Peter's Bengali log

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peter
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Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sat Sep 23, 2017 5:28 pm

This log is to cover my fresh start on Bengali. I first tried to learn the language about 20 years ago, from William Radice's Teach Yourself Bengali book and tape. Over the years I've dabbled again and again. But I seem to be at a typical 'book-learnt' stage. I have a familiarity with the script. I managed to work through most of the grammar and exercises in the book, as a kind of intellectual puzzle. I can still hear the actors' voices when I read over the sample dialogues in the book. But I look around me and can barely name objects in the room, let alone string together sentences about them.

So, I'm going back to basics, and aim to learn enough to use in an active way: to verbally make some simple statements/queries about the world around me.

My plan for now is:

1. learn some basic vocabulary so I can name objects/actions around me
2. speak to myself with questions and answers to force that vocabulary into active use, using simple sentences

For my vocabulary, I'm putting the 625 word list from https://fluent-forever.com/ into Anki, which seems a good start, and I'll add some other words which I find I would like to know. I estimate it'll take me 1 to 2 months to learn that many words and be able to use each in a few different configurations.

The follow-on stages would be to use Radice's book to expand on my grammar and sentence structure whilst pushing up my vocabulary.

I have a long-term goal. My wife-to-be is Bengali, and I would like to be able to speak with her somewhat in Bengali, and watch Bengali films/share books without subtitles/translation. (I would also like to feel less like a mannikin when meeting her family, where Bengali is the main language used!)
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby Daristani » Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:25 pm

Welcome to the forum!

I haven't studied Bengali (although the idea of an Indian language without gender is attractive), but wanted to point out that a new and relatively inexpensive textbook for Bengali has been published that seems to have gotten a couple of very enthusiatic reviews on Amazon:

Beginner's Bengali (Bangla) with Audio CD by Dr. Hanne-Ruth Thompson (Author)

You can get a look inside the book on the Amazon.com website.

The author has also written a large Bengali reference grammar, a phrasebook, and a smaller dictionary, all of which also get positive reviews.

An earlier discussion on Bengali here in the forum also listed some other resources for possible use:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ali#p35448

And finally, another website with materials:

http://home.uchicago.edu/~cbs2/banglainstruction.html
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:29 pm

Daristani wrote:Welcome to the forum!

I haven't studied Bengali (although the idea of an Indian language without gender is attractive), but wanted to point out that a new and relatively inexpensive textbook for Bengali has been published that seems to have gotten a couple of very enthusiatic reviews on Amazon:


Thanks for the suggestions. It's good to see a new book has been published. I like Radice's book, but it is very optimistic about the student's rate of progress. A book at a slower pace looks useful.
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:15 pm

Yesterday I started my vocabulary list in Anki. I've added up to letter C from my target list so there is some work to do, but I have already studied a few cards.

Towards Speaking

My aim is to talk to myself about my activities/environment in simple Bengali, so I started with breakfast. A few Bengali words came to mind for what I was doing:

  • medicine, spoon, milk, sugar, tea, cup, eat
  • "bowl" is an early win from my new vocabulary list

I sat down afterwards and tried to work out the most simple of sentences, with some wary input from Google Translate (even I can see it's wrong at times):

  • "I take my medicine"
  • "I put cornflakes, milk and sugar in the bowl"
  • "I make tea with hot water"
  • "I eat breakfast and read a book"

Simple stuff, as you can see, but at least I have sentences to speak in place of this morning's single words. I'll see how much I remember of these tomorrow.

Knowledge Check

William Radice's book Teach Yourself Bengali is my main reference, as I've studied most of the book before. It's divided into three parts. The first part covers the script and sound system - I seem to remember much of this, though conjuncts are challenging. The second part has twelve chapters working through Bengali grammar, with each chapter illustrated by a sample dialogue. The third part is challenging, presenting stories, prose excerpts and poetry - this is for later.

I started reading through the second part dialogues and skimming the grammar descriptions to see how much I recall and where I become stuck. The fourth chapter is where the vocabulary and conjuncts made it difficult for me to read the dialogue with full understanding. These four chapters cover the present tense of verbs, "is" and negatives, postpositions, questions, and similar simple but useful constructions.

