Published in The Dhaka University Studies. December 2010, Vol. 67, No.2, Page 63~77.

Language Situation in Bangladesh

A.B.M. Razaul Karim Faquire
Professor of Japanese Language
Institute of Modern Languages,
University of Dhaka
e-mail: bangla1999@hotmail.com

Abstract
This paper charts the state of language situation that exists in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been known as a
monolingual country since its independence in 1971, Bangla (or Bengali) being its only national and official language.
Therefore multilingualism has not been a political issue in Bangladesh, though a situation beyond the monolingualism
can be observed in the language situation of Bangladesh, if the three different scenes— a) distribution of regional
varieties of Bangla, b) distribution of indigenous languages and c) trend of foreign language use in different social
settings— are taken into consideration.
Keywords
Bangladesh, Language situation, Regional varieties of Bangla, Minority languages, Foreign language use

Introduction
The aim of this paper is to chart the present state of language situation beyond monolingualism that exists in
Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been known as a monolingual country with the population of 150 million
(approximately), Bangla (or Bengali) being its only national and official language since its independence in 1971.
However, before the independence, the region now known as Bangladesh had been existed as a multilingual country
for centuries throughout its social and political development. In the early period of history, there were various
aboriginal speech communities including mainly the speakers of Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages
distributed throughout the different regions of this country. The multilingual situation that had existed for millenniums
changed in the later period with the settlement of the immigrant people into two phases. In the first phase, the Aryan
speech communities immigrated into this region until the beginning of 1st Millennium. In the second phase, the
Muslim people including Afgan, Arabic, Persian and Turkish speech communities immigrated and settled here
beginning from the 13th century until the British period. The Aryan people were of Indo-Aryan speaking, the
vernacular of whom was Prakrit (meaning unrefined/common), the variety of speech which came into contact with the
local languages, i.e. the aboriginal languages. As a result of the effect of such language contact from the dominant
language of immigrant speech communities, most of the indigenous languages eventually lost their identity in favor of
the creation of a variety of Apabhramsa (corrupt/vulgar) which later emerged as Bangla in the 13th century (cf.
Shahidullah, 1965). The evolution of present-day Bangla can be seen from the following cline of language change:
Sanskrit>Prakrit (unrefined/common)>Apabhramsa (corrupt/vulgar)> Bangla

The evolution of Bangla language had further continued in the later period beginning from the Muslim
conquest until the British colonial rule. With the advent of Muslim conquest, the people of immigrant speech
communities started to immigrate into this region from the various parts of the Central Asia in different phases. In that
period of Middle age, Persian was introduced as an official language in order to replace the Sanskrit, the then official

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language of the Indian subcontinent. During the regime of the Muslim rulers, various speech communities like the
Arabian, the Afghan, the Persian and the Turk from the different parts of the Central Asia and those like the Uriya, the
Marwari, the Bhujpuri and the Kashmiri from the other parts of South Asia immigrated here, consequently a kind of
multilingual situation created which existed in this region throughout the evolution of Bangla. Again, during the
British imperial period, the situation of multilingualism widened with the introduction of English as the official
language in 1835, when some other speech communities such as the Uriya, the Bhujpuri, the Marwari, the Kashmiri,
the Nepali, the Telegu and the Punjabi from the different parts of South Asia came to settle here. This scene of
multilingualism in this region of then the East Pakistan changed again little after the birth of Pakistan by separation
from India in 1947, when many of the Hindus left this country to other parts of India and many Muslims of West
Pakistan as well as India poured into this country. The changing state of multilingualism can be viewed from the
following Table 1:

Table 1: State of Multilingualism in Bangladesh throughout History at a Glance [Source: Rahim, 1963 (translated
in 1982) and Majumdar (eds.), 1943]
No. Timeline of Local Speech Foreign Speech Nature of Language Effect of Language
History Communities Communities Contact Contact
01. Early Period Various aboriginal Aryan people started to Sanskrit and vernacular No record is found
(until 700 speech communities of pour into this region. form of Sanskrit started about the effect of
AD) the Austro-Asiatic and to be used as a vehicle language contact
Tibeto- Burman of religions, e.g.
languages with a few Hinduism and
Dravidian speech Bhuddism, and served
communities mostly as a contact language.
without any contact
between these languages.
02. Early Indo-Aryan speaking The flow of A kind of contact Evolution of Prakrit
Middle Ages Aryan people integrated immigration of between the dominant was continued with the
(750-1204 with the population of Indo-Aryan speech Indo-Aryan, i.e. Prakrit spread of Buddhism.
AD) this country. communities had with the local
continued. indigenous languages
started.
03. Late Intermarriage among the The Afghan, the Apabhramsa came in Creation of new forms
Middle Ages Muslim people of Arabian, the Persian, the contact with the Persian of vernacular toward
(1204-1576 different speech Pathan and the Turk and Arabic languages. the formation of the
AD) communities, and with poured into this region language of Bangla had
the converted local at the advent of the begun.
Muslim people had Muslim conquest.
begun toward their
integration with the

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population of this
country
04. Mughal Emigrant speech The more and more Arabic and Persian had Creation of a new form
Period communities of Arabic, Turkic people joined to been a vehicle for the of vernacular, i.e.
(1576-1757 Persian, Afgan and this flow of immigration religion of Islam. Due to Bangla as a means of
AD) Turkic origin from from Central Asia. the mobilization of literary language
central Asia integrated Additionally the speech various speech evolved by the
with the local communities of other communities, the administration of
population. Indic languages, e.g. vernacular Muslim rulers.
The flow of immigration Uriya, Bhujpuri, ‘Apabhramsa’ was
of the above speech Marwari from the enriched by the contact
communities continued. neighbouring regions of of Arabic and Persian.
South Asia poured into
this region.
05. British More and more speakers Immigrant speech English as a medium of A standard form of
Colonial of other Indic languages communities of the education influenced the Bangla with diglossia
Period from neighbouring above section along shaping of Bangla evolved as an
(1757-1947 regions of the with some British language. The acceptable lingua
AD) subcontinent poured into people. indigenous people of franca in the social and
this region. various speech cultural setting of
communities started to Kolkata.
accept the Bangla
language as their lingua
franca.
06. Pakistan Entire population of Most of the people of A transitional period of The standard variety of
Period English speaking Uriya, Bhujpuri, language planning Bangla developed in
(1947-1971 communities repatriated Marwari, Kashmiri, Kolkata during the
AD) but a large number of Nepali, Telegu, Punjabi British Period was
Urdu/ Bihari speaking speech communities recognized as one of
people poured into this returned to India the official languages
country followed by the of the then East
People from the region, Pakistan.
then West Pakistan.
07. Present Standard variety of Most of the Urdu speech Standard variety of Bangla has been
Period (since Bangla with various communities migrated Bangla is in contact accepted as a language
1971 AD) regional varieties of to Pakistan or India. with various regional of status for the first
Bangla. A number of varieties of Bangla. time in the history.
minority speech Similarly, all the
communities of minority languages are

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Tibeto-Burman and in contact with the

Austro-Asiatic Bangla language, the
languages. process which is
causing to shape those
minority languages.

This situation of multilingualism that had existed for centuries came to an end in 1971 with the emergence of
Bangladesh as a new homogenous nation. After the independence of Bangladesh, this country has been known as the
home of the Bangla speakers.
Apart from the Bangla speaking main speech communities in Bangladesh, there are, however, as Breton
(1997) reported, more than 30 speech communities which comprise more than 1% of the total population
(approximately 150 million) with the speakers from four different language families: the Austro-Asiatic including
Santal and Khashi, the Sino-Tibetan including Garo, Kokborok and Marma, the Dravidian including Kurux and Sauria
Paharia, and the Indo-Aryan including Chakma, Hajong, Tanchangya and Urdu. The following Table 2 shows a total
picture of the languages, which are spoken in Bangladesh according to their language family:
Table 2: Languages Spoken in Bangladesh according to their Language Family [Source: Lewis (eds.) (2009)]
Language Languages in Names of Languages Percentage
Family Category of Speakers
Indo-European Bangla Bangla and its dialects: Chittagonian and Shylheti 98.74%
Other Indic languages Urdu/Bihari, Rohingya 0.33%
Indigenous languages Chakma, Tanchangya, Hajong, Bishnupuryia, Oraon 0.25%
Sadri, etc.
Sino-Tibetan Baric languages Koch, Garo, Tripura (Kokborok), Kachari, Usoi 0.53%
Burmic languages Bom, Khyang, Khumi, Kuki, Lushei (Mizo), Pankhua,
Arakanese (Marma), Chak, Meithei (Manipuri), Mikir,
Mro (Mru)
Austro-Asiatic Khashi, Koda, Pnar, Santali,War Jaintia 0.12%
Dravidian Kurux, Sauria Paharia 0.03%

