Peter's Bengali log

[peter]

Ongoing

I'll be away for two weeks now, and I'm looking forward to some Bengali immersion in Delhi with family. I'm also hoping I can get some more Bengali materials, such as books and perhaps DVDs. Next year I plan to make Bengali a more natural part of life, with regular reading, writing and listening. I'm a bit slow at both reading and writing currently, but almost daily practice should transform that.

Apart from just learning the language, I've also become intrigued by some of the developments in the language itself over time. There's a summary of its history at: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bengali_language. The pie chart at the end is revealing - apparently much of the vocabulary is Sanskrit in origin, but most of the used words are from native sources.

From Dasgupta's book on the Bengal Renaissance, I learnt there were many developments in the language's use in the late 19th century in response to the English presence. These included developing Bengali literary forms such as the novel and adapting poetic forms. I would like to learn more about these. My feeling is that, although the actual literature is beyond me for now, reading about this history and these changes will not only be interesting in itself, but also help maintain my motivation to keep going with learning the language.

[peter]

Well, back from holiday and a new year begins by my signing up for the Output Challenge!

Progress

Two weeks in India, within a Bengali speaking family, has been enjoyable and educational too. Much more than before I now understand much of what is said in the household, though I have to concentrate to pick up enough of the words. I could contribute a few sentences too, in basic settings. Also useful was some time with Bengali films and music, and some discussion of Bengali poetry.

I took my book of Tailorbird stories, and spent some time reading this. I got some pronunciation correction and translation suggestions by reading aloud a couple of them. There's a lot of vocabulary I need to learn to manage these stories though - the dictionary I took has 3,500 Bengali words in it, and was not up to the task. However, one story I have fully worked out and two others I have the gist with a few grey areas. Two others I read through are hard for me to understand except in patches.

Ongoing

So, the Output Challenge: 50,000 words of written Bengali in a year. I will count what I post on my blog https://notuntalika.wordpress.com/, although I aim to use increasing amounts of Bengali in emails/letters and notes to myself.

My immediate task is to consolidate my reading of the Tailorbird book - I would love to finish the book off by the end of January. I need to do some intensive reading: extracting the vocabulary I don't know and untangling any sentence structures that may still be unfamiliar.

[peter]

Output Challenge

I'm not sure how to keep track of this, so for now I'll continuously edit this post with updates as the year progresses. All output is on my blog: https://notuntalika.wordpress.com/.

January:

• week of 8th: 81 + 61 + 104 + 122 = 368 words.
• week of 15th: 120 + 65 + 56 + 113 + 114 + 124 = 592 words.
• week of 22nd: 68 words
• week of 29th: 59 words

Total words: 1087 (we're aiming for 50,000 words by 31st December 2018!)

[peter]

Ramble (masquerading as a plan)

I feel in a funny place at the moment. I think in part it's restarting work after some time off, but language-wise I have completed the 'obvious' grammatical part of my Bengali TY book. Apart from review/consolidation my path is a little less clear. Part III of the book progressively steps through literature, but the rate that this escalates is quite alarming. I'm still trying to digest my childrens' books and the Tuntuni book. In addition, I aim to do much more writing to exercise everything I've learnt, and generally be productive in the language.

I'm thinking of the following as measurable "big ways" forward - with a rough one-year time frame (but really there's no rush):

• Work through Part III of my TY book, so I'm taken up the ladder of Bengali literature through Satyjit Ray, Tagore and onto poems of Shamsur Rahman and Jibanananda Das.
• Increase my vocabulary - there is a ~5000 word list in the GCSE specification which could be used.
• Practise writing/speaking - my dream with the Output Challenge is that my initial falterings will turn into fluent essays/stories!

What else? Well, I want to make some progress with two other 'wish list' languages.

Latin

I have Wheelock's latin book, and I plan to slowly work through it. A chapter here and there as I feel like it. I've done 3 chapters so far, and I find it enjoyable. It's a nice, no-pressure break from Bengali.

