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90-607: It is believed that the upazila was named after Sri Das and Mangal Das; two brothers who settled on the banks of the Hail Haor . A copper plate of Raja Marundanath from the 11th century was found in Kalapur. During an excavation at Lamua, an ancient statue of Ananta Narayan was dug out. In 1454, the Nirmai Shiva Bari was built and still stands today. Sreemangal thana was established in 1912. The central town later became

180-628: A haor , beel or baor are usually small. A beel is usually a depression or topographic low generally produced by erosion or other geographical process. These are marshy in character. Sometimes beels are remains of a river that has changed its course. Many of the beels dry up in the winter but during the rains expand into broad and shallow sheets of water, which may be described as fresh water lagoons. Beels are generally smaller than haors , but there also are large beels like Chalan Beel in Rajshahi Division , through which

270-672: A pourashava in 1935. In 1963, two peasants were killed by police officers which kicked off the Balishira peasant riots. During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the Pakistani army reached Sreemangal on 30 April setting houses on fire and committing atrocities against women. The East Pakistan Rifles camp and Wapda office premises were among the two mass killing sites. Two mass graves remain in Bharaura with

360-500: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from

450-558: A country where one third of all area can be termed as wetlands, the haor basin is an internationally important wetland ecosystem, spread over Sunamganj , Habiganj , Moulvibazar districts and Sylhet Sadar Upazila , as well as Kishoreganj and Netrokona districts outside the core haor area. It is a mosaic of wetland habitats, including rivers, streams and irrigation canals, large areas of seasonally flooded cultivated plains, and hundreds of haors and beels . This zone contains about 400 haors and beels , varying in size from

540-596: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises

630-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where

720-510: A few hectares to several thousand hectares. The core haor area, alternatively referred to as the Haor basin or the Sylhet basin, is estimated to spread over an area between 4,450 km and 25,000 square kilometres by experts. The total area of haor -type wetland ecosystem in Bangladesh is 80,000 square kilometres. The haor basin is bounded by the hill ranges of India – Meghalaya on

810-496: A fish park, a wildlife sanctuary, and a tourist center near Hammam Waterfall including hotels, restaurants, and parking areas. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers the increase in tourist traffic as "a potential opportunity for the haor dwellers for improving their livelihoods." IUCN Bangladesh initiated a community-based tourism project in the Tanguar Haor wetland area (a Ramsar site) as one of

900-692: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of

990-682: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,

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1080-535: A memorial in North Bharaura. Sreemangal is located at 24°18′30″N 91°44′00″E  /  24.3083°N 91.7333°E  / 24.3083; 91.7333 . It has 65,165 households and total area 450.73 km. It is bordered by Moulvibazar Sadar to the north, Tripura to the south, Kamalganj to the east and Chunarughat , Nabiganj and Bahubal to the west. According to the 2011 Census of Bangladesh , Sreemangal Upazila had 65,165 households and

1170-749: A number of contributions in evolving and standardising the quality of tea, and introducing its research findings to the tea industry of Bangladesh . Pineapples from the Sreemangal area are known for their flavour and natural sweetness. In 2010, the Hum Hum waterfall was discovered and has attracted visitors from all over Bangladesh to Razkandi forest. Sreemangal Upazila is divided into Sreemangal Municipality and nine union parishads : Ashidron, Bhunabir, Kalapur, Kalighat, Mirzapur, Rajghat, Satgaon, Sindurkhan, and Sreemangal. The union parishads are subdivided into 108 mauzas and 208 villages. Sreemangal Municipality

1260-418: A population of 230,889. Males constitute 51.76% of the total population, and females 48.24%. This Upazila's 18+ population is 124,778. Sreemangal has an average literacy rate of 29.8% (7+ years), and the national average of 32.4% literate. About 58% of this sub district's people are Muslims while 41% are Hindus and others are Christians and Buddhist. Madhobpur Lake is one of the main tourist attractions in

1350-411: A population of 318,025. 74,603 (23.46%) were under 10 years of age. Sreemangal had a literacy rate (age 7 and over) of 48.33%, compared to the national average of 51.8%, and a sex ratio of 1004 females per 1000 males. 39,757 (12.50%) lived in urban areas. Ethnic population was 13,460 (4.23%), of which Santal were 2,796, Khasi 1,665 and Manipuri 735. As of the 1991 Bangladesh census , Sreemangal has

1440-576: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in

1530-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in

1620-581: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,

1710-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are

1800-500: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it

1890-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since

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1980-537: Is a bowl or saucer shaped shallow depression , also known as a backswamp . During monsoons haors receive surface runoff water from rivers and canals to become vast stretches of turbulent water. In Bangladesh and in the deltaic part of the Indian state of West Bengal, which lie in the floodplain of three great rivers, the Bengali language has several terms to differentiate between lakes, including baor , haor , jheel and beel . All four are similar types of freshwater wetlands. The distinctions between

2070-572: Is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in

2160-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It

2250-707: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,

2340-721: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use

2430-496: Is flooded every year during monsoon . Some of the most extensive seasonally flooded areas in South Asia are situated in bowl-shaped depressions known as haors located between the natural levees of rivers subject to overflow during the monsoon. The major rivers in the area are Surma and Kushiyara . Some of the tributaries are: Manu, Khowai, Jadukhata, Piyain, Mogra, Mahadao and Kangsha. The hilly rivers coming down from

