Bengali (Bangla) alphabet

[Quiggle]

Hi!

I want to learn Bengali, and I would appreciate any good tips from fellow language learners along the way

For the alphabet, I currently use this course: http://www.memrise.com/course/258523/th ... lphabet-2/
It's not perfect, but is certainly a start. Does anybody know some good resources for Bengali? I already checked all courses I could find on Memrise & Quizlet. Too bad there's no course on Duolingo yet, hope they start one soon ^^

There are other websites too, but they look mostly pretty dusty and boring. I'll take a second look at them, though, because when I started out I was pretty focused on a phonetic approach. But after some more research, I think it's not very future-proof to try learning without being able to tap into real textual sources. There are lots of different transliteration systems, and getting used to them is hard. Trying to stick to one and find then only material for that system, it's very limiting.

Are native Bengali / Bangla speakers on this forum?

That's it for now
Thanks for your time, would love to hear from you!

[verdastelo]

An Intensive Course in Bengali published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) must be an excellent resource for any serious student of Bengali. I have books on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada from the CIIL's Intensive Course series. Each of them is filled with dialogues, grammatical information and drills. The CIIL is a publicly funded institute. Their books (please correct me if I am wrong) are used by the officers of the Indian Administrative Services. So they tend to be accurate, thorough and affordable. Luckily for you, An Intensive course in Bengali costs only INR 93. That's less than two Euros or 10 Chinese Yuan.

The CIIL also teaches Bengali online. You can enroll into the Bangla Course after trying out the sample lessons on the website. Here is the website: Bangla Online. The website is not aesthetically pleasing, but I am confident the content will be great.

Finally, if you speak Hindi (which I have no reason to assume you do), this free e-book may be useful in learning the script. बंगाली भाषा.

P.S. Here is Professor Alexander Arguelles' review of the CIIL's Intensive Series. CIIL: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews.

[MmeFleiss]

An Intensive Course in Bengali published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) must be an excellent resource for any serious student of Bengali. I have books on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada from the CIIL's Intensive Course series. Each of them is filled with dialogues, grammatical information and drills. The CIIL is a publicly funded institute. Their books (please correct me if I am wrong) are used by the officers of the Indian Administrative Services. So they tend to be accurate, thorough and affordable. Luckily for you, An Intensive course in Bengali costs only INR 93. That's less than two Euros or 10 Chinese Yuan.

The CIIL also teaches Bengali online. You can enroll into the Bangla Course after trying out the sample lessons on the website. Here is the website: Bangla Online. The website is not aesthetically pleasing, but I am confident the content will be great.

Finally, if you speak Hindi (which I have no reason to assume you do), this free e-book may be useful in learning the script. बंगाली भाषा.

P.S. Here is Professor Alexander Arguelles' review of the CIIL's Intensive Series. CIIL: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews.

How were you able to buy them? I'm interested in buying a book and cassettes but I don't see a link to an online store.

[Mani]

@Quiggle: As you are speaking German you might want to try Lehrbuch der modernen bengalischen Hochsprache by Rahul Peter Das. It is the textbook used to teach Bengali by the Southasian departments of the universities in Halle (Saale) and Heidelberg. Because it's been developed as a course textbook it comes without audio but Professor Das used IPA for the vocabulary throughout the first lessons and later on when a word is spoken differently than you would have expected from the rules you have learnt by the time it comes up.

By the way, if you plan to continue using the Memrise course - অ (short a in transliteration) is more often spoken as ​[⁠ɔ⁠] than as [⁠o⁠]​ and ভ isn't [vo] but [bʱɔ⁠] (= an aspirated b) (these are the 2 things I saw when I had a quick look at the course ...)

Well, I hope this'll help a bit and good luck with learning Bengali! It's a wonderful language.

[verdastelo]

I have books on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada from the CIIL's Intensive Course series. Each of them is filled with dialogues, grammatical information and drills.

How were you able to buy them? I'm interested in buying a book and cassettes but I don't see a link to an online store.

