It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand. It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the second-most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, and is the official language of the states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. Bengali is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language.īengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language.
With approximately 300 million native speakers and another 40 million as second language speakers, Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world.
Bengali ( / b ɛ n ˈ ɡ ɔː l i/ ben- GAW-lee), generally known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা, Bengali pronunciation: ), is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia.
