🌏 From Bengal 📝 A language 🧑 A person from Bengal 🗣️ A language speaker

Bengali

4 4.2

Relating to Bengal, its people, language and culture

adjective
/bɛŋˈɡɑːli/

: bengalí

But this was not the case in the culturally very different eastern wing, with its overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking population.
Bengali language
Bengali speakers
Bengali songs

Examples

The festival of Durga Puja is celebrated joyously by many Bengali families across the world.
The language issue was resolved by declaring both Urdu and Bengali as national languages.

Academic text (2018)
Every other Bengali living on the East Coast does.

The Namesake (2006)
Look, maybe it's not enough that we're both Bengali.

The Namesake (2006)
Because of the goals of the present study, we selected words that were meaningful in both Bengali and English.

Academic text (2011)
The discussions were conducted in the local Bengali language.

Academic text (2013)
My stomach's been bothering me since morning, and I was... invited by some Bengali students for dinner.

The Namesake (2006)
But by then Bengali poets and playwrights had turned Siraj into a tragic hero.
In the 1920s, psychoanalysis was much talked about among the Western-educated Bengali elite in Calcutta.

Academic text (1990)
She loves to cook traditional Bengali dishes, especially during cultural festivals.

Surface Forms

Bengali positive

Morphology

Bengali = Bengal (transparent) = Bengal + i

Formed by adding the productive demonym/adjectival suffix '-i' to the place-name 'Bengal', so the relation to the region/people/language is direct and predictable.

Etymology

Bengali comes from the name of the region Bengal, which people call Bangla in the local language. So Bengali means 'from Bengal' and is used for things related to Bengal's people, language, or culture.