I think these are a minimum for working out my simple sentences, and I can actively practise each of the grammar elements.

Onwards...

This coming week I shall continue entering and studying the vocabulary list in Anki (around 100+ new words), review the basic grammar, and look for more situations where some familiar Bengali words can be combined into sentences.

I also need to find a more efficient way to enter Bengali script, so I have more control over what I'm typing in.
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby rdearman » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:43 pm

How many words per day are you being tested on in Anki?
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:47 pm

rdearman wrote:How many words per day are you being tested on in Anki?


New cards/day is 20, which is how it came. I've not experimented with the program much yet.
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby rdearman » Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:58 pm

peter wrote:
rdearman wrote:How many words per day are you being tested on in Anki?


New cards/day is 20, which is how it came. I've not experimented with the program much yet.

20 cards a day will ramp up pretty quickly. Because the new cards yesterday are reviewed today, and then you'll get more reviews as time goes on. 20 isn't bad if you only have one deck, but just beware that lots of people don't like anki because it can become a torture machine. Don't be afraid to delete leech cards, or restrict the max number of reviews, reduce new cards, etc. if it starts to become a torture machine. Personally I review between 350-450 cards per day at the moment, with 40-50 new cards. But lots of people would find that too much.
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:17 pm

rdearman wrote:
peter wrote:
rdearman wrote:How many words per day are you being tested on in Anki?


New cards/day is 20, which is how it came. I've not experimented with the program much yet.

20 cards a day will ramp up pretty quickly. Because the new cards yesterday are reviewed today, and then you'll get more reviews as time goes on. 20 isn't bad if you only have one deck, but just beware that lots of people don't like anki because it can become a torture machine. Don't be afraid to delete leech cards, or restrict the max number of reviews, reduce new cards, etc. if it starts to become a torture machine. Personally I review between 350-450 cards per day at the moment, with 40-50 new cards. But lots of people would find that too much.


Thanks for the tips. ("leech" cards??) I only came across Anki a few days ago, and it's an experiment. I generally dislike computer-based learning, but I like the principle of staged repetition. I'll see how it goes with this first list I'm creating.

Back when I was doing my GCEs (and failing my language courses) I wrote my first useful computer program to do random testing of vocabulary; I credit that program with my finally passing those courses with high grades. My last attempt at learning Bengali instead saw me write out a lot of cards by hand and thumb through them over and over!
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby rdearman » Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:27 pm

Leech cards are cards which keep coming up, and you keep forgetting them. For whatever reason they just don't seem to stick. A lot of people seem to insist on knowing every card perfectly, but thing is when a language typically has half a million words, why worry about the few dozen you can't remember. Besides if you really need them they'll come up so often elsewhere that it isn't normally a problem.

Anki is a very, very flexible program. I suspect you're just doing basic front and back cards, but anki can do soooooooo much more. Audio, video, cloze deletion cards (where you have to type in the answer) and a lot more. There are ways to put an entire movie with dialogues and sub-titles for target language and native language, etc.

There are also shared decks on anki web. A couple for Bengali.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1865475594
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1886685557

Mostly I use anki on my phone. I review when walking the dog, or standing in a queue, or waiting for my wife to shop. Are you using the phone, web, or desktop version?
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peter
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Re: Peter's Bengali log

Postby peter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:07 pm

rdearman wrote:Anki is a very, very flexible program. I suspect you're just doing basic front and back cards,


Yes, that's right. Just replacing paper cards with something that does spaced repetition.

rdearman wrote:There are also shared decks on anki web. A couple for Bengali.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1865475594
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1886685557


Thanks for these links. I also found a large (3,500 word) list on memrise, but the words seem pretty obscure for the stage I'm currently at. I'm trying to control my first list to things I can immediately talk about, as I want fodder to get my mouth moving, basically.

rdearman wrote:Mostly I use anki on my phone. I review when walking the dog, or standing in a queue, or waiting for my wife to shop. Are you using the phone, web, or desktop version?


Desktop version. Once I'm organised I hope I can spend just 30 minutes or so on the computer a day and the remaining time talking to myself to practice.
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