Bangla Language

[Arnab]

Bangla is the fifth most spoken language in the world.

The World Book 2004 estimates are as follows:

1. Mandarin (Chinese) 874 million
2. Hindi 366 million
3. English 341 million
4. Spanish 322 million
5. Bengali 207 million
6. Portuguese 176 million
7. Russian 167 million
8. Japanese 125 million
9. German 100 million

[chinaman]

What is the correct (define at your taste) name of our language, Bengali or Bangla?

[Arnab]

Top 10 Languages Used in the Internet.

English 34.7 %
Chinese 13.8 %
Japanese 8.3 %
Spanish 6.8 %
German 6.5 %
French 4.5 %
Korean 3.9 %
Italian 3.5 %
Portuguese 2.7 %
Dutch 1.7 %

[Arnab]

Originally posted by chinaman
What is the correct (define at your taste) name of our language, Bengali or Bangla?

I like Bangla.

[chinaman]

Me too. But don't know if it is official or not.

[cisco-guy]

Originally posted by Arnab
Bangla is the fifth most spoken language in the world.

The World Book 2004 estimates are as follows:

1. Mandarin (Chinese) 874 million
2. Hindi 366 million
3. English 341 million
4. Spanish 322 million
5. Bengali 207 million
6. Portuguese 176 million
7. Russian 167 million
8. Japanese 125 million
9. German 100 million

Yea! We beat the German and the Russian and the Japanese and the Portuguese

[Arnab]

Originally posted by cisco-guy
Yea! We beat the German and the Russian and the Japanese and the Portuguese

//caustic remark follows

Yeah, we won the competition in pumping out dopeye gadhas thru the sore [] of our women. Yay!

Edited on, February 24, 2005, 3:05 AM GMT, by chinaman.

[shujan]

Bengali speaking total is 207 million. Bangladesh has about 200 million or so. That gives West bengal only 7 million.

[Orpheus]

Originally posted by shujan
Bengali speaking total is 207 million. Bangladesh has about 200 million or so. That gives West bengal only 7 million.

Bangladesh doesnt have 200 mil ppl. It shouldn't be more than 150 I think.

[reverse_swing]

Originally posted by shujan
Bangladesh has about 200 million or so.That gives West bengal only 7 million.

Another wrong information.The total population of West Bengal as at 0:00 hours of 1st March 2001 stood at 80,221,171.

>>[/i]Censusindia


And our population is 141,340,476 (July 2004 est.)

>>[/i]CIA Fact:BD



Edited on, February 24, 2005, 4:07 PM GMT, by reverse_swing.

[Arnab]

Originally posted by shujan
Bengali speaking total is 207 million. Bangladesh has about 200 million or so. That gives West bengal only 7 million.

How old are you?

[AsifTheManRahman]

remember reading that Bangla was the seventh most spoken laguage back in grade 4. looks like we have come a long way in terms of productivity.

[TigerFan]

Hindi, i think, they are counting more than the acutual number of poeple speak. I think they are holding the whole indian population for that. Only part of whole indian population speak hindi, like madha prodesh, bihar and uttar prodesh.

[Tintin]

>> I think they are holding the whole indian population for that.

Oh, no. There are more than a billion of us.

36% of Hindi speakers is a fair estimate. Uttar Pradesh itself contributes 160 million people.

[Rubu]

Originally posted by chinaman
What is the correct (define at your taste) name of our language, Bengali or Bangla?

Bangla is a Bangla word, and Bengali is an English word.

so ofcourse, I like Bangla. But at the best of my knowledge, the word "bangla" is not taken into english language.

google's dictonary (dictonary.com) does not recognize bangla, but do recognize bengali.

[TigerFan]

sorry tintin, I was wrong.

[Akib]

Chinese has two dialects. Catonese and Manderin. The list named one with 800 million. What happened to the Cantonese . Did they mix it up with the Manderin.

[Zunaid]

Originally posted by aka
Chinese has two dialects. Catonese and Manderin. The list named one with 800 million. What happened to the Cantonese . Did they mix it up with the Manderin.

Using standard linguistics definition for langauges in terms of mutual intelligebility - most linguists would classify the Mandarin as a language or language group rather than as a dialect. There are about 14 - 17 (depenfinf on how tight your definition of intelligibility is) other Chinese language groups - with the second most populous being Cantonese - but the number of speakers of this group won't make it the list above.

