| Rangpuri | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | India, Bangladesh |
| Native speakers | 15 million (2007) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | rkt |
Rangpuri is a Indic language spoken by ten million Rajbongshi people in Bangladesh, and five million in India, where they are known as Rajbanshi. Many are bilingual in either Bengali or Assamese. There is a strong language movement in West Bengal.
Rangpuri goes by numerous names. In Bangladesh, these include Rangpuri, Bahe Bangla, Anchalit Bangla, Kamta, Polia. In India, there is Kamtapuri, Rajbangsi, Rajbansi, Rajbanshi, Rajbongshi, Goalparia, Koch Rajbanshi. Another name of the language is Tajpuri.
The main dialects are Western Rajbanshi, Central Rajbanshi, Eastern Rajbanshi and Hill Rajbanshi (also known as Koch language).
The Central dialect has the majority of speakers and is quite uniform. There are publications in this language. The Western dialect has more diversity. Lexical similarity is 77 to 89% between the three dialects. The version spoken in the hills has some influence of the local tribal languages and differs quite a bit from the other three. Rajbonshi shares 48 to 55% of its vocabulary with Bengali, and 43 to 49% with Hindi and Nepali.
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