Bengali language

The Bengal area of South Asia is the original home of the Indo-Aryan language known as Bengali. It is the national, official, and most frequently spoken language of Bangladesh, and out of the 22 scheduled languages in India, it is the second most widely spoken language overall. There are roughly 300 million people who speak Bengali as their first language, and another 37 million people who speak Bengali as their second language. The Indo-European language known as Bengali is the fifth most common language spoken in the world.

The majority of people in Bangladesh use Bengali as their first language; in fact, 98 percent of Bangladeshis use Bengali as their first language. Within the country of India, the regions of West Bengal, Tripura, and the Barak Valley in the state of Assam are the only ones that use Bengali as their official language. Since September 2011, it has also been recognised as the second official language of the state of Jharkhand in India. It is the language that is spoken by the largest population in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are located in the Bay of Bengal. It is also spoken by substantial numbers in the states of Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, and Uttarakhand. There are communities of people who speak Bengali all over the world, including in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and other locations. These communities are known as Bengali diasporas.

Over the period of more than 1,300 years, Bengali evolved into its present form. Bengali literature, which has a literary history that dates back a millennium, saw significant development during the Bengali Renaissance and is now recognised as one of the most productive and varied literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement, which took place from 1948 to 1956 and demanded that Bengali become an official language of Pakistan, was a major factor in the growth of Bengali nationalism in East Bengal, which ultimately led to the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. In commemoration of the language movement, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated February 21 as International Mother Language Day in 1999.