Facts about Bengali

1. 07

   February 21st is celebrated as International Mother Language Day worldwide, commemorating the 1952 Dhaka protests where students died defending Bengali as a state language.

   BengaliSep 28sharehistorylanguagepolitics
2. 06

   Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar standardized Bengali orthography and grammar in the 19th century, establishing spelling conventions that remain the foundation of modern written Bengali today.

   BengaliMay 14sharelanguagestandardizationhistory
3. 05

   Chandimangal, a 16th-century Bengali narrative poem by Mukundaram Chakraborty, stands as the earliest known work of Bengali secular literature written in the vernacular language.

   BengaliMay 14shareliteraturehistorymedieval
4. 04

   In 1835, English became the medium of instruction in Bengali schools following Thomas Babington Macaulay's education policy, fundamentally reshaping the language's literary and intellectual landscape.

   BengaliMay 14sharehistoryeducationlanguage-policy
5. 03

   Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, becoming the first non-European recipient of this award.

   BengaliMay 14shareliteratureawardhistory
6. 02

   The Bengali script, developed around the 11th century, uses 11 vowels and 39 consonants arranged in a unique abugida system unlike Latin-based alphabets.

   BengaliMay 14sharelinguisticsscripthistorical
7. 01

   Approximately 230 million people speak Bengali as their first language, making it the second most spoken native language globally after Mandarin Chinese.

   BengaliMay 14sharelanguagedemographicsmeasurement