Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages (ranking 4th) in the world where in 1993 it was 5th.
Chronological development trend of Bangla Language:
1. Before the Indo-Aryan language:
Austro-Asiatic Languages like Santali (abola, acir-pacir, ador, alga etc), Mundari (akal, akhir, amdani) and Khasi (ator, ain, babo, biskit) b) Sino-Tibeten like Kachhari (akaj,ajala means foolish), Garo, Tripuri etc. c) Dravidian and Kol
2. Indo-Aryan Language (kentum#Europe & satam#Indo-Iranni):
Like other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages of the Indian subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit (200 BC) and Pali, the earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and the language of the Buddha, evolved into Ardhamagadhi. Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called Apabhramsa languages .The local Apabhramsa language of the eastern subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or Apabhramsa Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Bengali-Assamese languages
Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:
Old Bengali (650/900-1200)—texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc.; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Assamese branch out in this period and Oriya just before this period (8th century-1300).
Middle Bengali (1351–1800) — major texts of the period, Krittivas' Ramayan has been credited to be a classic. Other narrative poems include Srikrishnavijaya by Maladhar Vasu and Srikrishnakirttan by Baru Chandidas which Spread of compound verbs; Persian influence.
New Bengali (since 1801)—shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar → tar "his"/"her"; koriyachhilô → korechhilo he/she had done).
Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya era), and also during the Bengal Renaissance. Of the modern Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and Marathi maintain a largely Pali/Sanskrit vocabulary base (use of Sanskrit words by some Bengali poets such as Jaydev, Umapatidhara and Govardhan Acharya) while Hindi and others such as Punjabi, Sindhi and Gujarati are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.
3. Contribution of Muslim people:
From the 13th century to 15th century (Arabic words like Okil, Kalam, Dalal, Loksan, Khajna, Haloa, Masla etc. Persian words- Ain, Ajad, Abdar, Romal, Bagan, Goanda and some Turkish words like Toshak, Galicha, Daroga, Bibi, Lash, Chakor).
4. Contribution of Portuguese:
During the 16th Century Portuguese people came in our region and contributed for the development of our language. At present some Portuguese words used in our language like- Almary, Alkathra, Alpin, Saban, Gosal, Balti, Nilam etc.
5. Dutch, French and English:
In the Dutch, French and English started arriving in Bengal. As a result, words from these languages started entering Bangla vocabulary; for example, from the French: cartouche, coupon, café, restora; Dutch: hartan, iskaban, iskurup; English: table, chair, lord/lat, general/jadrel, etc.
6. Contribution of William Carey:
With the start of British rule in the 18th century and the spread of English education, Bangla started absorbing increasing numbers of English words. In CALCUTTA in 1801, the efforts of its head, WILLIAM CAREY, and his associate Bengali scholars, made Bangla department.
7. Role of some key persons:
During the 19th century, the efforts of Bengali writers contributed to the further growth of the language. Among them were RAJA RAMMOHUN ROY, BHABANICHARAN BANDYOPADHYAY, ISWAR CHANDRA VIDYASAGAR, BANKIMCHANDRA CHATTOPADHYAY, MICHAEL MADHUSUDAN DUTT and MIR MOSHARRAF HOSSAIN. The 20th century witnessed the elevation of colloquial Bangla to a written literary medium through the work of many talented writers such as RABINDRANATH TAGORE and PRAMATHA CHOWDHURY.
Finally, through the study of a particular dictionary, Sunitikumar Chatterji, taking JNANEDRA MOHAN DAS's Bangala Bhashar Abhidhan into account, showed that Bangla has 51.45 per cent tadbhava words, 44.00 per cent tatsama words, 3.30 per cent Perso-Arabic words and 1.25 per cent from English, Portuguese and other languages where Jnanendra Mohan Das's lexicon has around 150,000 words.
