(including parts of Assam, Bihar, Myanmar, Odisha, Nepal and Jharkhand) showing the six major dialect clusters of Bengali language.
( those marked with an asterisk (*) are sometimes considered dialects and sometimes considered separate languages)|class=skin-invert-image]]
The Bengali dialects ( ) or Bengali varieties (বাংলা ভাষিকা ) are the varieties of the Bengali language, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-European language family, widely spoken in the Bengal region of South Asia. The spoken dialects of Bengali are mutually intelligible with neighbouring dialects.
Bengali dialects can be classified along at least two dimensions: spoken vs. literary variations, and prestige vs. regional variations.
Classifications
Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen classified Bengali dialects in six classes by their
phonology, morphology and
pronunciation. They are:
[ NB Barendra refers to Varendri]
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Eastern Bengali/ Bangali/ Vanga dialects: the most widely spoken dialect of Bengali language. It is spoken across the Khulna Division, Barisal Division, Dhaka Division, Mymensingh, Sylhet Division and Chittagong Divisions of Bangladesh, Tripura and parts of West Bengal in India. However, it's not a widely accepted grouping as dialects spoken in Khulna are much closer to Central dialects. Dialects spoken in central, central-north and southern Bangladesh are very different from Sylheti language and Chittagonian dialects.
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Central Bengali/ Rarhi dialects: spoken across much of Southern West Bengal, India and Southwestern Bangladesh. It is spoken by almost 20 percent of Bengali people. The regions where it is spoken include the whole of Presidency division, the northern half of Khulna Division, the southern half of Burdwan division and parts of the district of Murshidabad.
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Southern Bengali/ Sundarbani dialects: spoken in the Presidency Division and the Khulna Division of West Bengal and Bangladesh. It shares similarities with the Bangali and Rarhi dialects.
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North Central Bengali/ Varendri dialects: spoken in Rajshahi Division, Western and southern Rangpur Division of Bangladesh and Malda division of West Bengal, India (previously part of Varendra or Barind division). It is also spoken in some adjoining villages in Bihar and Jharkhand bordering Malda.
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Western Bengali/ Manbhumi/ Jharkhandi dialects: spoken in the westernmost Bengali speaking regions which includes the whole of Medinipur division and the northern half of Burdwan division in West Bengal. Also included are the so-called Jharkhand dialects spoken in parts of Santhal Pargana division, Kolhan division and parts of North Chotanagpur division and Ranchi district. It is also spoken in some adjoining villages in Odisha bordering Medinipur.
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Far Northern Bengali/ Rangpuri/ Rajbanshi dialects: spoken in eastern Rangpur Division of Bangladesh and Jalpaiguri division and parts of Malda division of West Bengal, India and nearby areas in Goalpara of Assam, Kishanganj of Bihar and the Nepali province of Koshi Province.
Spoken and literary variants
More than other Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali exhibits strong
diglossia between the formal, written language and the vernacular, spoken language. Two styles of writing, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax, have emerged:
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Shadhubhasha (সাধুভাষা) is the written language with longer verb inflections and a more Sanskrit-derived (তৎসম tôtshôm) vocabulary (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language'). Songs such as India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana (by Rabindranath Tagore) and national song Vande Mātaram (by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay) were composed in Shadhubhasha, but its use is on the wane in modern writing.
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Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিতভাষা), a written Bengali style that reflects a more colloquial idiom, is increasingly the standard for written Bengali (চলিত cholito = 'current' or 'running'). This form came into vogue towards the turn of the 19th century, in an orthography promoted in the writings of Peary Chand Mitra ( Alaler ghare dulal, 1857),
Spoken Bengali exhibits far more variation than written Bengali. Formal spoken Bengali, including what is heard in news reports, speeches, announcements, and lectures, is modelled on Choltibhasha. This form of spoken Bengali stands alongside other spoken dialects, or Ancholik Bangla (আঞ্চলিক বাংলা) (i.e. 'regional Bengali'). The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one dialect – often, speakers are fluent in Choltibhasha, one or more Ancholik dialect, and one or more forms of Gramyo Bangla (গ্রাম্য বাংলা) (i.e. 'rural Bengali'), dialects specific to a village or town.
To a non-Bengali, these dialects may sound or look vastly different, but the differences are mostly in Pronunciation and vocabulary, and not so much a grammatical one, one exception is the addition of grammatical gender in some eastern dialects. Many dialects share features with Sadhu bhasha, which was the written standard until the 19th century. Comparison of Bengali dialects gives us an idea about archaic forms of the language as well.
