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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6841 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 33 29 November 2007 at 6:54am | IP Logged |
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Does anyone have good online resources for learning the Bengali script?
Links to other beginner resources are also appreciated. In conjunction with comments, if possible. I can use search engines to locate sites, but would need more time to work out the value of these. So if anyone could help me to get a head start, I'd be very grateful! Edited by virgule on 29 November 2007 at 6:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6915 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 33 29 November 2007 at 10:18am | IP Logged |
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http://links4languages.googlepages.com/
That website has links for Bengali resources. It's pretty comprehensive, I've submitted links for Bengali there recently. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6841 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 33 29 November 2007 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
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Any recommendations or comments on the resources you know?
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| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6915 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 33 29 November 2007 at 6:12pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm, well I only studied Bengali for a few months and I used the book & audio set 'Teach Yourself Bengali'. That's a really good book, written by a professor of Bengali in London. The sections at the beginning for teaching the script are fantastic, it's introduced very slowly. I would really recommend that book, if you're serious about learning Bengali I would start with that book.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/dig_toc.html?BOOKID=PK1663 .D6_1976 This site has the pdf of another really good Bengali book: 'Introduction to Bengali part 1' by Edward Dimmock. You can read it online. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/dig_toc.html?BOOKID=PK1664 .D6_1988 This is the second of Edward Dimmock's books, 'A Bengali prose reader for Second-year students'. Also looks good, texts are graded, going from easier to harder, and there are notes at the end of each text. Would be good once you've finished a book. http://www.it-c.dk/people/pfw/bengali/ These are some short notes written by someone learning Bengali. Looks good to use as a reference guide, isn't too wordy or too long. Uses romanization. http://www.blss.portsmouth.sch.uk/hsc/benscript.shtml This is a reference table of the Bengali script. If you go here: http://www.blss.portsmouth.sch.uk/hsc/bealphpic.shtml you can download some colourful Bengali alphabet charts to put on your wall! http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/bengali_index.html These are 5 lessons that go through the absolute basics of Bengali. They don't take too long to go through and look useful for getting a general idea of Bengali. http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/bengali.html Fonts for typing Bengali on your computer. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/biswas-bengali/ A Bengali-English dictionary. http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/dictionary.php An English-Bengali dictionary. http://www.jaspell.co.uk/learnlanguage.htm There are loads of resources for Bengali here. The pdf versions use Bengali script but the 'online basic course' uses romanization. I would recommend studying Bengali with the script. http://home.uchicago.edu/~cbs2/banglainstruction.html This site has downloadable books for Bengali, Edward Dimmock's books and other which I haven't tried before. Still looks very useful. Levels range from beginner & intermediate to advanced. http://www.geocities.com/bengaliska_magasinet/index.html This is another good textbook for Bengali. It uses a simplified script, which just means it doesn't use the hundreds of conjunct letters, and was made for children or adults studying Bengali. However there aren't any exercises and the lessons seem to be mostly grammar based. Click on 'Open the book' to view it online. http://www.ukindia.com/zip/zben01.htm Online lessons to learn how to read Bengali script. Looks pretty good. LISTENING PRACTISE http://www.bbc.co.uk/bengali/radio/aod/bengali_promo.shtml BBC radio in Bengali. Apparently updated regularly... http://bengali.cri.cn/ Audio available from China Radio International. http://www.voanews.com/bangla/ Audio available from Voice of America. Also has online TV shows about Bengali culture. http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/bengali/index.html News in Bengali from NHK Japan. Also if you go to Japanese lessons you can learn Japanese through Bengali! Could be useful if you know Japanese. Okay, I think that's all! God, I didn't realise there were so many resources for Bengali! Here's my advice. If you are going to learn Bengali using only online resources you are going to find it difficult to learn Bengali pronunciation, as there are hardly any websites with audio. Maybe find a native speaker to work through some of the lessons together or at least listen to Bengali radio a bit to get a feel of the language. -Printing the wall charts and sticking them on your wall to remind yourself while you are learning the script. -Use the ukindia lessons to learn the script. Supplement with the Bengaliska_magisnet textbook if you are linguistically inclined/know a lot of technical linguistic terms. -Go through the virtualbangladesh 5 lessons to get a feel for the language. -Have a look at the 3 textbooks (Bengaliska_magisnet, Edward Dimmock, jaspell) and decide which one you like best. I would recommend the Edward Dimmock course, as I have heard good things about it. -After you have finished one of the textbooks, either go through another textbook or try Edward Dimmock's 'Bengali prose reader for 2nd year students' -When you feel you've passed the beginner stage have a look at the uchicago website for some intermediate & advanced books. Also try reading Bengali stories, news etc and listening to Bengali radio. Okay, I hope that's useful! P.S. Bengali programs are available on BBC freeview radio channels. I don't know if you'd be able to get them in France though... Edited by unzum on 29 November 2007 at 6:14pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| linguaphile Triglot Newbie India Joined 6310 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Hindi, FrenchC1, German, Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 33 29 November 2007 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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Hey unzum,
Since you seem to know a lot about available Bengali resources and your profile says you study Sanskrit, you might be able to help me out... I've been studying Hindi for a while, and have been planning on using my knowledge of that language to pick up the basics of a couple of other Indic languages, including Bengali. However, all Bengali resources I have encountered are designed for those learning the language from scratch. Do you know of any resources that would specifically help someone with knowledge of Hindi to transfer those skills to Bengali, and that would also draw to my attention to and highlight major similarities, differences, and other such comparative details, etc.? It doesn't matter if it's designed for Hindi native speakers or for non-native students of both languages, but I'm really looking for something that gives me that comparative insight for the two languages. Any resources you might know of would be greatly appreciated... Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6841 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 33 30 November 2007 at 3:36am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Unzum! This post was very useful; and I am sure anyone else interested in Bengali will find this commented list a good place to get started.
It is also good to hear that the Teach Yourself book seems to be a good one. With so many languages covered, Teach Yourself courses invariably come with different quality... Given how many people speak Bengali, it's shocking how little material there is to learn the language... probably makes more sense when considering the GDP of the areas involved. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6915 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 33 30 November 2007 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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I was really not able to find any resources, the nearest I found was this:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/9594/index.html This page shows all the scripts of Asia and compares them. But be careful, it lists the inherent vowel as 'a' but in Bengali the inherent vowel is either pronounced as the 'o' in 'hot' or the 'o' in the French word 'mot'. I couldn't find any linguistic papers, or language courses. I wasn't able to search for pages in Hindi as I don't know it at all but maybe you could try that. I think you might have to get courses for Indian languages that are for complete beginners and just go through them quickly. You would probably be able to recognise vocab and grammar as you're learning. Sorry I wasn't able to help more! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NascentOne Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 6890 days ago 19 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian*, Hindi, Punjabi, French Studies: German | Message 8 of 33 02 December 2007 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
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Linguaphile have I got the thing for you!
This page has textbooks made for learning Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati and Assamese from a Hindi base. Select the language you want to learn from the list, and download all the pdf-files. The courses have been made by an Indian government institution. Indian language books Hindi is a language I know from my childhood, and I am also studying Bengali, so as to be able to read Rabindranath Tagore's classics in the original. Now the only thing I am looking for is a Hindi text to explain Sanskrit in the same way. I have no problem finding online English courses for Sanskrit, however learning it via Hindi should be so much easier. If you ever find such a site, or an e-book, please tell me. One more thing; the pdf-files I refer to have a lot of technical words for grammar concepts, so much that I was initially overwhelmed. I have therefore made my own list of all those Hindi words, and translated them/explained them. If you want to, I could send you that list. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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