Bengali and English–Similarly Different

Well, it is known to almost everyone who knows multiple languages that there are lots of interesting facts if we compare two or more languages. The science of linguistics and psycholinguistics offers us a variety of facets of different languages around the world. This is true to almost all the Indian languages–the very first one of them being the underlying current in all the languages of India. Almost all of them have the same alphabet in sound, though it differs considerably in its written format.

We are here to discuss a very good and interesting facet of two languages–Bengali and English. To get the essence of the point that I would be making we would need to understand some basic concepts in both of the languages. Let’s have a quick look at the concerned areas of both the languages.

Bengali:

Bengali is widely spoken in West Bengal and is a very popular language around the world. In Bangladesh also, Bengali is used. Moreover, due to the number of scholars, poets, and spiritual leaders coming from the land of Bengal, people all over the world know Bengali as a very beautiful language. One of the most striking feature of Bengali from almost all other languages of India is that it does not have a sound of “a”. Instead, it uses the sound of “o” for this sound. Like if you have a name written in all other Indian languages as “Dev”, they will have in Bengali as “Devo”; where “o” is the small vowel. This applies to all the words, and so, they have a sort of different pronunciation to all the words that would sound differently in other Indian languages.

English:

English is widely used in different parts of the world, and it has developed a lot of accents due to the regional usage of the language in different parts of the world. However, the correct pronunciation of the words often differs from the ones that are being used by different people. One thing which is very striking in the correct usage of words is the pronunciation of “o” in many of the words.

Let’s take the example of any of these words: “sock”, “dog”, “god”, “rod”, “moderator”, etc.

For any person who is not told the correct pronunciation of these words and have been taught only the sounds of the letters, he/she will pronounce them as it, where “o” will be giving the sound of “o” only. However, in real or correct pronunciations, this is used differently: “sock” is pronounced as “saack”, “dog” is pronounced as “daag”, with a little sound of “h” while they accent the “a”.

So, this is where we get the interesting point between Bengali and English:

In Bengali, we pick the sound from “a” to “o”, and in English we bring the sound of “o” to “aa”. While this would not sound interesting in the written format, in the audio version you can get the real taste of this fact. Because for this fact being sounding interesting, we do need the sound. I will try to get something in the audio format also and upload with this post.