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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.
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.
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.
Traditionally, Bengali exhibits diglossia in both written and spoken forms of the language's uppermost registers. Shadhubhasha (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language') exhibited longer verb inflections and heavily Sanskritized vocabulary. Up to the turn of the 19th century, most Bengali literature took this form.
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.
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.
The country is the third-most populous Muslim-majority state in the world and has the fourth-largest overall Muslim population. [236] Bengali Hindus form the country's second-largest religious minority and the third-largest Hindu community in the world. According to the 2022 census Hindus form 7.95% of the total population.
Bengali film is a glorious part of the history of world cinema. Hiralal Sen , who is considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema, sowed the first seeds of Bengali cinema. [ 181 ] [ 184 ] In 1898, Sen founded the first film production company, named Royal Bioscope Company in Bengal, and possibly the first in India. [ 185 ]