Maharashtrians, Odias, Assamese, Malayalis, Gujaratis, Anglo-Indians, Armenians, Jews, Punjabis, and Parsis. India's sole Chinatown is in eastern Kolkata.
Assamese is the major language spoken in the urban area while other widely spoken languages include Bengali, Bodo, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Hindi, Punjabi, English, etc. Assamese, Hindi, Bodo and Bengali are spoken widely in the surrounding areas.
The Bengali language developed between the 7th and 10th centuries from Apabhraṃśa and Magadhi Prakrit.[116] It is written using the indigenous Bengali alphabet, a descendant of the ancient Brahmi script. Bengali is the 10th most spoken language in the world. It is an eastern Indo-Aryan language and one of the easternmost branches of the Indo-European language family. It is part of the Bengali-Assamese languages. Bengali has greatly influenced other languages in the region, including Odia, Assamese, Chakma, Nepali and Rohingya. It is the sole state language of Bangladesh and the third most spoken language in India.
Discrimination against Bengali Hindu population is not limited to the North East. In Jharkhand, the Bengali Hindu demand of making Bengali the second official language has not been met, in spite of the fact that the Bengali Hindu population forms the second largest linguistic group in the state. They constitute almost 40 percent of the population in Jharkhand.Most of the Bengalis of Jharkhand are the Bhumiputras or the original settlers in the region.In Bihar, many Bengali Hindu refugees are denied land owning rights and caste certificates.[51][52][53] On the other hand, massive infiltration from Bangladesh has substantially altered the demography in West Bengal so much so that Bengal Hindus have been reduced to minorities in the border regions and occasionally, there have been violent clashes between Muslim and Hindu mobs in Bengal.[54]
Languages of Tripura, a state in Northeast India, include Bengali as official language and many other minority languages. As in the rest of India, English is used for official purpose. Bengali is the most spoken language, due to the predominance of Bengali people in the state. Kokborok is the official language of the state and is a prominent language among the tribes.
Bengali (), also known by its endonym Bangla (; ), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Bengalis in the Indian subcontinent. It is the official and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, behind Hindi.
Bangladeshi Americans often retain their native language Bengali and run many programs to nourish their mother tongue. However, many also speak Bengali dialects or other languages related to Bengali, the most common being Sylheti which is spoken by people from the Sylhet Division in Bangladesh, and Chatgaya which is spoken by Bangladeshis from Chittagong.
Spoken Bengali exhibits far more variation than written Bengali. Formal spoken Bengali, including what is heard in news reports, speeches, announcements, and lectures, is modelled on Choltibhasha. This form of spoken Bengali stands alongside other spoken dialects, or "Ancholik Bangla" (আঞ্চলিক বাংলা) (i.e. 'regional Bengali'). The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one dialect – often, speakers are fluent in Choltibhasha, one or more Ancholik dialect, and one or more forms of "Gramyo Bangla" (গ্রাম্য বাংলা) (i.e. 'rural Bengali'), dialects specific to a village or town.
Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura, southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Bengali is also spoken in the neighboring states of Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand, and sizable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, and Vrindavan. There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom and Italy.
The mother tongue of this district is Bengali. In this district of Bogra "the dialect spoken is what is known as Northern dialect of Bengali of the Eastern Branch," says Dr. Grierson, "may be taken to be the form of the language, which is spoken in the Dinajpur District, but the form of the dialect spoke in Bogra differs very little from that of Dinajpur". The northern dialect is spoken in the district of Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Bogra and Pabna. The whole of the tract has within historic times been subject to Koch tribes and members of this tribe still exist in each district. They were originally reported as speaking their original Koch language, but on an examination of the specimens of the language, Dr. Grierson found that they have given up their original speech, and now only speak more or less corrupt variety of Northern Bengali.
Some peculiarities (examples) are given below ("Bengali>Dialect, English").