As it is evident from the above Table 2, a language situation beyond monolingualism exists in Bangladesh
with a certain degree of multilingualism. This state of the language situation in Bangladesh can be explored, if the
following three different scenes: scene 1: distribution of regional varieties of Bangla, scene 2: distribution of
indigenous languages and scene 3: trend of foreign language use in different social settings are taken into
consideration.

Scene 1: Distribution of Regional Varieties of Bangla

The standard variety of Bangla developed by the literary scholars including Rabindranath Tagore in Kolkata
th
in the 19 century has been made one of the state languages of this country, the then East Pakistan in 1956. After the
independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan, Bangla was made the national and official language of the new nation for
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the first time in the history. Although the standard variety of Bangla has been introduced as its only national and
official language of Bangladesh, it exists with a number of dialectal varieties apart from its standard variety. During
the formation period of Bangla which continued until the 18th century, there were only the Austro-Asiatic and
Tibeto-Burman speech communities throughout the country. The languages of different aboriginal speech
communities were mostly mutually unintelligible to the speakers of other speech communities. However, these
aboriginal languages lead to the process of shaping the regional varieties of Bangla, while the formation of Bangla
took place.
According to the Cultural Survey of Bangladesh (2007), at present there are at least 16 regional varieties of
Bangla spoken in the greater districts of Barisal, Bogra, Chittagong, Comilla, Dhaka, Dinajpur, Faridpur, Jessore,
Khulna, Kushtia, Mymensingh, Noakhali, Pabna, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet. These regional varieties are the
dialects of Bangla, while two of these dialects: Sylheti and Chittagonian are remarkably deviated from the standard
variety. Among the 16 regional varieties, the Chittagonian variety is hardly intelligible to the speakers of other
regional varieties. Given the above language situation on the regional varieties of Bangla, a diglossic situation is
observed in the different regions of Bangladesh with the standard variety of Bangla for formal communication and a
regional variety of Bangla for everyday communication. In the big cities of Bangladesh such as Dhaka, Chittagong
and Sylhet, there have been created some language situations, where the people are mainly immigrants from the
different regions of Bangladesh. In these language situations of big cities, the people are found to understand the
speech of each other, while they speak in their own regional variety.

Apart from these regional varieties of Bangla, there are certain languages such as Chakma, Tanchangya,
Hajong, Bishnupuryia, Oraon Sadri spoken by the indigenous people of Mongoloid origin. These languages of
minority speech communities evolved from the vernaculars of the Tibeto-Burman origin due to the effects of long
contact with the local varieties of Bangla. These languages lost their affiliation with the ancestral family and now
belong to the Indic group of the Indo-European families (Faquire, 2009). The following Table 3 shows the varieties of
Bangla spoken in the different regions of Bangladesh:

Table 3: Varieties of Bangla and the Regions where they are Spoken

No. Varieties of Bangla Language Situation

01. Standard variety of Bangla The standard variety of Bangla developed by the literary scholars in Kolkata
for formal and official in the 19th century.
communication

02. Regional varieties of Bangla 16 regional varieties of Bangla spoken in the greater districts of Barisal,
for everyday communication Bogra, Chittagong, Comilla, Dhaka, Dinajpur, Faridpur, Jessore, Khulna,
Kushtia, Mymensingh, Noakhali, Pabna, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet.

03. Regional varieties with The regional varieties of Sylheti and Chittagonian which are remarkably
deviant features deviated from the standard variety. Between them, the latter is hardly
intelligible to the speakers of other regional varieties.

