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Why isn’t Bengali/Bangla more popular? | ||
Tags: Bengali | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5629 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 35 14 May 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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South Asian languages in general aren't very widely studied. Hindi, a language with 490 million speakers has about as many second language learners as Dutch does outside India.
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| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4413 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 10 of 35 14 May 2012 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if there are more study materials for Bangla in Hindi? It would make sense that there are few English-language study materials since Bangladesh/West Bengal is not very well visited by Americans/British/Australians. I would guess that most people interested in learning Bangla would already know another Indian language (ie Hindi). Edited by Hoppy on 14 May 2012 at 5:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| pigsonfire Newbie United States Joined 4873 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Cantonese | Message 11 of 35 14 May 2012 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Funny, both Hindi and Bangla are on the US "critical language" list. ( along with Arabic, Persian, Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Korean, Punjabi, Turkish, and Urdu.) You would think this would stir up at least a little more interest for them! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alanjazz Triglot Groupie United States Joined 4613 days ago 65 posts - 129 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 12 of 35 15 May 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think part of the reason is geography. Though it has a large population of native speakers, they mostly live in
Bangladesh and West Bengal, in India. For native English speakers, there aren't a lot of occasions to use Bengali or interact with Bengali (UNLESS you live in a part of the United States, the UK or Australia where there is a community.) I think economics aren't as strong of a reason to learn a foreign language than people may think... Spanish, in the US, for example, is often learned because of the weight of the Spanish-speaking population in the country. I think that contact is a really important element. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6027 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 35 15 May 2012 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Napoleon (or any other Bangla speakers out there) How much overlap is there between Hindi and Bangla? Is it just a coincidence of cognates that makes them sound somewhat alike (say, similar to English and German) or are they much more closely related, like Spanish and Portuguese? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 4814 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 35 15 May 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hindi-Urdu, Tamil and other indian languages that have a rich literary tradition are higly diglossic.
Bengali is no exception. It is said that Telegu and Bengali are the languages that use the most Sanskrit words in their present-day spoken forms. Bazaari Hindi, i.e., the colloquial version retains a lot of Arabic and Persian influences, to this very day. OTOH, Arabic and Persian could not influence Bengali to the extent that they influenced Hindi. Modern Standard Bengali, i.e., the Bengali of the mass-media, is based on the Bengali spoken in and around Kolkata, Howrah and, Hoogly. Bengali spoken in Bangladesh uses a lot of Persian and Arabic loanwords. By this, I refer to the spoken form alone. The written forms are indistinguishable. For example: 1- Meat Bangladesh-Goesht West Bengal-Mungshow 2-Water BD-Pahni WB-Jawl 3-Bathe BD-Goeshowl WB-Chun Its not as if your interlocutor will not understand you if you if you use the BD variety of Bengali in WB or vice versa. Its just a matter of preference. Someone with a firm base in Hindi/Urdu could learn Basic Bengali very easily indeed. You would just need to learn the basic grammar. Unlike Hindi/Urdu, Bengali has no genders, so that should be a relief. Most words in Hindi and Bengali are cognates. One only needs to know how the words are pronounced in each language. Once the differences between the ways the word is pronounced in Hindi-Urdu and Bengali is known, you get to transfer most of your vocabulary from Hindi-Urdu to Bengali. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5158 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 35 16 May 2012 at 7:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have an uncle-in-law who is from Bangladesh. He and my aunt's children (my cousins) don't speak any Bengali. He speaks perfect English, I have never asked him if he spoke both Bengali and English as a child, his accent is a bit difficult to decipher... sounds somewhat like an Indian who has spoken English natively in addition to Hindi... I digress. He also speaks Chittagona (?) dialect.
Anyway I have always wanted to try learning Bengali, just basic conversation, to surprise him some day. I never found a decent course, though, and also in the back of my mind was the idea that it might not be a good idea, since his own children never made the effort to learn, and I wouldn't want to hurt any feelings. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6027 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 16 of 35 23 May 2012 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey all.
I am writing a post on my blog about Indian languages (mainly - how unloved they are :-( ... ) and was going to include a few quotes from this post. I won't include your names unless you request that I do (just pm me) Also if you don't want me to include what you wrote let me know and I won't include it. Thankx! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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