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Bangla is the official language of West Bengal and Tripura and is also considered as the regional official language of the Cachar district in Assam. A considerable number of Bangla speakers are found in the neighboring states of Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. According to 1991 censes 69, 595, 738 were mother tongue speakers in terms of Bengali.
Bangla speakers have been noted to be competent bilingual speakers of Hindi, English, Asamiya, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Maithili, Nepali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, so on and soforth.
There are a considerate number of other language speakers who use Bangla fluently for the functional purpose. A lot of people whose mother tongues are Hindi, Asamiya, Oriya, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Nepali, Tamil, Manipuri, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, etc. belong to this functional group.
The following chart contains the number of Bangla speakers (above 10,000) , according to the 1991 census.
States Number of speakers West Bengal 58, 541, 519 Assam 4, 856, 532 Bihar 2, 523, 040 Tripura 1, 899, 162 Orissa 442, 971 Uttar Pradesh 263, 917 Madhya Pradesh 250, 794 Maharastra 161, 497 Meghalaya 144, 261 Delhi 121, 938 Arunachal Pradesh 70, 771 Andaman & Nicobar Islands 64, 706 Mizoram 59, 092 Nagaland 38, 280 Andhra Pradesh 30, 281 Rajasthan 28, 133 Karnataka 20, 926 Gujarat 20, 809 Manipur 19, 385
According to the 1991 census, the distribution of the functional group of Bangla ie, people who use Bangla as second language in India is as follows .
Name of First Language Number of speakers speaking Bangla as second language Adi 54 Angami 6 Ao 4 Arabi/Arbi 399 Assamese 11, 71, 689 Bhili/Bhilodi 933 Bhotia 80 Bishnupriya 34, 607 Bodo/ Boro 46, 197 Coorg/kodagu 4 Dimasa 17, 959 Dogri 29 English 2, 067 Gangte 33 Garo 23, 336 Gondi 404 Gujarati 4, 887 Halam 9, 680 Hindi 9, 31, 407 Hmar 3, 076 Ho 7, 885 Kabui 257 Kannada 161 Karbi/Mikir 25 Kashmiri 3 Kharia 1, 557 Khasi 3, 869 Khond/kondh 4 Kisan 11 Koch 3, 376 Koda/kora 11, 682 Konda 310 Konkani 76 Korwa 192 Koya 544 Kuki 959 Kurukh/Oraon 41, 484 Lahnda 6 Lepcha 6 Lushai/Mizo 462 Malayalam 1, 518 Malto 6, 197 Manipuri 40, 899 Mao 1 Maram 15 Marathi 1, 040 Mishmi 12 Mogh 9, 699 Munda 16, 729 Mundari 35, 964 Nepali 31, 977 Nissi/Dafla 4 Oriya 74, 369 Paite 10 Parji 4 Punjabi 5, 576 Radha 5, 000 Rengma 702 Sanskrit 12 Santali 11, 63, 063 Savara 651 Sema 2 Sherpa 6 Sindhi 495 Tamil 1, 885 Tangsa 596 Telugu 6, 509 Thado 21 Tibetan 344 Tripuri 2, 95, 932 Tulu 9 Urdu 2, 06, 356 Other Languages 28, 338
At the international level, Bangla diaspora is found in the countries like Bangladesh (100, 000, 000 - 1994), Nepal (27, 712) Singapore (600), United Arab Emirates (70, 000), United States of America, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia (15, 600), Malawi, Canada, Australia, France, etc.
At the national level, Bangla diaspora is evident in the states like Assam, Bihar, Tripura, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, Megalaya, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat and Manipur.
The ethnic composition of Bangla identity group is neither migrant nor nomadic. Rather it can be said to be sedentary in nature. The ethnic composition of the speech community is constituted of leoth rural and urban population.
The ethnic composition of Bangla functional group is basically migrant by nature. Both the rural and urban people of various speech communities like Gujarati, Rajasthani, Marwari, Oriya, Asamiya, Bihari, Tamil, Telugu, Malayali, Nepali, Sindhi, Punjabi, Iranian (kabuliwala), Chinese, etc. migrated in West Bengal for the purpose of business, service, etc.