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04. Variety of language spoken
by the indigenous
communities, which belong
to the group of Indic
language deemed to be the
dialect of Bangla
The languages, e.g. Chakma, Tanchangya, Hajong, Bishnupuryia (spoken by
the people of Mongoloid origin), and Oraon Sadri and Rohingya evolved as a
result of a long contact with Apabhramsa and later with local variety of
Bangla.

Scene 2: Distribution of Indigenous Languages

Apart from the language situation as seen with regard to various regional varieties, there exists a situation of
multilingualism with more than 30 indigenous speech communities (Lewis (eds.) 2009) in some of the regions in
Bangladesh. These regions include Chittagong Hill-Tracts, some parts of Sylhet and Mymensingh bordering on India
and those of Chittagong district bordering on Myanmar, where some mosaic like linguistic distribution have been
created with various speech communities. There are still some interior regions including the greater districts of
Rajshahi and Dinajpur with the speech communities of Santal, and the greater districts of Borguna and Potuakhali with
the speech communities of Magh, where bilingual situations prevail. The following atlas shows the distribution of
various speech communities in the various regions of Bangladesh.

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[Source: Map of Language Distribution of Different Speech Communities in Bangladesh, Source: Ethnologue by Lewis, (eds.)
2009]

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The distribution of various minority speech communities distributed throughout various regions of
Bangladesh (Anisuzzaman, 2008) is as follow:
a) The Chittagong Hill Tracts: It is a southeastern district of Bangladesh which borders on India and Myanmar. The
population of it is approximately 1.5 million, approximately 50% of which are the speakers of Tibeto-Burman
languages including Marma, Tripura (Kokborok), Chak, Pankho, Mru, Murung, Bawm, Lushei, Kyang and Khumi,
and two Indic languages, Tanchungya and Chakma, which are deemed to be dialectal varieties of Bangla, and the
remaining 50% (approximately) are the speakers of Bangla. In this region, a growing number of people of the
indigenous speech communities have been bilingual, who have a certain degree of control in their second language,
Bangla (cf. Chakma, 2000).
b) The regions of Sylhet bordering on India: There are some areas in the greater district of Sylhet bordering on India,
where a multilingual situation has been existed. In the district of Sylhet, there are speech communities including Khasi,
Bishnupriya, Garo, Hajong, Meithei (Manipuri), Pnar, War Jaintia and Sadri Oraon, which are concentrated mainly in
three different areas of Sylhet.
c) The regions of Mymensingh bordering on India: There are some more areas in the greater district of Mymensingh
bordering on the Meghalaya state of India, where multilingual situations have been existed. In the district of
Mymensingh, there are speech communities including A’tong (Bodo), Garo, Koch, Megam (Bodo), Hajong. There is
also some Garos, known as plain land Garo, who live in different interior areas of Mymensingh.
d) The regions of Chittagong bordering on Myanmar: There are some areas in the greater district of Chittagong
bordering on Myanmar, where a multilingual situation exists with the speech communities including Marma,
Rakhayne and Rohingya.
e) The regions of Rajshahi and Dinajpur: In some interior areas of the greater districts of Rajshahi and Dinajpur, where
the speech community of Santal and that of Kurukh ‒only language in Bangladesh belonging to the Dravidian family
are settled in here.

In the language situation of Bangladesh, the indigenous people from one speech community cannot
communicate with that from another in their own vernacular, for which they use Bangla as a Lingua Franca for the
communication. These people, therefore, have naturally been bilingual with different degrees of control in their second
language, Bangla. It is mentionable that most of them have converted to either of the Indian religions of Hinduism or
Buddhism, though some of them like Khumi and Mru remained animists. Consequently, their languages came into
contact with the vehicles of religions, i.e. Sanskrit and Pali for centuries and are still in regular contact with Bangla,
the Lingua Franca for them. Due to these ongoing effects of contact from the Indo-Aryan languages, some of the
recipient indigenous languages, e.g. Chakma and Hajong have received significant effects of contacts at all levels:
phonological, morphological, morpho-syntactic, syntactic and semantic on their linguistic structures that caused the
loss of affiliation to their ancestral family of language, i.e. Sino-Tibetan (Faquire, 2009).