German

At some point this year, I will review and refresh whatever German I remember. I'm setting myself a simple goal: I want to take the Goethe-Zertifikat A2 level test sometime this year. April will be too soon - June or later is more realistic. Potential travel plans to Germany/Austria might affect my timing on this though.

I may be underestimating the required amount of work, but I'm not starting from nothing, so I feel a concentrated month of work should get me there. One thing I'm interested in is comparing what A2 German requires, in all four read/write/speak/listen areas, with where I am in Bengali, and whether I can cover the same kinds of topics in Bengali.

Ongoing

For the immediate week or so, what do I do?

• Get going more seriously with writing - I want to put together synopses of the stories I'm reading, to exercise new vocabulary.
• Move forward with the Tuntuni book.
• Review my TY book. I found the Teach Yourself website provides its audio files free, so I don't have to find a tape player(!). I can do some listening practice with the dialogues, to see how much I now understand.

[peter]

Progress

This weekend I've managed quite a bit of Bengali. Mostly I've been working on my reading, from the Tailorbird book, and in particular trying to read out loud. Although 'in my head' reading goes fairly swiftly, reading out loud from printed text goes slowly. I think my mouth is still not accustomed enough to the required sounds. So I have been going through the audio tracks of Part I of my TY book and trying to match the speakers. Some of the sample phrases are little tongue-twisters, and the speakers rattle through the later phrases. It takes about 20 minutes to go through all twelve chapters, which covers all the sounds. I'll try to do this daily as an exercise, until I can repeat everything smoothly.

I was trying to measure how my English speaking speed compares: I have a feeling my normal speaking speed is slower than the Bengali speakers on the audio sometimes use, in terms of syllables per second. I don't mean this in a "don't natives speak fast?" kind of way, but I believe I do naturally speak slowly. Yes, I can speak fast if I need to or I'm under stress, but that's not how I naturally speak, and especially not if I'm trying to think about what I'm saying. Whatever the truth, I need to find a pace that suits me, so I can read out loud with understanding.

So, reading is the main emphasis for now, but I'm trying to convert that into writing. I'm picking up some new vocabulary, and I posted my first summary, in Bengali, of one of the stories, where I deliberately try to use the new words.

Finally, I've listened to some of the BBC/Bangla audio programmes. The native speakers are (still) hard to make out, but the presenter of the science radio programme is clear as anything. I can make out the words, but I either don't know what they mean or can't put together the overall meaning quickly enough. I need to go through the texts that come with each programme, to work out some of the vocabulary, then I should be able to make more sense of the audio. This is something I'll do later in the year. Being able to understand these radio programmes would be a huge step forward in my listening skills.

Oh, I found a Bengali-English-Bengali dictionary in my local library, by one D.Adhikary. A huge tome, about 4 inches thick. But it's printed on better paper than my Samsad dictionary, and also has some better descriptions for some of the words. I have a feeling the library won't be seeing much of this dictionary this year!

Ongoing

Mr.Tailorbird continues to be the main focus. I also have the childrens' readers for variety. I don't have much in the way of 'graded' or other stepped reading available to help me beyond this. I've become very suspicious of the Bengali books I've found on Amazon - I found there are people using google translate to generate books, which would be hopeless. So I have to make thorough use of what I have, and squeeze out all the learning I can from these materials. Apart from some extracts, the next books I have are at the 'adult native' end of the spectrum.

For Mr.Tailorbird I'm looking up every word I don't know and trying to convince myself of the grammar in most of the sentences. As I wrote above, I'm also trying to read these stories out loud, in an approximation of fluency. There are some grey areas and words I can't find in the dictionaries - these may be various colloquialisms or perhaps just dated terms, as the author, Upendrakishore Raychowdhury, lived 1863-1915, publishing this book in 1911. I'm letting the grey areas be after a little searching though: I'm not going to worry about every word.

