Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The country is the third-most populous Muslim-majority state in the world and has the fourth-largest overall Muslim population. [240] Bengali Hindus form the country's second-largest religious minority and the third-largest Hindu community in the world. They formed 28% of the population in East Bengal in 1942. [241]
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
Standard Bengali: spoken all over the country – originally the dialect of Nadia region (partly in Khulna Division), very close to dialect in the rest of Khulna Division; Bangali: General Eastern Bengali dialect spoken (beside Standard Bengali) in most of the parts of Bangladesh (Dhaka, Khulna, Mymensingh, Greater Comilla and Barisal regions).
It is also the de facto national language of the country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages. [52] It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam. [53] [54] Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011.
This makes Bangladesh the world's third largest Muslim majority country after Indonesia and Pakistan. Bengali Muslims also make up the world's second largest Muslim ethnic group after Arab Muslims. Most Bangladeshi Muslims are member of the Sunni branch of Islam. There are significant minorities of the Shia and Ahmadiya branches.
It is home to the fourth most spoken language in the world, Hindi–Urdu; the seventh most spoken language, Bengali; and thirteenth most spoken language, Punjabi. [note 1] Languages like Bengali, Tamil and Nepali have official/national status in more than one country of this region.
Bengali is the 5th most spoken language in the world. It is an eastern Indo-Aryan language and one of the easternmost branches of the Indo-European language family. It is part of the Bengali-Assamese languages. Bengali has greatly influenced other languages in the region, including Odia, Assamese, Chakma, Nepali and Rohingya.
Chittagong is the second-largest city and the busiest port of the country. The official language is Bengali, with Bangladeshi English also used in government. Islam is the official and largest religion and Bengali Muslims form the largest ethnoreligious group in the country. After the war, Sheikh Mujib became the leader of the country.