Scene 3: Trend of Foreign Language Use in Various Social Settings: religious and educational
The people of Bangladesh commonly use Bangla with its two varieties, regional variety and standard variety.
There are, however, some situations where either people use or require using a second language for their special
purposes in some extraordinary social settings including educational, religious and official ones. For example, they use

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any of the language of Arabic, Sanskrit or Pali for their religious purposes and English or Urdu/Arabic for their
educational purposes. Though they use one of these languages as a second language in various social settings, they do
not have an equal level of proficiency in these languages.
In the educational setting, a section of the people use English or Urdu/Arabic language for the purpose of
attaining an education. Although the common people of the country receive education given through Bangla medium,
there are other sections of people who receive education through English or Urdu/Arabic medium. The people of the
elite community prefer to receive a Western education through English medium in the English medium institutions.
Again, there are many Muslims, who bear fundamental values of Islam, feel satisfied to receive ‘pure’ education
through the mixed media of Urdu and Arabic in Madrasha. The people being educated in the special institutions would
use their mother tongue Bangla in common social settings, and English and Urdu/Arabic in their educational ones.
Through the process of being educated in the media in English or Urdu/Arabic, only some of them can attain a certain
degree of control over these languages. These people often switch from one code (English or Urdu/Arabic) to another
(Bangla) and vice versa in the educational settings. The languages, which the people of Bangladesh commonly use in
various educational settings, are shown in the following Table 4:

Table 4: Use of Languages in Educational Settings

No. Kind of education Nature of education Medium of Section of People
language
01. Education for the Thought to GCE 1 English A section of elite people with
people with be quality Syllabus medium upper socio-economic status.
socio-economic education NCTB 2 English version Middle class people
status Syllabus concentrated in the various
cities of Bangladesh.
02. Religious education Islamic Quawmi Urdu and Arabic A section of Muslim people
education madrasah with the fundamental value of
Islam.
Alia Bengli/Arabic A good number of Muslim
madrasah people who maintain Islamic
value leaning to the
mainstream education.
Hindu religious education Sanskrit A small number of Hindu
priests requiring Sanskrit for
the religious rites and rituals.
Buddhist education Pali A small number of Buddhist
priests comprising both
Bengali people and indigenous
people.

1 General Certificate of Education

2 National Curriculum and Textbook Board
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03. Education for the Education in accordance with Bangla Almost entire rural population
the National Curriculum and
common people Textbook Board and a section of urban
population with lower
socio-economic status.

In the religious setting, the people of Bangladesh use any of the three languages of Arabic, Sanskrit and Pali
for their religious practices, i.e. rites and rituals. Since the people of Bangladesh are mostly Muslim, Arabic is widely
used as the language of rites and rituals in the religious settings. The percentage of the people affiliated to various
religions and the language used by them are as follow:
Table 5: Use of Languages in Religious Setting
No. Kind of Medium of language The Population (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki accessed
religion on August 08, 2011)
01. Islam Arabic Entire Muslim population comprising 89.7% of the Bengali
people.
02. Hinduism Sanskrit Hindus including 9.2% of people, most of whom are Bengali
people and a few of whom are indigenous people, e.g. Hajong,
Tripura and Manipuri.
03. Buddhism Pali Buddhists including 0.70% of Bengali and some indigenous
people, e.g. Chakma and Marma.
04. Christianity Bangla/English Christians including 0.30% of Bengali, Anglo and indigenous
people, e.g. Garo.
05. Animism Indigenous languages Animist including 0.10% of indigenous people

Some people have sufficient control over English among the above mentioned languages of special purposes,
which they use as a medium of education and for official deals. These people often use English instead of Bangla in
verbal communication in some extraordinary educational and official situations.

Conclusion
On the basis of foregoing discussion with regard to the language situation in Bangladesh: a) distribution of
regional varieties of Bangla, b) distribution of indigenous languages and c) trend of foreign language use in different
social settings, it can be argued that a language situation beyond monolingualism certainly prevails in Bangladesh.
Again, there are certain areas in Bangladesh, such as Chittagong Hill Tracts and hilly area of Sylhet, where some
situation of multilingualism exists with the combination of various speech communities.

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