I also printed out the first part of the GCSE vocabulary list. This is just a list of Bengali words under various categories, so I have to figure out the meanings. I should know a good number of these already, but the list has ~5000 terms on it. This list seems a good structured way to learn vocabulary, in combination with the more random way of learning what I come across in reading/listening. I'm not sure how best to learn this number of words.

I used Anki earlier, to help me get to 1000 words, but I have a feeling the 30-40 minutes I used each night could be better spent to similar effect. My plan for now is to take a group of words, study them, and then incorporate them into some writing. Rinse and repeat. If I reread what I have written at a later date, I will be reviewing the words. I should also find them elsewhere in materials I come across, which is more review, and, once I'm aware of these words, I can deliberately try to use them. I would have to do the study part anyhow. The writing part is always a good idea, and compared to what I did before with Anki I'll instead be reviewing the words by rereading my own writing. I'll give this technique a go, and see how well it works out.

(Wow, that's a lot of description! Comments welcome. You can tell I'm spending as long on what I should do next as I am actually doing anything.)

[peter]

Today I received a present I had ordered for myself: a copy of Rabindranath Tagore's 1910 poetry collection Gitanjali in Bengali.

I'm finding it hard to track down Bengali books, but found this one on Wordery. They stock other Bengali books too. This is the "classic" Bengali book - an English version captivated Yeats and in part led to Tagore's Nobel prize in literature - so I am looking forward to being able to read it but, until now, could only find English editions.

And now here it is in front of me, in a large and clear print, ideal for enjoying poetry!

[peter]

Progress

My Bengali learning has started a new phase, and is less about specific book grammar and chapters and more about working on input and output. I'm still struggling along with reading, but have made progress on my book of short stories - the টুনটুনি বই. I thought I was going to have a relatively easy ride with looking up new words, deciphering the meaning of the sentences, and gradually getting complete stories that I can read. Well, the language kind of bit back this week and reminded me there's a lot more to learn.

I had one word বইতে, that's boi-te: boi means book and -te is a noun ending. But this makes no sense in the sentence. I had skipped it, as the general gist made sense (a cloud of mosquitoes attacking an elephant ...). Then I see রইতে in my book, which is almost the same but for a dot on the first syllable making the "b" an "r". The book explains this is from a verb রওয়া - which triggers an idea in my mind, I go look in the dictionary and বওয়া is listed ... but as an alternate form of a different verb বহা and ... finally I realise the mystery word means something like "to suffer", which better fits the picture of a mosquito attack than does a book ... I first put this down to a dated or obscure 1911 use of the word, but then I see it on BBC Bangla. So yes, that's one bite back.

The other was noticing a piece of grammar while skimming part III of my TY book, which again made sense of a number of sentences I was skimming over for the gist. Pairs of words teaming up to make special meanings such as "when ... and then". So, bite two.

Yes, languages are complicated beasts.

Also, I started working through the GCSE word list, as an additional way to increase my vocabulary. There are many English words listed simply in Bengali script - drugs (cocaine, heroin), pizza, flu ... but also a lot of new words. I have a dedicated note book where I'm writing these words out. 22 fit on a page, so that's my daily quota. So far I've done 8 pages.

Writing output is also becoming more of a habit. I've only done 700 words so far for the Output Challenge, but this is early days. I've started to use two main prompts: the words I'm learning, and the material I'm reading. I'll invent something for the first, and try a summary of the second. Apart from just producing sentences, the aim is to use as many of the new words as I can. But also I want to get stuff down in Bengali. I expect the quantity to increase dramatically over the year - I'll be disappointed if it doesn't.

In summary, I:

• Finished another story: টুনটুনি আর রাজার কথা (the tailor bird and the king)
• Learnt 176 words from the GCSE word list
• Reached a total of 700 output words.

