Bengali - One language, Multiple Variations
Bengali, also called Bangla, is the official language
of Bangladesh, and the Indian States of West Bengal
and Tripura. There are over 200 million native speakers
of this language across the world and it has the
pride of place as the 5th "most spoken"
language in the world (after Mandarin, Spanish,
English and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu). Bengali is
the second most commonly spoken language in India
(after Hindi). Yet, interestingly,
there are crucial differences between the spoken and
written forms of the language between Bangladeshi
Bengali (with intra-country variations) and Bengali
spoken in West Bengal.
Bengali - a language of ancient origin
Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of
South Asia that evolved as a successor to Sanskrit,
Pali, and Prakrit. Bengali is the English word for
the name of the language as well as for its speakers;
in Bengali, the language itself is called Bangla.
It is believed that Bengali became a separate language
around 1000 CE. Three or four periods are identified
in the history of the language: Old Bengali (1000
- 1400 CE), Middle Bengali (1400 - 1800 CE), and
New Bengali (since 1800 CE). However, there are
some scholars who believe Bengali is much older,
perhaps going back to even 500 BC.Â
Bengali Grammar written by Portugese & English!
Bengali existed as a collection of thousands of
dialects till the 18th century and did
not have a well-documented grammar.
- Manoel da Assumpcam, a Portuguese
missionary, wrote the first written Bengali grammar,
Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido
em duas partes.Â
- Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British
grammarian, is credited as being the first to
write a Bengali grammar using Bengali texts and
letters for illustration: A Grammar of the Bengal
Language (1778).
Bengali goes through important evolutionary changes
Ever since Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali
Reformer, published a book "Grammar of the
Bengali Language" in 1832, the written form
of Bengali has undergone under innumerable changes.
Perhaps the most important was the adoption of Cholti
Bhasha over Shadhu Bhasha (an archaic form of the
language) as the form of choice for written Bengali.
Spoken and written Bengali continues to evolve in
both West Bengal and Bangladesh.Â
Bengali - Â striking similarities and wide differences
In India :
Assamese (language of Assam), Oriya (language
of Orissa), and Bengali are considered by some to
be nearly mutually intelligible; some local dialects
of one language bear a striking resemblance to one
or more dialects of the other two languages.
In Bangladesh
Sylheti, Chittagonian, and Chakma are some of
the many languages that are often considered dialects
of Bengali. Although these languages are mutually
intelligible with neighboring dialects of Bengali,
a native speaker of Standard Bengali would hardly
understand them.
Interestingly
the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh
are written in Bengali!
Bengali - Written differently and spoken more differently
Like many languages of South Asia, Bengali exhibits
a strong case of diglossia between the formal, written
language and the vernacular, spoken language.
There are two standard written forms of Bengali:
- Shadhubhasha ("language of sages")
is the written language with longer verb inflections
and a more Sanskrit-derived vocabulary. Songs
like the Indian national anthem Jana Gana Mana
(by Rabindranath Tagore) and the national song
of India Vande Mataram (by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay)
were composed in a form of Shadhubhasha, but its
use is declining in modern texts.
- Choltibhasha ("running language"),
a written Bengali style that reflects a more colloquial
idiom, is increasingly the standard for written
Bengali. It is modeled on the form of the regional
dialect spoken in the districts bordering on the
lower reaches of the Hooghly River particularly
the Shantipur region in Nadia district, West Bengal,
and is thus sometimes called the "Nadia standard"
.Â
Spoken Bengali exhibits far more variation than written Bengali.
Spoken Bengali, including what is heard in news
reports, speeches, announcements, is modeled on
Choltibhasha. This form of spoken Bengali stands
alongside other spoken dialects, or Ancholik Bengali
("regional Bengali"). The majority of
Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one
dialect - often, speakers are fluent in Choltibhasha,
one or more Ancholik dialect, and one or more forms
of Grammo Bengali ("rural Bengali"), dialects
specific to a village or town.
The Great Bengali Divide
Bengali dialect is typically divided into eight
major dialect groups: Western, Southwestern, Central
(or West-Central), Northern, Bahe, Eastern, Ganda,
and Vanga. Often Chittagonian is added to this list
as well.
During standardization of Bengali in the late
19th and early 20th century, the cultural elite
was mostly from West Bengal, especially Kolkata
(formerly Calcutta). To this day, the accepted standard
language in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based
on the West-Central dialect of the 19th century
Kolkata elite.
This has helped create a state of diglossia in
most of Bangladesh, with many speakers familiar
with or fluent in both the regional dialect of their
community and the standard West-Central dialect
used in the media.
There are marked dialectal differences in terms
of phonological variations between the speech of
Bengalis living on the Poshchim (western) side and
Purbo (eastern) side of the Padma River.
Bengali - a cocktail of many languages
Due to centuries of powerful influences from Europeans,
Mughals, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, Bengali
has absorbed countless words from foreign languages,
often totally integrating these borrowings into
the core vocabulary. After centuries of invasions
from Persia and the Middle East, numerous Turkish,
Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed and fully
integrated into the lexicon. Later, European colonialism
brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and
most significantly English.
Bangladesh , Kolkata and the United Kingdom
In the dialects prevalent in eastern Bangladesh
(Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions),
many of the stops and affricates heard in Kolkata
Bengali are pronounced as fricatives.
These pronunciations are most extreme in the Sylheti
dialect, at northeastern Bangladesh - the dialect of Bengali most common in the United Kingdom !
Bangladeshi & Kolkata Bengali lexical variations
The third major factor in dialectical difference,
specifically between the dialects of West Bengal
and Bangladesh, is a lexical one. Even in Standard
Bengali, vocabulary items often divide along the
split between the predominantly Muslim Bangladeshi
populace and largely Hindu West Bengali populace.
Due to their cultural and religious traditions,
Muslims occasionally utilize Perso-Arabic words
instead of the Sanskrit-derived forms.
Some examples of lexical alternation between standard
West Bengali forms (or commonly called Hindu forms)
and their corresponding standard Bangladeshi forms
(or commonly called Muslim forms) are as follows:
- hello: namoshkar corresponds to assalamualaikum/slamalikum
- invitation: nimontron/nimontonno
corresponds to daoat
- water: jal corresponds to paniÂ
- meat: mangsho corresponds to gosh/goshto/gostoÂ
- prayer: prarthona corresponds to
doa
- God: Bhagoban, Ishshor corresponds
to Allah, KhodaÂ
- salt: nun corresponds to lDbonÂ
- turmeric: holdi corresponds to holud
- chili pepper: lDngka corresponds
to morich.
These differences reflect the vocabulary of the
standard varieties of Bengali in West Bengali and
Bangladesh. Variation in the vocabulary of the countless
regional dialects of both West Bengal and Bangladesh
are even more pronounced and diverse.