Interestingly, the Chinese themselves prefer to call all variants the same language with different dialects. This has political undertones - ie The Han Chinese all speak the same languages - albeit with many dialects. National unity comes into play here. I assume the recognition of multiple languages may help give legitimicy to various secessionist movements.

There are many "languages" in the world which are really dialects from a linguists perspective. But, as they say, a language is a dialect with an army. Consider Swedish v Danish - speakers of each class have aboslutely no problem understanding each other.

[reverse_swing]

In Chinese there are mainly five dialects(widely spoken): Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue (also known as Cantonese – common in Honk Kong, Malaysia and Singapore ) and Hakka. In China and Taiwan Mandarin is the official language.

speakers of each class have aboslutely no problem understanding each other.

Cantonese Chinese spoken people always face serious problem to understand Mandarin Chinese at the beginning.



Edited on, February 28, 2005, 1:06 AM GMT, by reverse_swing.

[Zunaid]

Originally posted by reverse_swing
In Chinese there are total five dialects: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue (also known as Cantonese – common in Honk Kong, Malaysia and Singapore ) and Hakka. In China and Taiwan Mandarin is the official language.

Depends on the linguists of the day.

Mandarin - 830M
Wu - 77m
Cantonese (Yue) - 70M
Min - 60M (This includes Taiwanese; Some linguists will break this further into several language groups)
Xiang - 50m
Hakka - 34m
Gan - 31m
Hui - 3.2m
Pinghua - 2m (often lumped with Mandarin)

I think ehtnologue.com lists more variants.

[reverse_swing]

As far as I know this is almost impossible to count the actual number of Chinese dialects. Even Mandarin have more than 500 different sub dialects although only 7 are widely spoken. It depends on how you classify them. So far around 1500 Chinese dialects have been found.

Edited on, February 28, 2005, 12:28 AM GMT, by reverse_swing.

[Akib]

k
I see now..
thanx

[reverse_swing]

Can anybody tell me the actual number of Bangla spoken people outside BD and WB?
In UK according to 2001 census we have around 280000 Bangla spoken people.

btw in London Bangla is the 2nd most spoken language. Top 40 languages spoken in London are as follows(2001 census ):


English 608,500
Bengali 40,400
Panjabi 29,800
Gujarati 28,600
Hindi/Urdu 26,000
Turkish 15,600
Arabic 11,000
English-based Creoles 10,700
Yoruba (Nigeria) 10,400
Somali 8,300
Cantonese 6,900
Greek 6,300
Akan (Ashanti) 6,000
Portuguese 6,000
French 5,600
Spanish 5,500
Tamil (Sri Lanka) 3,700
Farsi (Persian) 3,300
Italian 2,500
Vietnamese 2,400
Igbo (Nigeria) 1,900
French-based Creoles 1,800
Tagalog (Filipino) 1,600
Kurdish 1,400
Polish 1,500
Swahili 1,000
Lingala (Congo) 1,000
Albanian 900
Luganda (Uganda) 800
Ga (Ghana) 800
Tigrinya (Sudan) 800
German 800
Japanese 800
Serbian/Croatian 700
Russian 700
Hebrew 650
Korean 550
Pashto (Afganistan) 450
Amharic (Ethiopia) 450
Sinhala (Sri Lanka) 450

Source >>



Edited on, February 28, 2005, 1:05 AM GMT, by reverse_swing.

[Fazal]

Originally posted by reverse_swing
Can anybody tell me the actual number of Bangla spoken people outside BD and WB?
In UK according to 2001 census we have around 280000 Bangla spoken people.

btw in London Bangla is the 2nd most spoken language. Top 40 languages spoken in London are as follows(2001 census ):


English 608,500
Bengali 40,400

Source >>



Edited on, February 28, 2005, 1:05 AM GMT, by reverse_swing.

fertile land and fertile people

Bhaiera amar chaleyee Jan.... we need to reach 610K mark.

[bdlocal]

I was under the impression that Bangla is the language and bengali is the people who speaks Bangla.

However, it's good to hear Bangla is the 5th most spoken language in the world.