The Bangla-Speaking Community in Australia
Bangla is a rich language. Scholars believe the language evolved from Pali,
although it contains many Sanskrit words.
It's spoken by about 200
million people in the Indian sub-continent, including Bangladesh. It is said to
be the sixth most commonly used language in the world.
The community is
made up of relatively new migrants to Australia.
The first arrivals, who
came in the 1960s, were mostly Bangla-speakers from India but the mix has
changed with Bangladeshis now the biggest group.
According to the 1996
Census there are about 6,500 Bangla-speakers in Australia with most coming from
Bangladesh.
The SBS Bangla Program has a focus on providing practical
settlement information to the small community.
Often interviews are
conducted in English, as well as Bangla, because of the bi-lingual nature of the
population.
There is also an emphasis on the arts, particularly music
and poetry.
Music has always been an integral part of life in Bangladesh
while its literature is dominated by writers such as Rabindranath Tagore, who
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 and is still a highly revered figure
among all who speak Bangla.
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