Bangla speech community has language contact with different Indian languages as well as with many foreign languages. Significant language contact of Bangla is evidenced with the Indian languages, like Hindi, (official language of India) Oriya of Asamiya (having the areal contact leaving the neighboring speech communities). A tendency of Bangla-Hindi pidginisation has been noticed in the Purulia, Birbhum regions where it from the western border of west Bengal. Bangla has contact situations with Maithili, Magahi of Bhojpuri.
As far as foreign languages are concerned, Bangla has great deal of contact with English language at all levels. Having English as the dominant language for two hundred years Bangla attests both code mixing and code switching from English.
Code mixing from both English and Hindi is evident in Bangla. English code mixing is essentially found in the field of scientific, medical, engineering, technological, judiciary & administrative terminologies. Code switching to English is also quite prevalent among the speakers of the Bangla speech community especially in the field of education, administration, etc. Code mixing and code switching in Hindi can be observed in the field of trade and commerce. In the interactive field of romance and violence, Hindi code mixing and code switching are also evident as an influence of Hindi films.
Bangla attests convergence with Sanskrit on the morphophonemic level. The tatbhva words that originated from Sanskrit developed into different forms giving rise to the formation of a number of Homonyms and Homophones in Bangla which can be cited as an instance of language convergence.
In Bangla, borrowing of vocabulary items is found from Pharsi, Portuguese, Arabic, Sanskrit (tatsama), Hindi and most significantly from English. Chatterji (1926) points out that the ratio of Bangla vocabulary and the borrowed words is 50 : 50. The foreign elements in Bangla vocabulary constitute a major portion of vocabulary in the language. Instances of borrowing in Bangla from other Indian language can also be observed. Diffusion has not been significantly observed in Bangla.
The social structure of the Bangla speech community though varied, is not rigid. Caste system comprising the castes like Brahmin, kayastha, Vaidya, Vaisya, Mahisya, Namasudra, Tili, Tanti, sunri, Barujibi, Bagdi, etc. is existent.
In some rural areas the caste system is maintained in case of marriages, cooking food, etc. In different rituals like Sraddha, performing pujas, the role of Brahmin (not any other caste is still maintained in both the rural and urban areas. Otherwise the caste system is not rigidly maintained (as it was in the earlier period) in the speech community. Only in case of arranged marriages this caste system is maintained, that too only to some extent by some of the families.
Apart from the caste system, the religious system that comprises Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Brahmin, Buddhist, Vaishnava, etc are found to be existent in the social structure.
Bangla speech community exhibits institutionalization in the fields of child birth 'annaprasan' (first rice feeding of the child); education general academic institution, Tol, Madrasas, etc.); initiation 'upanayan' (in case of Brahmins and vaidyas the learning of 'gayatri mantra' and having the holy thread 'paite'); marriage 'vibaha' ; and Death 'sraddha'.
The functional group who speak Bangla for functional purposes like trade, commerce, occupation, etc. is usually
found to maintain their identity as well as loyalty towards their mother tongue. For education, they either opt for English or mother
tongue. As regards states and attitude of the functional group it can be said that it is maintenance-prone and positive.
The sociopolitical economy that governs a language from the point of view of sociopolitical power is evident from the
differentiation that exists between Bangla and English. The Bangla language is affected by the mastery of the English language to some
extent which is due to its colonial past. Though Adam's report in 1854 clearly recommended mother tongue to be the medium of
instruction at the primary level, Macaulay's minute of 1935 damaged the sentiment of the Bangla speakers by giving importance to the
English language as a medium of instruction. It was observed by the Hunter commission in 1882 that with the establishment of the
Universities in 1857, the affinity towards English education become widespread at the primary level also. With this hegemonic attitude
in the background, the linguistic awareness regarding their mother tongue was developed among the members of the Bangla speech
community inspite of accepting English for the official purpose and as a link language especially for the relative importance of
the English language that is characterized by socio-economic crisis for the Bangla language. As a result the consciousness for the
promotion of Bangla has taken a new shape. Though in the fields of education, medium of instruction, literature, song, drama and in
such other cultural performances Bangla finds its due place, the inclination for the promotion of Bangla in the fields of
administration, higher state government jobs, government and private corporate sectors, multinational sectors, has taken place.
The multinational corporate sectors have already started using Bangla for their clients which is evident from various Bangla
creative advertisements of their products. The domains of English and Bangla language usage need to be specified as a subject
matter of language planning. J. DIFFERENTIATION AND COHESION: LANGUAGE AND POWEER (SOCIOPOLITICAL ECONOMY)
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