[ˈbaŋla] (
listen)) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. It is the national and official language of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, and the official language of several northeastern states of the Republic of India, including West Bengal, Tripura, Assam (Barak Valley) and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken native language in the world. Bengali is the easternmost Indo-European language, it has been influenced by other language families prevalent in South Asia, notably the Dravidian, the Austroasiatic, and the Tibeto-Burman
families, all of which contributed to Bengali vocabulary and provided
the language with some structural forms. Dictionaries from the early
20th century attributed slightly more than half of the Bengali
vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Sanskrit words, corrupted forms of Sanskrit
words, and loanwords from non-Indo-European languages), about 30
percent to unmodified Sanskrit words, and the remainder to foreign
words. Dominant in the last group was Persian,
which was also the source of some grammatical forms. More recent
studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been
increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the
colloquial style.Today, Bengali is the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India.
