Bengali language is part of the Eastern Indo- Aryan family.

Origin

Bengali language is believed to have existed from the 11th century. Bengali is said to have derived from the Brahmi script which was in return created from Indus and Harappa alphabets of ancient India. Some scholars claim Bengali has some type of relation with the Devanagari script as the two scripts share a few features.

It is claimed that Bengali developed in three different stages. The earlier period Bengali was more refined in the later years of the 18th century while the Bengali language found in modern days got its form in the nineteenth century. Sanskrit language had influenced Bengali from the fifteenth century. However, its major effect was during the reformation of Bengal province of undivided India before independence.

The rules of Bengali grammar were first set by Manoel da Assumpcam in the first half of the eighteenth century. This was altered during the refinement of the language by Nathaniel Halhed in the later years of eighteenth century. The Bengali grammar was given a final touch by the well known Indian author Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was also actively involved in development of the modern Bengali language.

Other languages derived from Bengali

The other languages that are derived from the Bengali language include Assamese, Manipuri, Garo, and Mundari.

Assamese is the language of nearly 20 million people from Bangladesh and Bhutan along with Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Bengali script is used to write Assamese and one can also find relation between Assamese and Oriya, which is one of the regional languages of India.

Manipuri, also know regionally as Meitei, is one of the regional languages of India, which has official status in the Indian state of Manipur and is also Indian states of Assam and Tripura. Manipuri is also spoken in countries like Bangladesh, Burma and Myanmar. There are around two million people in the Manipuri speaking population in the world. It is one of the other languages that are written using Bengali script along with its individual alphabets.

Mundari is one of the regional languages of the Bihar state in India, which is written by using Bengali script along with Devanagari, Latin and Oriya scripts. There are at least a million Mundari speakers in Bihar state alone.

Sylheti is one of the other languages spoken in northern parts of Bangladesh. It also uses Bengali alphabets in its writing form. There are close to ten million people in the world who can converse in Sylheti out of which the 80% are based in Bangladesh.