Why don’t more people learn Bengali?

This picture might lead to you believe otherwise, but English-speaking learners of Bengali are not blessed with an over abundance of resources.

How do you learn Bengali?

One of the more surprising things Son1 said recently, even more so than “but why can’t we go to McDonalds for Mother’s Day”, was “how do you learn Bengali?”

For now I’ve leant him my copy of William Radice’s Teach Yourself Bengali as a stop gap measure while I work out a) whether he really does want to learn and b) how I’ll go about it this time.

As with my own Bengali we’ve tended to have peaks and troughs in his learning of the language and recently it’s been less on my mind than in the past.

Finding my way back to a learning plateau

There’s no getting around it. I’ve reached what My Bangla Diary recently described as a ‘learning plateau’.

Worse, I think I’ve probably reached several such plateau over the last six years of learning Bengali and descended from each one.

This year’s study started out well with my 5 Bengali Words series of posts, which aimed to help enlarge my vocabulary but the summer and autumn has been a deadloss.

Bengali vocabulary – animals

Image via Wikipedia

One of my strategies for learning Bengali has been to search out some childrens books in the language.

I started off with ‘A-Z’ (or rather অ – হ) handwriting books that show one letter per page, with each page filled with examples of things that begin with that letter.

Moving on from there I’ve also been learning vocabulary from a children’s Bengali word book and posting some of the word lists here.

5 Bengali words – questions

I was in two minds about this ‘5 Bengali words‘ post. The main point of all my Bengali language entries here is for me to practice and continue learning the language – though I’m very happy the web traffic shows they have wider appeal.

It’s just that this particular post only scratches at the surface of the Bengali words for questions. There’s no mention of how they should be used, where in a sentence they appear or even any examples.

Maybe I’ll post on some of that in the future. For now these particular posts are defined by their brevity, though I’m stretching the rules for today’s one, so here are 5 Bengali words (+1) that can be used when forming questions.

A revision plan … of sorts

I’ve meaning to draw up a proper revision plan to help further my study of Bengali for some time.

This post will not be it.

There is of course much to be said for first deciding why you want to learn a language, and then (as appropriate) mapping out how you’ll pursue the different skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Herbs, spices and other ingredients in Bengali

I’ve started to do a bit more Indian cooking recently for the first time in a while. It’s result of having just a tiny bit more spare time as the baby’s passes the nine months stage and we slowly settle back into a (usually) manageable routine.

K’s sleeping through the night much more often than not, and tends to go through until 5-6am. Even then, when I bring him into our bed he’ll go back to sleep for another couple of hours – if his elder brother, who still climbs into our bed of his own accord – and as often as he can get away with, doesn’t wake him up.

Where was I? Oh yes, food. So, I’m cooking Indian food more now. Only at the weekends and only occasionally. Last weekend was such an occasion. Chicken tikka, pillau rice and dhal. Nothing too fancy, but enough to take up a good couple of hours in the preparation and cooking.

Bengali vocabulary – the body (part 2)

I’m learning vocabulary from a children’s Bengali word book and posting some of the word lists here.

I posted part one of Lesson 1: “About Body” (সরির সম্বম্ধিয় [sōrir sōmbōmdhiy]) last week, here’s the second and final part of this lesson.

Shoulder – কাঁধ (kadh)

Bengali vocabulary – the body (part 1)

I’m learning vocabulary from a children’s Bengali word book and posting some of the word lists here.

First up is part one of Lesson 1: “About Body” (সরির সম্বম্ধিয় [sōrir sōmbōmdhiy])

Body – সরির (sōrir)

Bengali vocabulary – school words

Now in year two at primary school, A has been given homework for some time now. So revising school words in Bengali has been on my to-do list for a while.

We went in to the school yesterday for parents evening while A was at Beavers, so now seems as good a time as any to get around to it.

There’s a useful chapter for this area of vocabulary in William Radice’s excellent Teach Yourself Bengali book where, through a conversation about a school, he looks at a number of different parts of grammar, including the present tense, the reflexive pronoun and participial postpositions.