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| jobeda | Wednesday 03rd of November 2004 03:17:58 PM |
| Learning shuddo basha - Can someone help me improve my shuddo basha or bhalo basha? I speak fluent Sylheti but even this is all quite domestic and limited as I am not from an educated family - ar ami Dhakate ar Kolkatate giyechilam ar ektu ektu bolte parchi, kintu I would really like to improve, to the degree that 1) I can read Tagore etc in the orginal 2) I can converse about politics, society, ethics etc Can anyone help? I have webcam and can exchange English teaching. | |
| bengaligal | Thursday 04th of November 2004 04:46:30 AM |
| - What du u want 2 learn in bengali? It is not that different from syleti. They r similar. Ami bangla bhalo bhabe jani. | |
| jobeda | Friday 05th of November 2004 02:29:28 AM |
| learning Bengali - I just want to learn to understand and speak Bengali confidently. Partly my reasons are emotional, I want to learn to understand the language of literature and poetry so that I can understand my own history a bit more. I studied Indian history at degree level, but without being able to read anything in any of the Indian languages and I want to try and correct this now. I am also trading with Bangladesh and India and need to be able to talk business with them in Bengali - as you probably know, back home their perception of expats who don't speak the language well is that we are simple or limited (and not entirely wrongly!). But when you speak to them in English they will treat you like a foreigner and you will obviously get charged foreigners rates! I don't think Sylheti is that similar - we have always been slightly apart from the other Bengali speakers and in fact it is the one dialect that standard speakers struggle with - our verbs and even our nouns are drastically different - this is unusual for dialects and it has even been rumoured that Sylheti did used to have its own written form before it was repressed by the Bengalis in the same way that the Paks tried to repress Bengali...but the Paks didn't succeed whereas the Bengalis did - I'm not sure if that's an urban myth but either way it illustrates the gulf between the dialects. My mother and most of my extended family don't speak English - so when I say I am fluent in Sylheti, I mean I do conduct a fulfilling and varied life in it. So I'm afraid I beg to differ, they are different enough that they need to be taught, if you are not immersed in it. Final point - vocabulary - as you will know, the Sylheti migrants in Britain aren't exactly the Bengali bourgeoisie: most of us are from rural (usually illiterate) peasant backgrounds and so have inherited a very limited vocabulary. My family and I speak about domestic stuff, kinship stuff, leisure and shopping, but I want to be able to talk about politics, history, philosophy and science. I have spent significant time in Sylhet and all political business is conducted in standard Bengali - have you tried to talk about human rights in Sylheti without resorting to either standard Bengali or English words? Sylheti is a very limited dialect in my experience - but I'm not at all averse to being proved wrong! | |
