Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4712 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 1 of 6 26 January 2012 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
I hope this is the right forum for my post...
To all the other Bengali learners out there: what learning materials do you use?
I have the Teach Yourself Bengali but I'm not too happy with it. Apart from that I also own the "Kauderwelsch Bengali" (+Audio) which isn't much more than a phrasebook. For now I've decided to work with the "Introduction to Bengali" on the Digital South Asia library website - so far I like it but I'm only on Lesson VII now.
For native material there's the Bengali version of the Deutsche Welle website. I'm not advanced enough to read the articles yet but I like to listen to the audio.
Is there anything else you can recommend?
1 person has voted this message useful
|
iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 2 of 6 26 January 2012 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
The Central Institute of Indian Languages has Learn Bangla Online with an English base.
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4712 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 3 of 6 28 January 2012 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
Thanks very much for posting this interesting link! Has anyone ever studied Bengali with the "Learn Bangla Online" Course and can tell something about the overall quality? As it's not free it would be great to hear some opinions on it.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Afgjasmine16 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6008 days ago 29 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish
| Message 4 of 6 24 March 2012 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
Hello Kat! I also learn Bengali. Have you tried these courses?
Colloquial Bengali
http://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Bengali-Series-Mithun-Nasri n/dp/0415261198/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1332548259&sr=8-8
This is good for learning how to speak it, but the alphabet lessons aren't very good but still worth checking out.
Introduction to Bengali
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bengali-Part-Emphasis-Und erstanding/dp/8173041903/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332 548439&sr=1-6
Very very old book and old fashioned but still very useful.It's one of the best books for Bengali. You can view the audio files and a preview of the book here:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~cbs2/banglainstruction.html
Bengali doesn't have many resources :(
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5442 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali
| Message 5 of 6 14 December 2012 at 8:24am | IP Logged |
There are more resources now--
For writing Bengali try google transliterate--this makes it easy as you just type the Bengali phrase in English
letters and it interprets what you want and writes it in Bengali letters. After some time this becomes too much of
a crutch and one does want to make ones' own mistakes and learn from them. At the end of the day it's just
about writing the letters over and over.
Hanne- Ruth Thompson has a phrasebook which is excellent, as well as a dictionary (good, but I would rate it
less highly compared to other dictionaries) and a truly major book: Bengali / A Comprehensive Grammar --700+
pages--truly in-depth and excellent in many many ways. Expensive.
Teach Yourself Bengali by Wm. Radice is still very good even if it moves awfully fast. Good literary section at the
end. It has audio.
This is an excellent site:
http://supriyosen.net
and be sure to take a look at
http://supriyosen.net/write-bangla/verb-conjugation-wizard/
I buy books from Parabaas in New Jersey--large numbers of classic Bengali literature--many are available in both
languages. A good children's book after one goes through a lesson book is Tuntunir Boi, translated by Radice as
The Stupid TIger. One can go to Parabaas' site and order online. Still one needs a tutor to help explain many
phrases.
for more phrases:
http://www.bengali-dictionary.com/english-bengali-words-phra ses-contents.html
which also has a thesaurus
There is a lot of information in the U Michigan Bengali site
Trav Lang's word of the day will email you a Bengali word every day and you can click to hear it pronounced
correctly. Today's word is ocean - moha shagor. http://www.travlang.com/languages/bengali/bg_moha1.AU
http://www.travlang.com/wordofday/
travlang's Word of the Day: Beverage
www.travlang.com
You can learn more of any of these languages from our Foreign Languages for TravelersTourist
InformationSquareReservationTeaTuesdayWord of the Day
And there's more!
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5349 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian
| Message 6 of 6 19 December 2012 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
There are a few links here, but I see some don't work: https://sites.google.com/site/links4languages/bengalilinks
Best of luck with it. It's on my hit list!
1 person has voted this message useful
|