2520-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of

2610-424: Is low because of subsidence of tectonic Dauki fault . In the geological depression of the haor basin, subsidence is continuing at an estimated rate of 20 mm per year. In some places it has sunk by around 10 m in the last few hundred years. The area, by some experts, is further divided into three zones by standards of morphology and hydrology : The haor basin is a remote and difficult area that

2700-490: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of

2790-505: Is subdivided into 9 wards and 20 mahallas . According to Banglapedia, Victoria High School , founded in 1924, Bhunabir Dashrath High School & College Founded in 1896, is a notable secondary school. The Jamia Luthfia Anwarul Uloom Hamidnagar is a notable madrasa and Islamic centre in the Sylhet region . Haor A haor ( Bengali : হাওর ) is a wetland ecosystem in the north eastern part of Bangladesh which physically

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2880-405: Is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It

2970-686: Is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. 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 . Bengali

3060-509: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played

3150-615: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including

3240-545: The Atrai River passes. It has shrunk over the years but still occupies an area of 26 km in the dry season. Sometimes small permanent water bodies within the haors remain after the haors dry up. These are also called beels , which occupy the lowest part of the depressions. A baor or jheel is an oxbow lake , namely moribund beds of the Bhairab, Kaliganga, Gorai and Kumar rivers. A simple definition

3330-474: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of

3420-526: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c.  1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in

3510-723: The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what

3600-524: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In

3690-607: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"

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3780-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script

3870-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong

3960-409: The 12th century there is almost no information available on the human habitation here. The information up to the 17th century is sketchy. During the British period, this area was not stringently surveyed, and not a lot of information is available. It is believed that the early settlers of the area were Hindus and other ethnic groups including Garo , Hajong , Khasi and Koch people coming down from

4050-623: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of

4140-652: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as

4230-593: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by

4320-456: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,

4410-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,

4500-422: The British conquest of Sylhet in 1765. By the 1770s all the cultivable land was brought under plough cultivation . From the 1780s, population and area under cultivation declined till early 20th century, mostly due to successive natural calamities including floods and earthquakes. The haor basin became an important fishing zone during this time. Population growth picked up again in the 20th century, again due to

4590-597: The Khasi and Jaintia hills in Meghalaya carry particularly high volumes of water as they come from some of the rainiest places in the world. During July to November due to flood these areas go under deep water and look like seas with erosive water surface. During wind storm these waves reach up to 1.5 m in height. It remains under water for seven months of the year, turning haor settlements mostly built on earthen mounds into islands. The fight against natural calamity of

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4680-990: The Meghna estuary , Tanguar haor and Hail- Hakaluki haors - have been declared as Ramsar sites under the Ramsar Convention for protection of wetlands, of which Bangladesh is a signatory. The Bangladesh government has also declared the Tanguar haor an Ecologically Critical Area . The Haor basin has a number of government bodies working to preserve the environment, including the Forest Resources Management Project, Management of Aquatic Ecosystem through Community Husbandry, Haor and Floodplain Resource, Conservation and Management of Medicinal Plants and Coastal and Wetland Biodiversity Management at Cox's Bazar and Hakaluki Haor. Prior to

4770-506: The area used to provide an important source of firewood, but these forests are now almost completely destroyed. In recent times, various herbs and aquatic plants are being collected for use as fuel. On top of that, aquatic plants are also being collected for use as fertilizers. Only a few patches remain of the swamp forests that once dominated the area, featuring flood tolerant trees like Hijal ( Barringtonia acutangula ) and Koroch ( Pongamia pinnata ). Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) did

4860-619: The area, and is home to the Great White-Bellied Heron , the only confirmed site in Bangladesh. The Baikka beel is also a nearby body of water and home to the Large-billed reed warbler . Sreemangal has been nicknamed the tea capital of Bangladesh , due to the number of tea gardens in the area, and is the place of origin of the Seven Color Tea . The Bangladesh Tea Research Institute in Sreemangal has made

4950-416: The basis of botanical records of Kanjilal (U.N. Kanjilal, P.C. Kanjilal & A. Das; Flora of Assam ; 1934): Upland vegetation , Emergent vegetation , and Aquatic vegetation . The hijal or hual, korij or koroch, bhui dumur ( Ficus heterophylla ), nol ( Arundo donax ), khagra ( Pharagmites karka ), ban golap ( Rosa involucratia ) and barun ( Crataeva nurvala ) are the main plant species found in

5040-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on

5130-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in

5220-507: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in

5310-453: The demand of growing populations production of fish from this source is gradually dwindling. In recent years, the wetlands have also been used for rearing domestic ducks. Due to scarcity of cultivable land, government lands ( khas land) including the wetlands are increasing getting transferred to private ownership in Bangladesh. Thus most of the haors and beels have now been sold or leased to private individuals for cultivation during

