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Bengal region of South Asia
- Bengalis (Bengali: বাঙ্গালী, বাঙালি [baŋgali, baŋali] ⓘ), also rendered as endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia.
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Etymology. The ancient political divisions of the Ganges delta. The term Bengali is generally used to refer to someone whose linguistic, cultural or ancestral origins are from Bengal. The Indo-Aryan Bengalis are ethnically differentiated from the non-Indo-Aryan tribes inhabiting Bengal.
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The Bengali are of diverse origin, having emerged from the confluence of various communities that entered the region over the course of many centuries. The earliest inhabitants of the region are believed to have been the Vedda from Sri Lanka. Later the Vedda were joined by Mediterranean peoples who spoke Indo-European languages.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Early literary and geographic accounts. The ancient Bengal region features prominently in legendary history of India, Sri Lanka, Siam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Nepal, Tibet, China and Malaya. According to the Indian epic Mahabharata, the Vanga Kingdom was located in Bengal.
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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 immigra...
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).
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.
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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 t...
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.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The culture of Bengal defines the cultural heritage of the Bengali people native to eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, mainly what is today Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, where they form the dominant ethnolinguistic group and the Bengali language is the official and primary language. Bengal has a recorded ...
Bengalis ( Bengali: বাঙ্গালী, বাঙালি [ baŋgali, baŋali] ⓘ ), also rendered as endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia.
Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit languages. Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.