During standardisation of Bengali in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cultural elite were mostly from the regions of Dhaka Division, Kolkata, Hooghly district, Howrah district, 24 Parganas, Nadia District and Kushtia. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect. While the language has been standardised today through two centuries of education and media, variation is widespread, with many speakers familiar with or fluent in both their socio-geographical variety as well as the standard dialect used in the media.
Regional dialect differences
Dialectal differences in Bengali manifest themselves in three forms: standardized dialect vs. regional dialect, literary language vs. colloquial language, and lexical (vocabulary) variations. The name of the dialects generally originates from the district where the language is spoken.
While the standard form of the language does not show much variation across the Bengali-speaking areas of South Asia, regional variation in spoken Bengali constitutes a dialect continuum. Mostly speech varies across distances of just a few miles and takes distinct forms among religious communities. Bengali Hindus tend to speak in Sanskritised Bengali (a remnant of the Sadhu bhasha), Bengali Muslims comparatively use more Farsi-Arabic vocabulary and Bengali Christians converse in Christian Bengali when engaging in their own circles. Apart from the present dialects, there are a few more that have disappeared. For example, Sātagāiyã' (this is the name used in East Bengal for the dialect of the Southwestern Rarh region).
Phonological variations
The Eastern dialects serve as the primary colloquial language of the
Dhaka district, mixed nowadays with the standard register. In contrast to Western and Central dialects where ট and ড are unvoiced and voiced postalveolar stops respectively, far Eastern dialects pronounce them as apical alveolar and , especially in less formal speech. These dialects also lack contrastive nasalised vowels or a distinction in র //, ড়/ঢ় , pronouncing them mostly as , although some speakers may realise র // when occurring before a consonant or prosodic break. This is also true of the
Sylheti dialect, which has a lot in common with the
Kamrupi dialect of Assam in particular, and is sometimes considered a separate language. The Eastern dialects extend into Southeastern dialects, which include parts of Chittagong. The Chittagonian dialect has Tibeto-Burman influences.
Fricatives and fricatives
In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern
Bangladesh (
Barisal Division, Chittagong,
Dhaka Division and
Sylhet Division), and
Tripura and
Barak Valley of
India, many of the stops and affricates heard in the western and (south) central dialects are pronounced as fricatives. Western palato-alveolar and alveolo-palatal affricates চ ~, ছ ~, জ ~, ঝ ~ correspond to eastern চ ~, ছ , জ , ঝ . Note that few Perso-Arabic borrowings containing the phoneme are realized as such in all dialects.
The unvocied aspirated velar stop খ , the aspirated labial stop ফ and the voiced aspirated labial stop ভ of western-central Bengali dialects correspond to খ় ~, ফ় ~ and ভ় ~~ in eastern Bengali. These pronunciations are more prevalent in the Sylheti language variety of northeastern Bangladesh and south Assam, the variety spoken by most of the Bengali community in the United Kingdom. Note that phonemic transcriptions from left to right for eastern Bengali dialects indicate the realizations further eastwards. Retroflexes lose aspiration and variously remain like that or become alveolar. Breathy voiced stops lose breathiness. The voiced velar stop গ can fricative to গ় , and is mostly lost afterwards.
Many eastern Bengali dialects share phonological features with Assamese, including the debuccalisation of স, শ & ষ to হ (but not to খ় ).
Tibeto-Burman influence
The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on the phonology of eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels, an alveolar articulation for the Retroflex
Stop consonant ট , ঠ , ড , and ঢ , resembling the equivalent phonemes in languages such as
Thai language and
Lao language and the lack of distinction between র and ড়/ঢ় . Unlike most languages of the region, some Purbo Bengali dialects do not include the breathy voiced stops ঘ , ঝ , ঢ , ধ , and ভ . Some variants of Bengali, particularly Chittagonian and Chakma Bengali, have contrastive tone; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. In dialects such as
Hajong language of northern Bangladesh, there is a distinction between
উ and
ঊ, the first corresponding exactly to its standard counterpart but the latter corresponding to the Japanese sound . There is also a distinction between
ই and
ঈ in many northern Bangladeshi dialects.
ই representing the sound whereas
ঈ represents an .
Comparison table
Dialects and subdialects
Other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages
See also
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Bengali vocabulary
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Bengali phonology
Notes
External links
