Bengali is natively spoken by approximately 280 million people, primarily in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, making it one of the most spoken languages in the world. It is central to Bengali cultural identity, known for its rich literary tradition, music, and festivals such as Durga Puja. Written in the Bengali script, the language has a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order and uses postpositions instead of prepositions, with a relatively simple tense system and no grammatical gender.