Bengali

How to spell bengali

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bengali

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bengali mean?

1. nounThe Indo-Aryan language of Bengal, or a person native to that region.
2. adjectiveRelating to Bengal, its people, language, or culture.

Bengali in a sentence

• noun

  The menu was printed in both English and bengali.

• adjective

  The restaurant is famous for its bengali fish curry.

• noun

  Her grandmother spoke fluent bengali at home.

• adjective

  He studied bengali literature at university.

Where does bengali come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

This word is built on the place name Bengal, the great delta region split today between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Bengal itself traces back to the ancient Sanskrit kingdom name Vanga, which over centuries softened in regional speech to Bangla, the people's own name for both their land and their language. The final -i is a familiar adjectival ending in Persian and Hindi, meaning roughly 'belonging to', the same suffix seen in words like Punjabi and Gujarati. English picked the word up during the era of trade and empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, using it for the language, the people, and anything characteristic of the region. The spelling trap is that the single soft 'g' is followed by the unstressed -ali ending, which tempts writers toward a doubled 'l' or an -ally finish that does not belong.

How the word is built

• Bengal (the historical region of Bengal)
• -i (adjectival suffix meaning 'of, belonging to', from Persian and Hindi)