Beginner‘s Bengali (Bangla) with Online Audio

The most up-to-date, complete self-study course for Bengali (Bangla), an official language of India and Bangladesh, that is spoken by 230 million people worldwide For students, businesspeople, government and NGO workers, and even second-generation Bengali speakers in the diaspora who want to learn their heritage language 14 chapters include practical grammar lessons with dialogues, vocabulary, exercises and online MP3 audio files for free download Bengali (Bangla) is the 7th most spoken language in the world and 2nd most widely spoken native language in India after Hindi There are over 375,000 Bengali/Bangladeshi Americans, mostly found in the NYC metro area (home to 2/3 of Bengali American population), NJ, PA, MD, MA, VA, FL, CA, TX and MI There are approximately 90,000 Bengali/Bangladeshi Canadians mostly found in the greater Toronto area and Montreal The U.K. is home to about 500,000 British Bangladeshis (the largest population outside of Bangladesh and India), mostly centered in the inner boroughs of London Since 2014 a number of universities (Rutgers, Berkeley, U of Chicago, Cornell, U of Toronto, and CUNY) have implemented initiatives to offer more Bengali language courses Bengali (Bangla) is been on the State Department Critical Languages list because as the economies of South Asia grow, demand for languages like Bengali increase for global corporations, universities, research organizations, nonprofits, NGOs and the U.S. government