I attended the New Delhi World Book Fair last year. You can write to them if you are really interested in their book. I'm sure they will find a way. They are nice people. One of them offered me his cold drink when I expressed an interest in Telugu. He said, "It's so nice to meet someone who isn't only obsessed with European languages." He even offered me a discount and suggested several books, which I ended up buying. Call them, or write to them.

An alternative will be to turn to Amazon or another bookseller in your country.

P.S. He probably said "foreign" but probably meant "European." In India, "foreign" usually refers to English-speaking white countries. I don't like that. So whenever someone tells me "Things are better in foreign [countries]." my reply is "Do you mean Pakistan, or Somalia or probably Nigeria?" Even China and Japan aren't "foreign." They are Nepalese. Gosh! All Africans are "Negroes." And all Europeans speak English and are white. That summarises most people's simplistic view of the world here.

[MmeFleiss]

I have books on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada from the CIIL's Intensive Course series. Each of them is filled with dialogues, grammatical information and drills.

How were you able to buy them? I'm interested in buying a book and cassettes but I don't see a link to an online store.

I attended the New Delhi World Book Fair last year. You can write to them if you are really interested in their book. I'm sure they will find a way. They are nice people. One of them offered me his cold drink when I expressed an interest in Telugu. He said, "It's so nice to meet someone who isn't only obsessed with European languages." He even offered me a discount and suggested several books, which I ended up buying. Call them, or write to them.

An alternative will be to turn to Amazon or another bookseller in your country.

P.S. He probably said "foreign" but probably meant "European." In India, "foreign" usually refers to English-speaking white countries. I don't like that. So whenever someone tells me "Things are better in foreign [countries]." my reply is "Do you mean Pakistan, or Somalia or probably Nigeria?" Even China and Japan aren't "foreign." They are Nepalese. Gosh! All Africans are "Negroes." And all Europeans speak English and are white. That summarises most people's simplistic view of the world here.

I was afraid of that! Thank you for the suggestions; I'll look into them and if that doesn't work ask one of my husband's relatives currently living in India to order it for me (something I would prefer to avoid).

[Speakeasy]

I have not studied Bengali. However, in response to the general question of resources for studying Bengali, I conducted a quick search of the HTLAL and the Internet and I came up with a few introductory-level courses that are worth considering.

Introduction to Bengali, Part 1, (Edward Dimock, Somdev Bhattacharji, and Suhas Chatterjee)
From a reading of the Customer Reviews on Amazon, this introductory course seems rather interesting. A description of this course provided by one of the reviewers suggests to me that this course was modelled on the "audio-lingual method" of language instruction (drill-drill-drill).
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bengali-Part-Emphasis-Understanding/dp/8173041903/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463169870&sr=1-2&keywords=bengali

The audio recordings accompanying this course book are freely available via the Indiana University’s CeLT Recorded Materials Archive
http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/bengali_archive.html

Routledge Colloquial Bengali
Generally speaking, the scope of the Routledge Colloquial courses is limited to meeting the basic “transactional needs” of a traveller to the region where the target language is spoken. The audio recordings are now freely available as MP3 downloads from the publisher’s website, where you can also publish the course book, which is also available via Amazon and elsewhere.
http://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Bengali-Book-Only/dp/1138950076
http://www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/colloquial/default.php#languages

Teach Yourself Complete Bengali
The Teach Yourself courses provide a solid, but very basic, introduction to numerous languages:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Bengali-Two-Audio-CDs/dp/0071767029/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463169968&sr=1-18&keywords=bengali

Pimsleur / Assimil
I am both surprised and disappointed that these publishers currently do not offer courses for Bengali.

