Bengali Hindus
Bengali Hindus () are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious population who make up the majority in the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. In Bangladesh they form the largest minority. They are Bengalis adherents of Hinduism, and are native to the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Bengali Hindus speak Bengali, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and adhere to the Shakta and Vaishnava traditions of their native religion, Hinduism. There are significant numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus in different Indian states.
Bengali vocabulary
Bengali ( "Bangla") is one of the Magadhan languages, evolved from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali languages native to the Indian subcontinent. The core of Bengali vocabulary is thus etymologically of Magadhi Prakrit and Pali languages. However, centuries of major borrowing and reborrowing from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sanskrit, Austroasiatic languages and other languages has led to the adoption of a wide range of words with foreign origins. Thus making the origins of borrowed and reborrowed words in the Bengali vocabulary numerous and diverse, due to centuries of contact with various languages.