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Tuesday, 5 April 2011

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Bengali alphabet

Origin

The Bengali alphabet is derived from the Brahmi alphabet. It is also closely related to the Devanagari alphabet, from which it started to diverge in the 11th Century AD. The current printed form of Bengali alphabet first appeared in 1778 when Charles Wilkins developed printing in Bengali. A few archaic letters were modernised during the 19th century.
Bengali has two literary styles: one is called Sadhubhasa (elegant language) and the other Chaltibhasa (current language). The former is the traditional literary style based on Middle Bengali of the sixteenth century, while the later is a 20th century creation and is based on the speech of educated people in Calcutta. The differences between the two styles are not huge and involve mainly forms of pronouns and verb conjugations.
Some people prefer to call this alphabet the Eastern Nagari script or Eastern Neo-Brahmic script

Notable features

  • The Bengali alphabet is a syllabic alphabet in which consonants all have an inherent vowel which has two different pronunciations, the choice of which is not always easy to determine and which is sometimes not pronounced at all.
  • Vowels can be written as independent letters, or by using a variety of diacritical marks which are written above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to.
  • When consonants occur together in clusters, special conjunct letters are used. The letters for the consonants other than the final one in the group are reduced. The inherent vowel only applies to the final consonant.

Used to write:

Bengali, an eastern Indo-Aryan language with around 211 million speakers in Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal and also in Malawi, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia, the UAE, UK and USA.
Assamese, an eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 15 million people in the Indian states of Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and also spoken in Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Manipuri, one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur in north-east India and has about 1.1 million speakers. It is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and also has its own alphabet
Garo, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 800,000 people in the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam, and also in Bangladesh.
Mundari, a Munda language with about two million speakers in eastern India, mainly in the Indian state of Bihar, also in Bangladesh and Nepal. It has been written with the Devanagari, Bengali, Oriya and Latin alphabets.

Vowels and vowel diacritics

Bengali vowels
More consonant-vowel combinations

Consonants

Bengali consonants

A selection of conjunct consonants

A selection of Bengali conjunct consonants
All conjunct consonants

Modifier symbols

Additional Bengali symbols

Numerals

Bengali numerals
Download a spreadsheet with these charts (Excel format, 80K)

Sample text in Bengali

Sample text in Bengali (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

SEN and MFL GCSE

Like most schools, we are getting our heads around the new specification GCSE and although we have begun to get to grips with the controlled assessment tasks we hadn’t really begun to look into the reading and listening examinations until this month. We wanted to give our pupils a trial go at these two skill papers, so that the students have an idea of how the paper works, and also so that we had an idea of how they would achieve. Interestingly, most of my candidates were able to achieve a C grade or higher (bar one or two weaker students, who still managed a D at least).

For me, the greatest difference has been the many red herrings in the Spanish papers. They hide a lot of information in texts, and deliberately put more information in than necessary to weed out the skim readers from the real people who understand, so practice at these papers is certainly vital.
There are two pupils in our current Year 11 who take a language and have a learning need and when we conducted the listening examination we realised that we are no longer allowed to pause the audio playing (AQA) and we began to wonder what we would do for a pupil that required extra time. After a very long hunt, I found out that JCQ/AQA allow the audio to be paused for a pupil that requires extra time, so long as they are accommodated separately to the other candidates, and extra time is provided for quite easily for the reading exam.
“For taped/recorded examinations, the centre must request an extra recording from the awarding body, unless they normally receive enough spares. Centres should contact the awarding body for advice on how the extra time is to be applied” JCQ Access Arrangements document, section .1.6
The speaking controlled assessment task allows for no extra time, as the task lasts between 4-6 minutes any way, however, I believe that extra time is allowed at Stage 3 for the writing task (the writing up moment of the task). “23. Are candidates with a disability eligible for extra time for Stage 3 of the controlled assessment? Yes, candidates with a disability are eligible for extra time at Stage 3 as timing is not part of the assessment objectives.” AQA’s FAQ for CA tasks, Qu 23