FSI Bengali Short Course & Peace Corps Bengali
Although somewhat dated, these introductory courses are certainly worth trying. They are available free-of-charge via the FSI-Languages-Courses website. Note carefully that, in order to locate the Peace Corps courses, you must follow the link near the top of the page.
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/

DLI Special Forces Bengali
My familiarity with several other DLI Special Forces courses suggests to me that their Bengali course would be very similar to many commercial “basic orientation” language courses. You can acquire this course at a very low price from iTunes or on EBay:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/u.s.-army-special-forces-bengali/id816953491?mt=11
http://www.auctiva.com/stores/viewstore2.aspx?id=1299994&page=home&search=bengali

HTLAL Discussion Threads
A search of the HTLAL website using “Bengali” as a search criterion yielded a total of 190 discussion threads, most of which include only passing references to the language. The following discussion threads seem to have raised the question of resources for studying the language:

Bengali
http://www.how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8224&PN=50

Some Bengali Resources
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35258&PN=24

Intermediate Resources Indian Languages
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=28039&PN=31

Central Institute of Indian Languages
Already mentioned above.
http://www.ciil.org/Courses.aspx

Online Courses
There are far too many to list.

[Quiggle]

Thank you all for your detailed replies, lots of helpful stuff in there!
The PDF of the German professor seems especially cool! Sounds like a very thorough approach, and he uses IPA.

I evaluated some Memrise alphabet courses, and since they only teach most basic stuff, I started my own course. Additionally to the normal letters it contains the combinations of a consonant with a vowel, I was missing a bit more exposure to this. Not finished yet, let's see how that goes. I'm adding the combinations to Forvo, in hopes a native Bangla speaker might pronounce them, so I could add them to the course as well. http://forvo.com/user/Morgengrauen/added-words/

[7APTARSHI]

An Intensive Course in Bengali published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) must be an excellent resource for any serious student of Bengali. I have books on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada from the CIIL's Intensive Course series. Each of them is filled with dialogues, grammatical information and drills. The CIIL is a publicly funded institute. Their books (please correct me if I am wrong) are used by the officers of the Indian Administrative Services. So they tend to be accurate, thorough and affordable. Luckily for you, An Intensive course in Bengali costs only INR 93. That's less than two Euros or 10 Chinese Yuan.

The CIIL also teaches Bengali online. You can enroll into the Bangla Course after trying out the sample lessons on the website. Here is the website: Bangla Online. The website is not aesthetically pleasing, but I am confident the content will be great.

Finally, if you speak Hindi (which I have no reason to assume you do), this free e-book may be useful in learning the script. बंगाली भाषा.

P.S. Here is Professor Alexander Arguelles' review of the CIIL's Intensive Series. CIIL: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews.

How were you able to buy them? I'm interested in buying a book and cassettes but I don't see a link to an online store.

MmeFleiss ,

I am a new member here and I am a native Bengalee, living in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. If you are still interested in learning/practicing Bengali with a native Bengalee, ping me anytime.

[Quiggle]

Mmmh, some dust has collected here... *cough cough*

After a loooong break, I've started learning again. I might post updates, or not. Let's see how it goes this time.

My main resource is "Complete Bengali" by William Radice (Teach Yourself). The audio CD went missing, BUT they offer all MP3s online! For free! I'm not sure if they still sell the book even, it wasn't listed in their current portfolio.

So far I have recreated the first unit in Anki. MP3s (one per unit, contains ca. 30 individual audios) have been split with "AppleMacSoft MP3 Splitter for Mac" (by Dennys Yevenko). It's a lightweight tool which I only need 1-2 functions off, and it seems to do the job just fine. It has been quite a journey to find a "free" tool for Mac with an automatic silence detection and split function, that's why I'd like to recommend it here for future learners. It costs about 20 USD, but first 10 uses are free. That's pretty cool because unless you have to restart your Mac for any reason, this tool can stay open "forever"

I really like the book's approach. A handful of consonants is taught in each unit (vowels are spread over the first four units) - then about 30 example words / sentences are formed with the unit contents. The alphabet itself has not been turned into audio, but the 30 examples have. This seems like a very good method to ease into it, get used to the many foreign (to my ear) sounds and start reading immediately. And I think i might have found an OK workflow to get all ingredients for my cards together.

Right now I'm pretty happy with my little deck. It contains the Bengali phrase and its audio file on the front, while the back can show you IPA, the English and German translation, as well as notes, if there are any. I'm not exactly sure if I can share my deck publicly as "fair use" (audio is free if you register on their website, the book seems to be out of print entirely). But it's only the beginning anyway. That book is thicc.

See you around!