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Why isn’t Bengali/Bangla more popular? | ||
Tags: Bengali | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6015 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 35 13 May 2012 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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So, my daughter and I were watching a "Globetrekker" program last night on Bangladesh ( which looks like a really
interesting place!). This, of course, led me to look up the Bangla language. After reading up on it, it made me curious why it isn't a more studied foreign language? After all: it has nearly 300 million total speakers and is one of the most spoken languages (ranking sixth) in the world. It is trying to recognized as an official language of the UN. It has an extremely rich history in art and literature as well as being the native language of Satyajit Ray, perhaps the best known Indian film director of the 20th century. Why aren't more people studying Bangla? 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5515 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 2 of 35 13 May 2012 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Probably because it doesn't have much economic clout for a language of 300 million speakers. Languages with "rich culture" are a dime a dozen, but most language learners probably focus on the few languages that have enough economic clout to make their studies worthwhile.
Another reason may be many Bangla people speak English, but I don't know about that. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 4802 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 35 13 May 2012 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
:o Whoa! That's a pretty strong statement. LOL :)
Most educated Bengalis have some proficiency in written English. But the spoken variety keeps eluding us. :) PS. @liddytime: Thank you for taking an intersest in my mother tongue. I was working on an intoductory book on the bengali script, but had to stop to focus on my semester examinations, which should end by the second week of June. Perhaps, if you are interested, we could start a Basic Bengali study group here on HTLAL. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5131 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 4 of 35 13 May 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Bengali holds a very special position within modern Indian literature being the first language which gave voice to it, and several of its authors have earned a place within the universal canon of letters.
Why isn't it more widely studied? Lack of awareness, probably. Along with the position of English within India itself. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5239 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 5 of 35 13 May 2012 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I can only speak for myself. There are some 6000 languages in the world. and I can't study them all. Therefore, I study only a few. India and Bangladesh are far, far away. I have never visited them. Maybe I will some day, but I don't know. I only know one Bengali speaker. He speaks excellent English and some Norwegian, so I don't need Bengali to speak to him. It makes more sense for me to study European languages. If I'm going to study an "exotic" language, Chinese or Japanese seem like more obvious choices. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5515 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 6 of 35 13 May 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What I meant is that for just about every language with decent learning materials, there will be someone who says that a rich culture or how beautiful the language sounds are reasons that they want to learn it. It's a pretty cliche reason for studying other languages. Plus, then you get into the messy idea of which culture is richer than the other. I suppose I should have said people giving the reason that they study a language for its rich culture are a dime a dozen.
I'm not interested in studying Bengali, but thank you for sharing your language and culture with us.
Agreed. Plus you're far more likely to meet a Japanese or Chinese businessman or tourist than a Bangla businessman or tourist. There's economics again. Edited by Michael K. on 13 May 2012 at 9:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4535 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 7 of 35 14 May 2012 at 2:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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At least in India, movie industry in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam is much more robust than the movie industry in Bengali. Bengali movies are not made to be popular, to be hits in movie theaters, to make money, they're more like independent art films of limited distribution. Most educated people from West Bengal speak Hindi and English.
The most popular West Bengal actresses (Rani M. and Bipasha) moved to Mumbai to work in Hindi movie industry. Most Bollywood hit movies are dubbed into Telugu and Tamil, but not in Bengali. It's because people in Mumbai and Dehli expect Bengalis to understand Hindi. Overall, you can tour India with English+Hindi only. Hindi is widely understood, from the North to the South (except for the state of Tamil Nadu where people like English more than Hindi). But in Kerala, everyone understands Hindi because it's an obligatory school subject. West Bengal used to be anti-Hindi, but Bollywood movies changed that. Many people in Kolkata like watching them, so they acquire the language in this way. Edited by Camundonguinho on 14 May 2012 at 2:14am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6015 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 35 14 May 2012 at 4:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yeah, I guess I am still a bit baffled. There are still many times the materials available for, shall we say : Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovene, Irish, Welsh etc.. than there is for Bangla! As far as the economy, Bangladesh ranked as the 43rd largest economy in the world in 2010 and is growing at 6-7% per year. It is one of the fastest growing economies in the world right now. Although it does make sense that any Bengali that is serious about doing business will be fluent in English (or Arabic, or Russian, or Japanese, or Chinese...). I'm sure this would be different off the beaten path in West Bengal or Bangladesh though. I must admit, I have never (that I know of ) met a native Bangla speaker. I'm sure that chance would go up considerably if I lived in the Northeast US or in Britain... but here in the Pacific Northwest ... not many Bangla speakers. That's, in fact, why I got so frustrated with Hindi. I couldn't find anyone in my area that actually spoke Hindi! (Plenty of Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Kannada, etc. speakers... but no Hindi speakers!).
I am interested! Sadly, I am up to my ears in other languages and work commitments right now so I think it would be quite a while before I could consider it a serious pursuit. It was pretty cool though, I was listening to a Bangla podcast and I definitely recognized many cognate words from my Hindi study! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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