Similarities Between Bengali and Odia

Bengali and Odia are both Indo-Aryan languages belonging to the eastern branch that share a lot in common, but how similar are they? In this video, Shazeen, a Bengali (Bangla) speaker from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Kamal, an Odia speaker from Berhampur (Brahmapur), Odisha, India challenge each other with a list of sentences and to see the extent of mutually intelligibility between their native tongues.

For anyone who wishes to contact Kamal, here is his e-mail: [email protected]

Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ) is primarily spoken in the Indian state of Odisha where it has official status. In addition to Odisha, there are significant Odia speakers in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Due to its long literary history and a very small amount of borrowed words other languages, Odia is designated as one of India's classical languages, along with Sanskrit, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada.

The region of Odisha(sometimes spelt as Orissa) was historically known with various names like Kalinga and Utkala.During ancient times, the Kalinga war was fought here, after which King Ashoka followed Buddhism devoutly.

Some parts of Coastal Odisha had maritime trade relations with South East Asian countries during ancient times. In its memory, festivals like Boita Bandana and Bali Jatra are celebrated today.

In 1912, parts of Bihar-Odisha region got separated from the Bengal region under the British rule.

In 1936, a separate Odisha province was formed, which is celebrated as Utkala Dibasa (Odisha Formation Day).

Bengali (বাংলা) is an Indo-Aryan language and the official and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, behind Hindi. Within India, Bengali is the official language of the states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley in the state of Assam. It is also spoken in different parts of the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. It is also the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant minorities in other states including Jharkhand, Bihar, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Odisha.

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