Bengali/Today

Nowadays Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh. In India, Bengali is official in the states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura and the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Owing to the aid of UN peacekeepers from Bangladesh, Bengali is also an honorarily official language in Sierra Leone. The language is regulated by academies in Dhaka and Kolkata, which hold near-equal sway in development.

Even decades after the death of master storyteller, poet, and songwriter Rabindranath Tagore, a noted diglossia exists between Bengali's literary standard (সাধুভাষা sadhubhaṣa) and its colloquial standard (চলিতভাষা colitobhaṣa), the former retaining more archaic word forms and the latter capitulating to speech impediments and increased borrowings from English outside of those obtained in the era of the British Raj.