Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Focus languages/Form/Bengali

Language: Bengali

Language details

What is the language, language family, usual scripts, where is it spoken, by how many people, and what other languages do speakers (%) of this language usually speak? (Some of this information can be found in the article list of languages by total number of speakers)

Bengali is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken in that ethnolinguistic region of the Indian subcontinent known as Bengal (comprising Bangladesh, the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, and adjoining areas in other states). Its varieties are the first language of around 228 million people; many in urban areas also understand English and (in India) Hindi.

Current representation of this language in Wikimedia projects

Is there a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary? Is it a language in Wikidata? If yes, what are the statistics for pages in Wikipedia or Wiktionary, or for Lexemes in Wikidata? (Details are in m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects, and in the local Special:Statistics pages, and in Ordia for Lexemes.)

As of 4 March 2021 there are

• 1,04,466 content pages on the Bengali Wikipedia,
• 12,296 content pages on the Bengali Wiktionary (of which at most 5,500 describe Bengali words), and
• 3,971 lexemes in Bengali.

Current representation of this language in other sources

Is there an open corpus of text for this language? How many books are published in this language? Is this language taught in schools? Is it an official language of a country or region? (Please link to details)

There are some open text corpora in Bengali (this page has a list). As an official language in the areas where it is spoken, there are lots of books printed in it and it is taught in schools there.

Seed group of participants

Describe a bit about the seed group that wants to coordinate and actively participate. Describe its size, its current activity, why this group will likely still exist in three years time. Does anyone in the group know how to code? How many in the group know English? How many in the group are not living where the language is spoken, or are not native speakers?

There is a group of users who are interested in the development of the language for this tool, whose activities in the spirit of which have promoted the initial growth of Bengali lexemes on Wikidata. It is presently sitting at around five or six of us, all who know English, a few who live outside Bengal, and one (the initial author of this form) who also claims English as a native language.

Potential for community growth

Describe the potential for the language community to grow. Is Internet access widely available? Through which kind of devices usually? What is the literacy rate in the language community? Are there universities, vocational schools, or similar institutions, and how large are the student populations?

As far as existing contributors go, there is a growing community of Wikipedia editors for whom explanation of what Abstract Wikipedia and Wikidata actually is supposed to do would be helpful (efforts up to this point have either been insufficient or inadequate).

As far as new contributors go, the literacy rate has been growing in the region (to 80.7% in West Bengal in 2017 and 73.9% in Bangladesh in 2018), and mobile Internet access has been rapidly expanding in Bengal just as it has in the rest of the Indian subcontinent. There were around 670,000 students enrolled in Bangladesh's 43 public universities (one of which is an open university) and likely more in its private universities, and around 500,000 in the public universities of West Bengal in 2017-18 (though this number is likely not equal to the number of Bengali speakers, and omits figures from institutions over which the Indian government has some provenance).

Openness of the existing community to innovation

If there is a Wikipedia in that language, how open has it been to Wikidata? To Article Placeholder? To bot editing and usage of modules?

The Bengali Wikipedia does use Wikidata in a number of places (including for infoboxes and sometimes categorization), though not consistently; this is due more so out of ignorance than to opposition (unlike the case on the English Wikipedia). By contrast, the Bengali Wikisource has been moving full speed ahead as far as integration of Wikidata goes. The Bengali Wikipedia also has an active implementation of ArticlePlaceholder, though statistics of its use are unknown at this time. A number of users do run bots, although out of concern for the possibility of bot-created low-quality articles (such as populate the Cebuano and Egyptian Arabic Wikipedias) their proliferation is stifled somewhat.