Geographical distribution Bengali language

a bengali sign in brick lane in london, home large bengali diaspora

besides native region spoken bengalis living in tripura, southern assam , bengali population in indian union territory of andaman , nicobar islands. there presence of bengali-speaking people in odisha, bihar, jharkhand, chhattisgarh, karnataka , delhi of india. bengali speaking people found in cities mumbai, varanasi, vrindavan, , other places in india. there significant bengali-speaking communities in middle east, japan, united states, singapore, malaysia, maldives, australia, canada , united kingdom , italy

official status

bengali national , official language of bangladesh, , 1 of 23 official languages in india. official language of indian states of west bengal, tripura , in barak valley of assam. bengali second official language of indian state of jharkhand since september 2011. recognized secondary language in city of karachi in pakistan. department of bengali in university of karachi offers regular programs of studies @ bachelors , @ masters levels bengali literature.

the national anthems of both bangladesh , india written in bengali bengali nobel laureate rabindranath tagore. in 2009, elected representatives in both bangladesh , west bengal called bengali language made official language of united nations.

dialects

regional variation in spoken bengali constitutes dialect continuum. linguist suniti kumar chattopadhyay grouped these dialects 4 large clusters—rarh, banga, kamarupa , varendra; many alternative grouping schemes have been proposed. south-western dialects (rarh or nadia dialect) form basis of modern standard colloquial bengali. in dialects prevalent in of eastern , south-eastern bangladesh (barisal, chittagong, dhaka , sylhet divisions of bangladesh), many of stops , affricates heard in west bengal pronounced fricatives. western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [tɕɔ], ছ [tɕʰɔ], জ [dʑɔ] correspond eastern চ [tsɔ], ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ], জ [dzɔ~zɔ]. influence of tibeto-burman languages on phonology of eastern bengali seen through lack of nasalized vowels , alveolar articulation of categorised cerebral consonants (as opposed postalveolar articulation of west bengal). variants of bengali, particularly chittagonian , chakma, have contrastive tone; differences in pitch of speaker s voice can distinguish words. rangpuri, kharia thar , mal paharia closely related western bengali dialects, typically classified separate languages. similarly, hajong considered separate language, although shares similarities northern bengali dialects. during standardization of bengali in 19th century , 20th century, cultural center of bengal in city of kolkata, founded british. accepted standard form today in both west bengal , bangladesh based on west-central dialect of nadia district, located next border of bangladesh. there cases speakers of standard bengali in west bengal use different word speaker of standard bengali in bangladesh, though both words of native bengali descent. example, word salt নুন nun in west corresponds লবণ lôbôn in east.