Bengali

A parade in Bangladesh, overlaid with Bengali script

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There are more than 200 million speakers of Bengali (also called Bangla), which is spoken in Bangladesh and in the state of West Bengal in India. Bengali literature and film have both received international recognition. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his poetry originally written in Bengali and is the only Indian writer to receive this award to date. Satyajit Ray, script-writer and director of Bengali cinema, won a special academy award for his film oeuvre.

First and second year Bengali language courses are offered each year.