Vocabulary
Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 are considered tôtshômo (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 are tôdbhôbo (native words with Sanskrit cognates), and the rest being bideshi (foreign borrowings) and deshi (Austroasiatic borrowings) words.
However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a large proportion of these words are archaic or highly technical, minimizing their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of tôdbhôbo words, while tôtshômo only make up 25% of the total. Deshi and Bideshi words together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.
Due to centuries of contact with Europeans, Mughals, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Afghans, and East Asians, Bengali has incorporated many words from foreign languages. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. Close contact with neighboring peoples facilitated the borrowing of words from Hindi, Assamese and several indigenous Austroasiatic languages (like Santali). of Bengal. After centuries of invasions from Persia and the Middle East, numerous Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Pashtun words were absorbed into Bengali. Portuguese, French, Dutch and English words were later additions during the colonial period.
Read more about this topic: Bengali Language
Famous quotes containing the word vocabulary:
“A new talker will often call her caregiver “mommy,” which makes parents worry that the child is confused about who is who. She isn’t. This is a case of limited vocabulary rather than mixed-up identities. When a child has only one word for the female person who takes care of her, calling both of them “mommy” is understandable.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)
“The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.”
—Marina Warner (b. 1946)
“[T]here is no breaking out of the intentional vocabulary by explaining its members in other terms.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)