Bengali Vocabulary - Classifications of Origin Types

Classifications of Origin Types

The typical Bengali dictionary lists 75,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered তৎসম tôtshômo (words directly reborrowed from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are তদ্ভব tôdbhôbo (native Bengali vocabulary with Sanskrit cognates), and the rest being borrowings from দেশী deshi "indigenous" (i.e. Austroasiatic) or বিদেশী bideshi "foreign" sources.

However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a huge chunk 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 native tôdbhôbo words, while tôtshômo reborrowings only make up 25% of the total. Deshi and bideshi borrowings together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.

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