Bengali (Bangla)

Bangla (also known as Bengali) is spoken in Bangladesh and in part of India, primarily in the state of West Bengal. With over 200 million speakers, it ranks among the top ten of world languages. The standard colloquial language spoken and written by educated Bengalis, is termed suddha, "pure" Bangla. West Bengal and East Bengal dialects, for the most part, are mutually intelligible. However, a few dialects in Bangladesh, most notably those of Sylhet and Chittagong, would not be understood by speakers of the standard language.
The history of Bangla and its literature is divided into three periods: old Bangla (c 1000-1350 AD), middle Bangla (1350-1800) and modern Bangla (1800-present). Bangla has a rich literature, dating back to 1000 AD. Old Bangla is known primarily from a single manuscript of Buddhist songs, the Caryapada or Caryagiti, which was discovered in Nepal in 1907. A vast body of literature from the middle period exists, devoted to both Hindu and Muslim themes. Among the many great modern Bangla writers, the best-known figure is Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. In the nineteenth century, a literary form of Bangla called sadhu bhasa, "refined language," developed. Although literature today is no longer written insadhu bhasa, it continues to be employed in Bangladesh for official documents. Bengalis take great pride in their language and literature. The struggle for independence of Bangladesh may be traced to the Language Movement (bhasa andolan) of 1952, which established Bangla as a state language of Pakistan. UNESCO has declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
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Nandini Abedin

Lecturer
abedin@uw.edu