As of now, I think that I especially like Bengali culture. It is characterized as being refined and artistic, fond of intellectual discourse and with an elevated style. In fact, Kolkata, the state capital of West Bengal, is even considered the cultural capital of India known for its excellent literature, poetry, music and artwork. The Bengali people not only have greater cultural sophistication but also seem more laid back than other Indians. I'm sure that a cultured and intellectual person like myself would fit in better with the Bengali region than with hot-tempered Marathis (even though I do respect their macho culture
) or materialistic money-oriented Gujaratis. Bengali girls also look a bit darker and more exotic, often with softer facial feature, most likely due to their small amount of Bhutan-Burmese admixture. I've watched some movies and music videos and find their dances and clothes really beautiful.I also now think that Bengali is the most beautiful modern Indo-Aryan language. In my view, Bengali has a more pleasant and musical phonology than Hindi (indeed, in India it is widely known as the sweetest language) and its grammar seems quite enjoyable and nifty. The Bengali is actually the 2nd most spoken language in India and even ranks 5th in terms of number of native speakers worldwide with 165 million in Bangladesh and 97 million in India.
No offense to any possible Hindi speaker that might be lurking around here but I have to say that Hindi - the language which certain elements of Indian society want to impose on the rest of the country - sounds like an abomination. Like not even a real language. I've watched some videos of Indian academics speaking it and they mix in English words absolutely everywhere and codeswitch all the time. I'm sure that a pure Sanskritized Hindi would sound much better but unfortunately the Indic-Arabic-Turkic-English mongrel language that is spoken today is just plain awful. Sorry to say this.
Bengali on the other hand sounds divine and has a purer lexicon. I checked with Google and around 92% of its vocabulary comes from an Indo-Aryan source, either through natural evolution from the language's ancestral prakrit or as direct borrowings from Sanskrit (this is especially the case with philosophical and technical terms). I also asked the AI chat how common English loanwords and codeswitching are in Bengali. The answer that I got was that English loanwords do exist due to the historical British rule and codeswitching does occur although not to the extent that it does in Hindi. Anecdotally, watching some Bengali TV and movies myself seems to confirm this.
Historically, I'm glad that Bengali speakers managed to repel the onslaught from the hordes of Hindi and Urdu speakers and thereby retain their noble and refined cultural treasure. In fact, Bengali has a more than solid stronghold in Bangladesh where it's the sole national language as well as the native language of 99% of the enormous population.
Culture and Heritage of West Bengal
Bengali poetry recited by a woman
Some hot Bengali girls with their nice dances and beautiful clothes: