Talk:Bengali language/Archive 1

message: "Bengali is thus arguably the only language for which people have sacrificed their lives."
This appears to be a blatant falsehood. It may be true that the people who sacrificed their lives for Bengali are the only ones specifically recognized with a holiday.
-- Carlmarks 21:48, 2004 May 12 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with Carlmarks. Since language is so often the most apparent part of one's culture, it seems probably that many people have lost their lives for speaking a language. For one example, see Catalan. Under Franco, people in Catalonia were killed for speaking their language. Also banned were Basque and Galician. I'm going to remove the sentence from the otherwise fantastic article. Leland 07:49, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: we're talking about minorized languages or languages in substitution. That doesnt happen with popular languages. If they got a holiday dedicated to the language, then it is more reasenable that it shoulb be stated. Many things in an encyclopedia are obvious. But, in fact, there can be hundreds of languages that people have sacrificed their lives. And for the asian languages I really doubt that there was really a sacrifice like those in Spain. Because beganli is widely spoken, i really doubt that the language was so much forbitten, if it was... there should be lesser number of speakers, what happens in Spain, were the minority languages are very influenced by Spanish and in the basque country, for ex., those who speak their language is a minority due to that attacks against the language. -Pedro 17:22, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV? 

message: Hello to my fellow Bengalis and Bengalophiles!  I'm new to Wiki, but as a linguistics graduate student who is of both West Bengali and East Bengali heritage, and who uses both dialects of Bengali (and researches on both), I thought I'd try my hand at fixing up this article.  I started this morning with the "Variation" section, which--while not half-bad--was written by somebody with a noticeably West Bengali bias and which lacked terminological precision (especially when it came to describing the sound changes).  So I changed that around. Clearly the next thing to do is to describe the script (§4) and sounds (§6) of Bengali in a systematic way--I'd like to utilize the Unicode characters, but don't know very well how to do this yet, so I appreciate help from one who knows more than me about this.  Also, kudos to those who wrote and edited §1 through §3--I don't have much to add to those.
I'd like also to respond to two points made in the immediately preceding post here: yes "bongo" [bOngo] (vanga) is the standard Bangla word for "Bengal."  I too grew up mostly in America but have routinely heard West and East Bengalis alike refer to "poshchim bOngo" and "purbo bOngo." (I'm using [O] to represent the open "aw" sound).  The term is said to come from Sanskrit "vanga," although this is contested.   On the other hand, on the observation that the Wiki article (before my revision) made the Bangla of Dhaka "sound like a pidgin"--well, yes and no. A pidgin is a technical term, and the previous author did not claim that Dhakaiya Bangla was a pidgin, but you correctly detected some bias (see the new version, it's been totally changed). For the record, Muslim Bengalis don't "substitute" Sanskrit words with Perso-Arabic---this was a very misleading way to phrase it. The real story, which I'm going to have to work on and put online, is that all kinds of native Indic (Sanskrit and Prakrit-derived) as well as Perso-Arabic words were used by Bengalis of both religions...but Calcutta Brahmanical elites of the late 18th and 19th ceunturies attempted to purge Bengali of its non-Sanskritic elements, and Muslim writers responded, especially in the 20th century, with turning more and more to Perso-Arabic words.  What is striking is, despite the socially and politically motivated linguistic divergence in Bengali, the news broadcasts from Dhaka and Kolkata are essentially in the same language--even the same dialect and style--- while the broadcasts of "Urdu" from Islamabad and "Hindi" from New Delhi show linguistic divergence to the point of mutual non-comprehension.
But to return to the issue of bias: there's nothing biased in presenting one dialect as the "standard."  The Calcutta version of "cholti bhasha" is the standard--this doesn't connote any kind of value judgment about the language, though many people assume the "standard" language is somehow "better."  My point is simple: if you listen to news broadcasts or speeches or lectures given in Dhaka, they are in a standardized version of the language that is essentially identical to the standard used in Calcutta, and which originates from Calcutta speech in the late 19th century (Tagore popularized this "Cholti Bhasha").  Incidentally, I changed the references from Chalit Bhasha to Cholti Bhasha because that is the more frequent term (the article, pre-revision, flip-flopped between "Cholti" and "Chalit" haphazardly).
--Rashad Ullah 09:28, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  My revisions 

message: An attempt is being made to create a standard English transliteration scheme for words in the Bengali language. Anyone with knowledge of the language (and English of course) and of phonetics is requested to check out the project page for discussion on this issue. For a start, I found some reasonably good schemes already in use by other authorities, but each one lacks one thing or another. -- Urnonav 09:02, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transliteration of words in the Bengali language 

message: I suggest that this page be moved to Bengali—there's no need for disambiguation there. Any thoughts? — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:11, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. There's nothing else on Bengali. However, I would think that we should create an article at Bengali that refers to the population and culture in general. I am in doubtful situation as to how much information we can put there, but I frequently come up with things to write that should be classified under Bengali as in Bengali people/culture/bla bla. -- Urnonav 11:28, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page move 

message: The discussions on Asamese and Oria, while important, should not be in the first paragraph. Could this be moved to a different section, possibly a section of its own discussing related languages? I changed the first paragraph's recent edits slightly although I am not satisfied with my changes either. "Almost mutually understandable" sounds very iffy. There ought to be a better way to write that. The notes on dialect should move to the section on related languages or to the section on dialects. The intro is always better limited to a single paragraph or, at most, two with few sentences. Any comments on these?
-- Urnonav 00:55, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asamese and Orhia 

message: I removed Hindi from the list of foreing language influences. The list already includes Persian and Arabic. So, I am a little unclear as to whether there are words that were specifically Hindi (not Persian, Arabic or English) that have been absorbed into Bengali/Bangla. I am guessing that if a word is not "native" Bengali then it's very unlikely it will be native "Hindi" since both languages have similar roots. Could somebody with more knowledge of etymology and linguistics please look into this matter since I'm not an expert on this issue? Thanks!-- Urnonav 23:39, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foreign language influences 

message: This is not true that Bangla or Bengali language is evolved from or its a somewhat derivative of Sanskrit. Bengali follows a totally different track of evolution where it owes its origin to New Indo European root. It descends from Indo European language through Magdhi Apabhrangsha or Magdhi Prakrito which is totally different than Sanskrit.
This has been wonderfully backed up by the discovery of 'Charjapad' in Nepal By Haraprasad Shastri.
For more info please see : http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/B_0137.HTM
(The above message was left by Anon at  68.83.109.22)
:I think that's unlikely, although I am not an expert. I think we'd need some more concrete evidence to counter such the well-accepted belief that Bengali is descended from Sanskrit. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that the term Sanskrit is somewhat ambiguous.  According to my understanding Bangla/Bengali derived from Vedic Sanskrit.  No spoken languages today derive from Classical (Paninian) Sanskrit, the one that most people have in mind when the term Sankrit is mentioned.  Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. --jonsafari 19:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bangla is not evolved from Sanskrit 

message: Why are the references to "chalitbhasha" being removed? It is the most common pronunciation of the word. At least leave it in one instance. (Comment left by anon at )
:"Chalitbhasha" is not the correct word. There is no hashanta after soft-taa. so the pronunciation is like Cholito or chalita bhasha, or to be fair to the West Bengali dialect, Cholti bhasha. So, there is no point adding any reference to Chalit bhasha. Thanks. --Ragib 06:38, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Interesting that you would call "choltibhasa" a part of this so-called "West Bengal dialect". I think "cholitbhasha" is just a colloquial form of the word "cholitobhasha". There are some other words in which people assume "implicit hoshonto" when there shouldn't be one or reverse, although I can't think of one off the top of my head right now. The difference between cholti and cholito is not of regional dialect I believe. cholti is what choltibhasha calls itself, while cholito is the shadu form of the work cholti! I don't think cholit is wrong; so while it should be mentioned, the proper word to use is cholti, in my opinion. -- Urnonav 04:43, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cholitobh&#257;sh&#257;/Cholitbh&#257;sh&#257;/Chalitbhasha 

message: Hi everyone
I added this unnecessarily large section on vocabulary/etymology - I'm realizing now it might be too much. What do you all think? If there are just too many words, feel free to take some/most of them out as you see fit. Or if you think that the whole section needs to be redone, let me know and I'll get around to it.
Thanks
SameerKhan 03:42, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vocabulary section 

message: A question was raised about this article being copyvio from http://www.translation-services-usa.com/languages/bangla.shtml. This is not correct, because if you look at the bottom of that page, you'd find the source, none other than nationmaster.com , which is a wikipedia mirror. I'm almost sure because I wrote or edited several sections of the page, which show up in that webpage. So, I reverted it back. Thanks. --Ragib 04:45, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  alleged copyvio 

