Bengali is a word used by English speakers to refer to both the speakers of the language as well as the language itself. Among Bengali speakers, the language
is known as Bangla. There are some major differences between the Bengali that is spoken in West Bengal and that of Bangladesh. Although the literary and written forms remain largely the same, certain characters and regional grammatical variations are heard. Most differences that can be attributed to the growing cultural and religious separation between predominantly Muslim Bangladesh and largely Hindu West Bengal. Bengali is normally written in the Bengali script, which is a variety of Brahmic script similar to the Devanagari that is used in written Hindi and Sanskrit. Some 207 million people, living mainly in the Indian state of West Bengal and the nation of Bangladesh, speak Bengali today.