Among other Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali is spoken in South Assam in the Barak Valley. Besides the Sino-Tibetan Tripuri language, Bengali is a majority language in Tripura. Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language, is dominant in Sikkim, besides the Sino-Tibetan languages Limbu, Bhutia and Lepcha. Bengali was the official language of Colonial Assam for about forty years from the 1830s.
At the 2011 Bangladesh census, Ranhat had a population of 3,216 of which males constituted 48.15% and females 51.85%. 1374 were over the age of 18, and the average literacy rate was 43.62% (7+ years), compared to the national average of 36.32%. Ranhat has recently been developed in educational perspectives. Children go to school at all ages in Ranhat. Almost every resident in Ranhat is Bengali people, as is the case in most of Bangladesh. People generally speak in Bengali, the national language. Many distinctive Bengali dialects and regional languages are also spoken. English is understood by a few numbers of the total population, especially for study purposes. Islam is a major religion, approximately 97.49% people are Muslim, and the rest of them are Hindus and others.
However, these figures do not take into account the large proportion of archaic or highly technical words that are very rarely used. Furthermore, different dialects use more Persian and Arabic vocabulary especially in different areas of Bangladesh and Muslim majority areas of West Bengal also Hindus use more Sanskrit vocabulary than Muslims and while standard Bengali is based on the Nadia dialect of spoken in the Hindu majority states of West Bengal, about 90% of Bengalis in Bangladesh (ca. 148 million) and 27% of Bengalis in West Bengal and 10% in Assam (ca. 36 million) are Muslim and speak a more "persio-arabised" version of Bengali instead of the more Sanskrit influenced Standard Nadia dialect. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of tadbhavas, while tatsamas comprise only 25% of the total. Loanwords from non-Indic languages comprise the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.
During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final "ô", the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was an official court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the literary development of Bengali. Bengali became the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Chandidas' "Shreekrishna Kirtana".
The official languages recognised by the Bangladeshi and Indian governments are Standard Bengali and Assamese respectively. These languages are used in education. The most common spoken language is Sylheti, although this is considered as a dialect of Bengali to both governments. Other dialects of Bengali that are spoken include the Dhakaiya Bangali and Chittagonian, spoken by the immigrant communities as well as the Rohingya language. The Adivasis also have their own languages which they speak in addition to Bengali such as Khasi, Kuki, Meitei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Garo and Tripuri.
Bengali is the principal language of the district. The principal communities are Hindus and Muslims, constituting the major portion of the population. Surjapuri one of the minor dialects of Bengali language is also spoken in this district.
In 1941 Agartala had a population of 17,693. By 1991 the population had risen to 157,358.
Bengali, the official state language, is the dominant language in Agartala while English is also a popular language in the state; Kokborok is spoken by the Tripuri people. According to the 2011 census, 94.09% of the population is Hindu, 4.37% Muslim, 0.99% Christian, and 0.28% Buddhist. The remainder of the population includes Sikhs, Jains, and other religions; 0.27%.
The city mainly consists of Bengalis and Tripuris. Bengali is widely spoken in the city as a result of the erstwhile regal patronage and high influx of Bengalis from Comilla, Sylhet, Noakhali, Chittagong districts of Bangladesh. Durga Puja and Saraswati puja are celebrated with great grandeur and ecstatic enthusiasm, which reflect the influence of the culture of the Bengalis. The inter-cultural, inter-communal integrity is rather wonderful. Hence, nearly every festivity attracts participation from citizens of diverse and vibrant backgrounds.
The largest spoken language in this region is Hindi, followed by Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi. In the modern era, new syncretic languages developed in the region such as Urdu that is used by Muslim community of northern south Asia (particularly Pakistan and northern states of India). The Punjabi language spans three religions: Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. The spoken language is similar, but it is written in three scripts. The Sikh use Gurmukhi alphabet, Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan use the Nastaliq script, while Hindu Punjabis in India use the Gurmukhi or Nāgarī script. The Gurmukhi and Nagari scripts are distinct but close in their structure, but the Persian Nastaliq script is very different.