message: "shemiz/kamiz" - turns out bangla borrowed the same word twice - once from french, as "shemiz" from "chemise" (the french pronunciation of a pan-mediterranean word) and once from spanish or simultaneously from urdu/farsi/arabic as "kamiz" from "qaamiis" (the arabic pronunciation of the same word). the words do not mean the same thing in bangla - they refer to different articles of clothing.
anyhow, the two words ultimately come from the same place, but it's still important to distinguish the paths of borrowing, as "shemiz" and "kamiz" were borrowed from different modern languages at different times in different contexts.
about "daoat" instead of "dawat", the reasoning is because [w] is a sound that does not occur in that sort of phonological position in bangla. in fact, that is the reason why many bengalis have trouble pronouncing english words like "power" and "hour", sounding more like "paoar" and "aoar". i suppose this may be something only native english speakers notice! furthermore, the way we have been transliterating bangla on wikipedia makes no use of [w], using [u] or [o] instead depending on the exact pronunciation. for example, "khaoa" is written with an [o] although "kaua" (dialectical word for "crow") is written with a [u]. phonetically, only "kaua" has a [w], defined as a high-back glide, while "khaoa" has a nonsyllabic "o", not a [w]. anyhow i am probably not making sense the way i am explaining this, but i just thought i'd explain why i don't think we should be using [w] (or [y] for similar reasons) in transliterating bangla.
--SameerKhan 08:49, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  reasons for reverting the recent changes 

message: I removed the following phrase from the article:
and that gives us the name of the country "Bangladesh"
Bangla Desh is a word that has been in existence for way longer than the country Bangladesh has existed and was used and still frequently is used to cover what in other words is "Bengal". Hence, whether Bangla came from Bangla Desh or the other way round is what happened is a little "iffy". Also it is totally irrelevant to the article.
Urnonav 07:39, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Bangladesh from Bangla

message: I removed "Influenced primarily by universalist Hindu philosophy in the Upanishads, Tagore" in the literatire section as Tagore's what was primary influence can be widely debated and perhaps was too wide to describe in a sentence.--ppm 06:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tagore 

message: The article Jana Gana Mana begins: "Jana Gana Mana ... is the first of five stanzas of a poem by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, written in the highly sanskritized Bengali language." - There's been some question about whether it's meaningful or appropriate to use this expression "sanskritized Bengali language". Can anyone contribute to this? (Please discuss in Talk:Jana Gana Mana.) Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 16:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I replied there. Thanks. --Ragib 16:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jana Gana Mana: "sanskritized Bengali language"

message: Khoikhoi, thanks for pointing out how the the TOC had found its way to the middle of the article.  I inserted a template about a month ago that wraps the Table of Contents in the article text, which removes a lot of white space in the article (a pet peeve of mine).  Unfortunately, when SameerKhan rearranged the article, I failed to notice that the TOC had moved as well.  That was my mistake.
I also restored "Script" as the first section, not just so I could have a damn wrapped TOC--well, for the most part--but also because the script is an important part of Bangla that should be explained first.
--Ttownfeen 04:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I see. Looks good! --Khoikhoi 05:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah sorry! Totally my bad on the TOC misplacement. I didn't even realize it was in the Script section. Thanks for Khoikhoi for pointing that out and Ttownfeen for fixing that. And about reverting to the old order: if people prefer this order, that's fine. --SameerKhan 09:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  restoration of TOC 

message: Vidyasagar, as respectable as he is, doesn't deserve a whole para in a short Bangla literature writeup. That should go to the vidyasagar entry itself.
--ppm 17:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I also changed the redirect at Bengali literature to point to Bangla literature (it pointed to this article before). --Ragib 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vidyasagar 

message: About six months after the fact, I've started taking the peer review suggestions (which mainly only amounted to "Look at other language FAs") to try and improve the article.  It's not going to be easy, though.  The "variations in dialect" is like a 300-lb rock and it's gonna be hard to break up properly.  I think you all have probably realized by now that I know about as much Bangla to qualify as a non-speaker. So, I can only mainly contribute by looking at articles for information and for cleanup.
Hopefully, you guys can cleanup the mess I make trying to cleanup the article (if that makes any sense).
Here's to hoping we can get this sucker to FA-status. :-)
--Ttownfeen 06:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's a mess, I know. 

