Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. Bengali is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, southern Assam- also known as Barak Valley, and part of Tripura. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages in the world. Bengali is the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second most spoken language in India. Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-Iranian languages and the most eastern of the Indo-European languages. With its long and rich literary tradition, Bengali serves to bind together a culturally diverse region. In 1952, when Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, this strong sense of identity led to the Bengali Language Movement, in which several people braved bullets and died on February 21. This day has now been declared as the International Mother Language Day.

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