Ongoing

For writing and vocabulary, I'll continue as I am. For reading, I will continue with the টুনটুনি বই as it'll be satisfying to have a complete book read and understood. There's a lot of new vocabulary in it, and it's also forcing me to see how the complex verb forms are put together.

Aurally, I'm reading out loud as much as I can, and I'm listening to a few things as well, such as from BBC Bangla. I'm thinking of going through the FSI Bengali course, which is short, just 6 hours, but seems to have dialogs where I can focus on understanding how things are said, rather than what is being said as well.

Ramble

I'm gradually becoming more familiar with Bengali history/literature. Whilst browsing for things to read, I recognised a description of one of the stories I'm reading, calling it a traditional Bengali folk tale.

More interestingly, I had another look through the small collection of books I have. Back in September I think I wrote "miscellaneous books" on this log. Now I realise I have a second book by the author of টুনটুনি বই, called ছেলেদের মহাভারত, or Boy's Mahabharata. There's a lot of text on the page, but perhaps it's a natural step up from the book I'm reading. The author was quite well known at the time, and wrote a few books aimed at children.

I also discovered I have one of the classic Bengali novels: আনন্দমঠ (Anandamath) by Bankim Chattopadhyay, published in 1882 - a controversial book, banned by the British at the time, and apparently the source of India's national song. I think this goes after my books of Tagore's poetry, as something to aspire to in a couple of years' time!

So, I have some child-level things to read, and some advanced - you might need a degree in Bengali literature - things to read. I'm still looking at how to fill the gap in the middle. Next time I'm in India, I'll try to find some more contemporary stuff. According to wikipedia, Bengali has a tradition of science fiction stories - I might find those interesting.

[peter]

Soooo, I got wildly sidetracked. Serves me right for sorting through boxes of books ... sorting, rearranging the bookshelves, preparing boxes for charity ... the inevitable discovery and re-reading of long-lost friends ...

Good times, but ... this did lead to my first major break in Bengali since my restart in September. Time to take control again while we are still in January! I made the effort today to write something for the Output Challenge. Not quite where I meant to be, with just 1000+ words completed in a month. Well, tomorrow's another day, and Bengali is back on the agenda.

[tiktiki]

Hello Peter,

As a student of Bengali, I applaud your efforts and commiserate with them at the same time ! I wanted to join this forum today in order to bring you some good news: there is a new bangla Beginners' book out by Hanne-Ruth Thompson, who was formerly teaching bangla at the SOAS in London and whose mentor William Radice was/is for a long time. The tools for learning Bengali language being few and far between, this is a thoroughly welcome addition.

I have learnt the alphabet and some basics of bangla using Teach Yourself Bengali by William Radice. I have picked up a little bit here and there during various visits to Kolkata. (I do not have any family connections.) Friends who are Bengali speakers and others who are learning Bengali give me tips along the way. Watching Bengali films helps. Reading some easy texts helps, once you reach that watershed of having done Parts I and II of Radice. But as for myself, I fall often by the wayside and get distracted into trying to learn other languages from scratch, and then I return to Bengali and find I have to start all over again. So I am now working through Beginners' Bangla by HRT and it is refreshing.

Wishing you a great 2018 in your Bangla studies.



Another extremely helpful tool in learning and reading Bengali is Bangla Tangla :http://www.banglatangla.com

[peter]

Hi tiktiki, it's good to have another Bengali learner around!

I know about Thompson's book, and it looks a good one to get started (again!). Currently I'm trying to push forwards. I aim to get through Radice part 3 this year, along with a lot of reading and writing.

I would like to see more 'beyond beginner' resources for Bengali. The nearest I've found was recommended to me much earlier in this log by Daristani: http://home.uchicago.edu/cbs2/banglainstruction.html I plan to go through Intermediate Bengali by Seely later, as it appears to expand on the grammar topics covered briefly by Radice in part 3. There are also further 'readers' and material on that website.

Thanks for the Bangla Tangla link. I shall look.