5400-604: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on

5490-639: The dry season. This transfer is governed by the Haor Development Board Ordinance (Ordinance No. IX of 1977) are under the direct control of the Revenue Department in the Ministry of Land Administration and Land Reforms. Haors are unique wetlands and have started attracting tourists. The best time to visit the haors is at the end of the monsoons, say around August–September, when they are full with water. Thereafter,

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5580-700: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In

5670-553: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around

5760-557: The emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as

5850-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,

5940-708: The form of full flood dykes or submersible dykes is being provided in some of the developed areas. Among the varieties of rice cultivated in winter, the Boro season, in the knee-deep water of marshlands, the Hashi (BR-17), the Shahjalal (BR-18) and the Mongol (BR-19) varieties are best suited for the haor areas. Haors and baors , along with the rivers, canals and the floodplain, are a major source of fish production. But, due to silting, and excessive harvesting of fish to meet

6030-606: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form

6120-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,

6210-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –

6300-434: The hills to the north. They were drawn to the area because of its productivity and favorable tenurial terms . With the expansion of Muslim power in the south and the west further Hindu migration continued in the 13th and 14th century. Following an Afghan defeat in Orissa in 1592, a large number of Afghans moved into the area. Expansion of Muslim population continued after the Muslim conquest of Sylhet in 1612, accelerating after

6390-413: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,

6480-547: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in

6570-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between

6660-407: The locals people, mostly day laborers, relies on traditional and indigenous methods which with limited effect. Many villages have already been washed away, and many more are on the verge of extinction, forcing people to migrate to urban centers. The Haor Basin is the only region in Bangladesh where remnant patches of freshwater swamps and reed lands still exists. Once extensive forests of Hijal in

6750-531: The most fascinating rural areas of Bangladesh." According to the Ministry of Water Resources of Bangladesh, there were 144 of tourist spots in the Haor area in 2012, of which 37 were natural and 107 were manmade. The Ministry declared its aims to increase the current GDP rate of the tourism sector from 0.70 in 2012 to 2% by 2015 and then to 5% by 2021. 13 tourism development projects were declared including 2 eco-parks, 6 tourist spots, 3 nos of bird watching tower,

6840-605: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of

6930-633: The north, Tripura and Mizoram on the south, and Assam and Manipur on the east. The basin extends north to the foot of the Garo and Khasia Hills, and east along the upper Surma Valley to the Indian border. The Tippera surface lies directly to the south of the Haor Basin, and is partly low and deltaic and partly higher ground with a piedmont fringe to the east. It includes about 47 major haors and some 6,300 beels of varying size, of which about 3,500 are permanent and 2,800 are seasonal. These area

7020-436: The opportunity to cultivate land for a nominal rent. In the haor region, villages are tightly nucleated and built on the natural levees (locally known as kanda s). The haor villages are very large in size because no settlement can take place beyond the levees. During the dry cropping season, the satellite villages are established deep inside haor beds, far from parent villages. After harvesting and before inundation,

7110-564: The original survey of local flora sometime in 1850, recorded in his Himalayan Journals (published by the Calcutta Trigonometrical Survey Office and The Minerva Library of Famous Books; Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., 1891). The findings of his travels along the Surma and visiting the wetlands of Sylhet are reflected in his Flora of British India . Three habitat types in the Sylhet region were identified on

7200-517: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming

7290-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent

7380-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where

7470-764: The swamp forests. All of them are flood-tolerant species and can survive in the submerged condition for extended periods of time. However, among these, hijal, tamal and koroj trees are of the greatest value to the people and the environment. Other plant species available in the wetlands include madar ( Erythrina variegata ), gab ( Diospyros peregrina ), makna ( Euryale ferox ), singara ( Trapa bispinosa ), jaldumur (a kind of Ficus ), chitki ( Phyllanthus reticulatus ), thankuni ( Centella asiatica ), kalmi ( Ipomoea aquatica ), helencha ( Enhydra flactuans ), hogla ( Typha elephantina ), duckweed , water hyacinth , lotus and water lily . Three zones of international importance for conservation and sustainable utilization -

7560-654: The third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history, was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to

7650-425: The village structures are dismantled and transported back to parent villages along with harvests. These haors and beels support major subsistence and commercial fisheries, while the seasonally flooded lake margins support major rice-growing activities. The main crop grown in the haor basin is boro rice or dry season rice. Early monsoon flash floods often cause extensive damage to the boro crop. Protection in

7740-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on

7830-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory

7920-426: The water in the haors starts receding but still provides an awe-inspiring sight. In winter, the haors and beels receive thousands of migratory birds. It is the ideal season for bird-watchers, but then the haors are reduced in size and lose much of their watery grandeur. As summer sets in the haors are no more there, but one can still see numerous beels . Lonely Planet describes these areas as "some of

8010-494: The ways for sustainable management of wetland resources. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali

8100-422: Was provided by hydrologist Saila Parveen, " Haor – seasonal wetland, baor – oxbow lake, and beel – perennial water body." Jheels or baors are found mostly in the moribund delta as in greater Comilla , Faridpur , Dhaka and Pabna districts. The haor is predominantly a feature of north-eastern Bangladesh. Beels are seen all over Bangladesh and the neighboring districts of West Bengal. In

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