Why Languages Are Important


Thursday, 31 March 2011

Most Speaking Languages In World


Pos Language Family Script(s) Used Speakers
(Millions)
Where Spoken (Major)
1 Mandarin Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 1151 China, Malaysia, Taiwan
2 English Indo-European Latin 1000 USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
3 Spanish Indo-European Latin 500 Mexico, Central and South America, Spain
4 Hindi Indo-European Devanagari 490 North and Central India
5 Russian Indo-European Cyrillic 277 Russia, Central Asia
6 Arabic Afro-Asiatic Arabic 255 Middle East, Arabia, North Africa
7 Portuguese Indo-European Latin 240 Brazil, Portugal, Southern Africa
8 Bengali Indo-European Bengali 215 Bangladesh, Eastern India
9 French Indo-European Latin 200 France, Canada, West Africa, Central Africa
10 Malay, Indonesian Malayo-Polynesian Latin 175 Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
11 German Indo-European Latin 166 Germany, Austria, Central Europe
12 Japanese Altaic Chinese Characters and 2 Japanese Alphabets 132 Japan
13 Farsi (Persian) Indo-European Nastaliq 110 Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia
14 Urdu Indo-European Nastaliq 104 Pakistan, India
15 Punjabi Indo-European Gurumukhi 103 Pakistan, India
16 Wu Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 90 China
17 Vietnamese Austroasiatic Based on Latin 86 Vietnam, China
18 Javanese Malayo-Polynesian Javanese 85 Indonesia
19 Tamil Dravidian Tamil 78 Southern India, Sri Lanka, Malyasia
20 Korean Altaic Hangul 78 Korean Peninsula
21 Turkish Altaic Latin 75 Turkey, Central Asia
22 Telugu Dravidian Telugu 74 Southern India
23 Marathi Indo-European Devanagari 72 Western India
24 Italian Indo-European Latin 62 Italy, Central Europe
25 Thai Sino-Tibetan Thai 60 Thailand, Laos
26 Burmese Sino-Tibetan Burmese 56 Myanmar
27 Cantonese Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 55 Southern China
28 Kannada Dravidian Kannada 47 Southern India
29 Gujarati Indo-European Gujarati 46 Western India, Kenya
30 Polish Indo-European Latin 46 Poland, Central Europe

Language Arabic Speak in (Middle East, Arabia, North Africa)

Arabic Language History

MSA is used in official documents, in educational settings, and for communication between Arabs of different nationalities. However, the spoken forms of Arabic vary widely, and each Arab country has its own dialect. Dialects are spoken in most informal settings, such as at home, with friends, or while shopping. Of all spoken dialects, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood, due primarily to Egypt's role as the major producer of movies and TV programmes in the Arab world.
Being one of the quirkiest in the world, the actual script reads from right to left with an alphabet containing 28 consonants. There are various types of Arabic script, some more intricate than others. The best known are "Kufic" and "Thuluth". Arabic script has been used for decorative purposes all over the Muslim world in mosques, houses and other buildings. This is possible as the writing flows in a beautiful stylised fashion.
Today, words of Arabic origin can be found in some European languages such as Portuguese and Spanish, due to periods of Arab reign in those countries. English words of Arabic origin include "zero", "algebra", "alcohol", "mosque", "tariff", "alcove", "magazine", "elixir", "sultan" and "cotton".

Roots of the Arabic language

Arabic language historyArabic is descended from a language known in the literature as Proto-Semitic. This relationship places Arabic firmly in the Afro-Asiatic group of world languages. Going further into the relationship between Arabic and the other Semitic languages, Modern Arabic is considered to be part of the Arabo-Canaanite sub-branch of the central group of the Western Semitic languages.

Modern Arabic Disglossia

Modern Arabic is an uncommon language because it is characterised by what is called diglossia. This means that modern Arabic is really almost two languages: Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic is used in reading, writing, and high register speech. It is descended from the Classical language of the Qur'an and, in the view of almost all Arabs, is the "pure" Arabic. However, Modern Standard Arabic is a learned language. It is no one's mother tongue. In fact, all Arabs grow up learning the second or colloquial language.

