Not everyone agrees with this way of organizing the Bengali dialects, but it seems to be the most common way of doing so. Besides that, the dialects of Bengali tend to be organized into four different groups: Varendra, Banga, Rarh, and Kamarupa. Bengali is classified by linguists as a dialect continuum, just like Hindi. Besides the national anthem of India, the Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi national anthems were all composed in Bengali originally.Ī dialect continuum is a group of dialects that form a spectrum, with dialects on either end of the spectrum that are so different that they are no longer mutually intelligible. The lyrics were later translated into Hindi-Urdu by Abid Ali. Along with that status, the national anthem of India, “Jana Gana Mana,” was actually originally written in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel prize winning Bengali writer, poet, and composer. Though it may not be one of the official languages of India, Bengali is recognized as a regional official language in some Indian states. The Language of the Indian National Anthem About 250 million people speak Bengali as their native language, putting it in seventh place for the most spoken language in the world in terms of number of native speakers. One of those languages, which comes in at second place in terms of number of speakers, is Bengali.īengali is the official language of Bangladesh and is native to the Bengal region, which is made up of Bangladesh as well as the Indian states of Tripura, West Bengal, and the southern region of Assam.

Hindi may be the official language of India along with English, but there are large chunks of the population that speak languages that aren’t even part of the Hindi dialect continuum.

However, India is a land of a thousand languages, or at least over 120. For foreigners and others not too familiar with the country of India, the Hindi language is maybe the only one that comes to mind when thinking about what languages the people of India speak.

Bengali language