Global Voices Online

Bangla or the Bengali language is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world today. It is the official language in Bangladesh and one of the official languages in India, where it is the second most commonly spoken language after Hindi. In India, Bangla is mainly spoken across the states of West Bengal and Tripura.

Bangla has various dialects, depending on the region where it is spoken. For example, the Bangla spoken/written in Dhaka, Bangladesh would be slightly different from the way it is spoken/written across in Kolkata, India. Nevertheless this does not prevent from people from understanding each other and there has always been creative exchange across the Bengal borders. Further details about the language and its various dialects can be found here.

Bengali bloggers from across the globe have been trying for quite some time to run blogs in their mother tongue. Initially however, they were stonewalled by the difficulties of reading and writing the Bangla script online. Not to be discouraged, some bloggers began writing by typing Bangla words in the English script, as can be seen in this case.

Needless to say, Bangla blogs have come a long way since then. Today, it is possible to write in Bangla script, using the regular English keyboard. With many of the current browsers supporting Unicode, the easy availability of Bangla software and fonts, more people (Indians and Bangladeshis) are beginning to blog regularly in Bangla. Here is an example of the switchover (where the same post has been typed both in the English and Bangla script for easy reading). Soon however, the need to write in English font lessened as writing in Bangla became easier and more widely prevalent. Further details on how to read and write Bangla scripts are available here.

The real push for Bangla blogging however, came from Bangladesh on December 16, 2005 when somewhere in…, a Norwegian software company based in Dhaka, launched a new blogging platform in Bangla at somewhereinblog.net. In a way this marked the true birth of the Bangla blogosphere as it helped create a vibrant, interactive community, where people could reach out and share their thoughts and feelings on varied topics and issues. Since its launch, the site has been inundated with posts, hits and its family of Bangla bloggers continues to (more…)