Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language. To what family does your language belong? What sounds, words or structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures?
This week I spoke of the history of the Bengali language with my learning partner. Bengali is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. Specifically, the language is a member of the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the 2nd most spoken language in India. Bengali has influences from the Arabic and Persian languages (mainly Farsi) and is spoken mainly in Calcutta, India, and Bangladesh. Bengali also has commonalities with Hindi. The word “jal” means “spicy” in Bengali, Farsi, and Hindi. The word “pani” means “water” in those languages as well. Hindi and Bangla were initially evolved from Sanskrit but has now been influenced by Urdu/Farsi words. My language partner discussed how the language is a uniting factor for all Bengali speakers. After India was divided into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangladesh), the Bangladeshis fought to keep their language and free themselves from Pakistan.
My learning goal for this week is employing Bengali iPhone applications into my daily studying routine. This has helped tremendously because the apps have a lot of listening and speaking opportunities. I can listen to a word and define it on the application. I can also speak aloud and try to pronounce the words. The specific applications I am using are Learn Bengali Quickly, uTalkGo, and Bengali Dictionary. Learn Bengali Quickly has the alphabet, greetings, traveling, numbers, food, etc. uTalk Go has a lot of practices, speaking games, and memory games. The Bengali Dictionary application is used mostly when I cannot remember a word or am looking for a word to say. I use each application daily and it has greatly helped with my speaking abilities, something I was very nervous about.
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