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Hindi / Bengali comparison | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4884 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 4 09 April 2015 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, so while I won't be seriously studying any language other than Chinese until late NEXT year (four more months of intensive Chinese at home, then hopefully a full year in China), I have always been very kee in learning a language from the Indo-Aryan branch.
Hindi was always the obvious choice for me given prestige, number of speakers, plus materials, but lately I have been drawn in by Bengali, and to some extent Punjabi. Now this is all Wanderlust, and I thankfully can control the urges, but nonetheless wanted to ask a couple of things. I have tried googling the differences between Bengali and Hindi, and have some idea, but I wanted to get input from native speakers of either, or even better, bilingual speakers of both. What are the major differences besides script? For example vocabulary: does Hindi draw from Sanskrit more than Bengali? Has Hindi borrowed more from English than Bengali? Has Bengali been influenced more by non-Indo-Aryan South East Asian languages that are spoken to the east? That kind of stuff. Grammatically, what are the major differences? Finally, what about cultural context. Is one language more rigid in terms of register, etc? Second part is... I think after I learn Mandarin Chinese, and having the other languages in my profile under my belt (with both different families within Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language), I would consider myself a bit seasoned in language learning. Thus, if I decided to in the future, would it make sense learning both Hindi and Bengali simultaneously? Are they separate enough to lessen interference? Given my experience I think I could minimize this issue, but I ask nonetheless. As a bonus, if anyone wants to tackle the same questions above vis-à-vis Punjabi, I won't complain :) Thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| linguaholic_ch Triglot Groupie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4983 days ago 69 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English, Hindi, Bengali Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 4 28 April 2015 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Shuddha Bengali and Hindi comprises mostly of Sanskrit derived words called tatsam words while the loan words include the tadbhav words. Various words like typhoon,rickshaw and many different words incorporated from other languages.It has loan words from Portuguese,German,Arabic,Persian,Dutch and Japanese etc. The same goes for Hindi also. Both have differences in script but the foundation remains same. The Bengali and Hindi spoken now has a major influx of English words.
You could definitely learn both together but you have to dig right through and not procrastinate. It will be alright and if you can choose the language which you seem most inclined to. P.S. Sorry if the writing is clumsy. Its really difficult from the mobile regardless of the screen size. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4603 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 4 28 April 2015 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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[nt] Edited by Medulin on 29 April 2015 at 12:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4603 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 4 of 4 29 April 2015 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Bengali is along with Telugu and Malayalam the most Sanskritized Indian language, vocabulary-wise.
Yes, ''pure'' Hindi is Sanskritized as well, but its use is marginal in colloquial speech, movies (Bollywood) etc, everyday colloquial Bengali is much more Sanskritized than everyday colloquial Hindi. Vocabulary-wise, Assamese is closer to Hindi than Bangla is. (But Nepali is even closer to Hindi, though not as close as Gujarati or Punjabi). Some differences: Nasality: both have nasal vowels but nasality is more prominent in Hindi (but not as prominent as in Punjabi which sounds extremely nasal) Vowel length: spoken Hindi has vowel length distinction, but spoken Bengali does not Gender: Hindi has 2 genders (like French, so nouns are more difficult to ''incorporate''), Bengali has only 1 gender (like English) Grammar: Bengali has no ergative marking in the perfective, much unlike Hindi ( Ergativity is tricky concept to grasp.) Furthermore, there are four cases in Bengali, much more postpostions, much more honorfic speech, it also has also more moods. Culture-wise, Bengali films tend to be more realistic (Bollywood movies look like parodies to Western audiences), and music is more ''neutral'' (pop dance songs and light folk ballads are common, hardcore Hindustani music is not).
Diglossic tendencies in Hindi are on the rise: 50 years ago, Hindustani (colloquial Hindi) was used even in formal settings, but after Pakistan split up from India, the formal Hindi was deliberately de-Urduized and Sankritized, so the language used in bollywood movies and in ''pure Hindi'' newscasts is very different. The opposite ocurred in Bangla. It was a highly diglossic language (like Tamil or Arabic) until 1950ies, but nowadays Cholitobhasha (the former Low [L] variety of the diglossic situation) is the standard for written Bengali now. This same style is used in both Bengali movies and in newscasts. Both Hindi and Bangla have dialects that could be considered separate languages, like Rajahstani vs Hindi or Bengali vs Sylheti. (Sylheti is closer to standard Assamese than to standard Bengali). My picks were these: Assamese vs Bangla: I wanted to learn Assamese, since it sounds better than Bangla (Bangla is an overflow of SH sounds), but Assamese has no learning material available, and the Bengali movie industry is FAR SUPERIOR. Hindi vs Nepali: I chose Nepali as my Devanagari-based language since I find it more pleasing on the ear, and I find Nepal much more interesting than the Hindi belt. Nepali movie industry is excellent, films have great stories, and no silliness and cheesiness of Bollywood. Hindi and Bengali speech areas don't overlap. On the other hand you can practice both Nepali and Bengali in the district of Darjeeling. Edited by Medulin on 29 April 2015 at 12:21am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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