| Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language.
The alphabet is derived from the Brahmi alphabet
and is closely related to the Devanagari alphabet.
It was in 1778 that the alphabet first appeared,
it was Charles Wilkins who developed the printing in Bengali.
A few of the archaic letters
were modernised during the 19Th century.
Some people prefer to call the alphabet the Eastern Neo-Brahmic
scrip or the Eastern Nagari script.
In Bangladesh, the strong linguistic
consciousness led to the Bengali Language Movement,and on 21st February 1952, several
people were killed during protests to maintain the writing of Bengali in the Bengali script and
to gain its recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan. The day has since
been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh,and on 17Th November 1999, it was proclaimed the
International Mother Language Day by UNESCO. |
