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 5^th “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.