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Bengali language: Difference between revisions

807 bytes added ,  10 April 2021
Vocabulary info
(Vocabulary info)
(Vocabulary info)
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Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 are considered [[Tadbhava]]s, 21,100 are [[Tatsama]]s and the remainder [[loanword]]s from [[Austroasiatic languages|Austroasiatic]] and other foreign languages.
Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 are considered [[Tadbhava]]s, 21,100 are [[Tatsama]]s and the remainder [[loanword]]s from [[Austroasiatic languages|Austroasiatic]] and other foreign languages.


However, these figures do not take into account the large proportion of archaic or highly technical words that are very rarely used. Furthermore, different dialects use more [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Arabic]] vocabulary especially in different areas of Bangladesh and Muslim majority areas of [[West Bengal]]. Hindus, on the other hand, use more Sanskrit vocabulary than Muslims. While standard Bengali is based on the [[Bengali dialects|Nadia dialect]] spoken in the Hindu majority states of West Bengal, about 90% of Bengalis in Bangladesh (ca. 148 million) and 27% of Bengalis in West Bengal and 10% in Assam (ca. 36 million) are Muslim and speak a more "persio-arabised" version of Bengali instead of the more Sanskrit influenced Standard [[Bengali dialects|Nadia dialect]].
However, these figures do not take into account the large proportion of archaic or highly technical words that are very rarely used. Furthermore, different dialects use more [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Arabic]] vocabulary especially in different areas of Bangladesh and Muslim majority areas of [[West Bengal]]. Hindus, on the other hand, use more Sanskrit vocabulary than Muslims. While standard Bengali is based on the [[Bengali dialects|Nadia dialect]] spoken in the Hindu majority states of West Bengal, about 90% of Bengalis in Bangladesh (ca. 148 million) and 27% of Bengalis in West Bengal and 10% in Assam (ca. 36&nbsp;million) are Muslim and speak a more "persio-arabised" version of Bengali instead of the more Sanskrit influenced Standard [[Bengali dialects|Nadia dialect]]. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of tadbhavas, while tatsamas make up only 25% of the total.<ref name="bhoumick">[http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Tatsama Tatsama] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150706010902/http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Tatsama |date=6 July 2015 }} in {{Harvnb|Asiatic Society of Bangladesh|2003}}</ref><ref name="bhoumick1">[http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Tadbhaba Tadbhaba] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150706052525/http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Tadbhaba |date=6 July 2015 }} in {{Harvnb|Asiatic Society of Bangladesh|2003}}</ref> Loanwords from non-Indic languages account for the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern [[Bengali literature]].