Arab colloquial dialects are generally only spoken languages. Arabs use the colloquial language in all their daily interactions, but, when they encounter a language situation calling for greater formality, Modern Standard Arabic is the medium of choice.
Standard Arabic is more or less the same throughout the Arab world, while there are wide differences between the various colloquial dialects. In fact, some of the differences are so large that many dialects are mutually unintelligible.

Language Russian speak in (Russia, Central Asia)

Russian Language History

What is more, Russian remains the unofficial lingua franca of the former Soviet republics, an indispensable communications tool across all of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russian accounts for one quarter of scientific publications, and it is an increasingly important language for business and trade as Russian institutions, both public and private, integrate with their European and American counterparts.
MatryoshkiRussian is mainly a phonetic language. The stress is mobile and does not follow strict rules. There are 6 different cases in Russian language, meaning that the ending of the words varies according to their syntactical function in the sentence. Word order is, therefore, highly flexible.
Although Russian as a modern cultural language is relatively new, with the vast majority of classic work having been produced in the 19th and 20th centuries, the wealth of the Russian cultural heritage in literature, visual art, theatre, opera, instrumental music, and ballet is enormous.
With the end of the Cold War, Russia has opened its door to international businesses, banking, media, culture, and entertainment. Russia's re-entry into the world economic system has opened up an enormous and largely unexploited market for Western goods and services. Russia possesses a well-educated work force and vast natural resources. Over 300 US companies have already opened businesses in Russia, and Western European firms are even more actively investing in the region.

Roots of the Russian language

The sixth century AD saw the migration of the Slav people from old Poland. The Slavs expanded westwards to the river Elbe and southwards to the Adriatic sea where they gradually occupied much of the Balkans.
By 10th century, three Slavonic language groups had emerged: Western, Southern and Eastern. Eastern Slavonic gave rise to the modern languages known as Ukranian, Belorussian and Russian. The Slavonic languages retained many features in common especially in grammatical structure; therefore, the separate groups were able to use one common written language. This language was known as Old Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic (the language was used in its written form only). In the 9th century, two missionaries - Constantine (who on his deathbed took the monastic name Cyril) and Methodius - were required to write down the scriptures in Old Church Slavonic and to preach Christianity to the people of Moravia.
Before they set out for Moravia, Constantine invented a Slavonic, now known as Cyrillic, alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet is closely based on the Greek alphabet, with about a dozen additional letters invented to represent Slavic sounds not found in Greek.
In Russia, Cyrillic was first written in the early Middle-Ages in clear-cut, legible ustav (large letters). Later a succession of cursive forms developed. In the early eighteenth century, under Peter the Great, the forms of letters were simplified and standardised, with some appropriate only to Greek being removed. Further unnecessary letters were expunged in 1918, leaving the alphabet as it is today.
Low, Middle and High Style
Old Church Slavonic remained the written language until the middle of the eighteenth century in Russia.  By this time, the need was felt for a written language which was closer to the educated spoken norm. The famous M. V. Lomonosov, after which the Moscow State University is named, distinguished three styles:
1) High Style - Church Slavonic, to be used for poetics and religion.
2) Middle Style - to be used for lyric poetry, prose and science.
3) Low Style - to be used in personal correspondence and in low comedy.
The Middle Style, which combined features of both East Slavonic and Church Slavonic is the style which came to form the basis of the modern standard language. In the mid 1800's, Standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect became the official language.
The Russian language allows an interesting way of addressing people to whom you have just been introduced. The person's first name is combined with a modified form of his or her father's first name. If a man's first name is Ivan and his father's first name is also Ivan, you would call him Ivan Ivanovich (Ivan, son of Ivan), and if Ivan had a sister, she would be called Natasha Ivanovna, (Natasha, daughter of Ivan). The -ovich and -ovna suffixes are always appended to the father's first name and not to the mother's.