message: In a wikipedia article on a subject, it is not correct to talk irrelevantly about wikipedia. Sure, not too many people from Bengal are into wikipedia. That's not, in any way, a measure of any type of status of a language. There are 100s of other factors. But most importantly, talking about wikipedia and other things in a wikipedia article about a language is not encyclopedic, and irrelevant.
Next, the social status of Bangla is nowhere as low as mentioned. In Bangladesh, it is true that the most affluent 1 or 2% may look into English as a social status symbol, but the rest of the 98%, and most media DO focus on Bangla. A look into contemporary media in Bangladesh (TV, news, drama etc) would justify that completely.
In light of that, I removed the irrelevant comments about the status. Because, simply put, the comments are not correct. Thanks. --Ragib 05:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference to wikipedia 

message: hi all,
to anyone who can fix charts: can you make my diphthong chart be NOT bold? and can it be centered? is it too big? should i split it into two smaller charts? or should i get rid of it altogether? i thought it would show something special about bangla (well, about all the eastern indic languages actually), but if it's too ugly, we can get rid of it. --SameerKhan 11:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I got it to not be bold, though I'm sure if it was to degree you wanted.  I'm working on how to center it. --Ttownfeen 19:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ugh i am horrible with the charts 

message: I believe our website satisfies the requirements to be listed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bengali_language 
URL of our site is: http://www.linguistsguide.com/English_Bengali.htm 
Description: Bengali words and phrases. Hope our site will be listed in the external links section 
Thanks
:Yet another spam!! --Ragib 06:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, you just explained why your message is a spam!! Wikipedia is not out there to promote your site's google ranks. Thanks. --Ragib 15:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I did take a look, and saw a commercial website intent on getting google adsense revenues. The intention of the External links section is to have links relevant to a page, and not to direct traffic to your website. Thanks. --Ragib 15:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Rather than continuing this conversation, I suggest you take a look at WP:NOT and WP:SPAM, and refrain from spamming. Wikipedia is NOT a link farm. Your only intention, as seen from your pattern of mass spamming language articles, it to draw traffic to your ad-filled site. Sorry, but no thanks, wikipedia can live without these links. --Ragib 16:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Webpage for Bengali phrases 

message: The graph says the largest amount is native vocabulary, but the text says is sanskrit borrowings. Either the text or the graph got it mixed up. LodeRunner 05:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The vocabulary graph 

message: Will this map work? :Image:Bangla_extent.png I used the world map used all over wikipedia for this one.--ppm 19:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's makeshift, I must admit, but it's better than anything I could have come up with.  I'd go ahead and put it in. --Ttownfeen 20:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

text: One doubt I had is whether Tripura should be added or not--ppm 22:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: Looking at FA language articles () it seems that many of them have a well written History section. We should consider doing that here, with the "modern history" going as a subsection.--ppm 04:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: merge "Variation in dialects" and "Dialects" - the best way to do this is to delete the first one (variations)--ppm 00:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: "Meithei (Manipuri), a Sino-Tibetan language used in the Indian state of Manipur, was written in the Bengali alphasyllabary for centuries, until the 1980s, when Meetei-Mayek (the Meithei alphasyllabary) returned to daily usage. " --- this needs reference. The Meetei-Mayek article itself talks about efforts to reinstate it, not it being in daily usage. This webpage of an Indian ministry seems to suggest the exact opposite:Manipuri--ppm 23:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manipuri 

message: It really pains me to point this out only now, when plenty of work has been done on it, but the section on literature doesn't belong in an article about a language. While it's certainly relevant to Bangla, the article is about linguistics, not literature, and hence a separate section on literature simply isn't included in the language template nor do any FAs have a section on literature. On the other hand, it would make a wonderful addition to Bengali literature which currently has no references.
Peter Isotalo 13:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literature in a linguistic article 

message: hello,
i deleted two examples of different but synonymous bengali-derived words, one used in West Bengal and the other in bangladesh.
first, i have lived in calcutta and other WB districts for more than 30 years, and very, very few people actually call turmeric 'haldi'. the overwhelming majority call it 'holud', just as in bangladesh. so i deleted that line.
secondly, 'thakurjhi' is not the *name* of the relationship; the husband's sister is still referred to as 'nonod', as in bangladesh. it is only when she is *addressed* is the word 'thakurjhi' sometimes used, and even then not always. other salutations like the simple 'didi' are at least as common. i deleted that line, too.
i added an example to this section, the usage of 'bari' as opposed to 'basha', which has always struck me as important, especially so when i visited dhaka in 1996. however, i do not know how to write the 'daw-e-shunno raw' of 'bari' in the roman script, so i just wrote 'bari'. someone please correct this, if a correction is needed.
- tathagata (tathagatab at gmail dot com)
:Thanks for your input! --SameerKhan 18:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edited Examples of E-W Variations 

message: Can someone possibly look at the to-do list and do an update? --ppm 15:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To-do