Bengali vocabulary

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Bengali (বাংলা Bangla) is one of the Magadhan languages, evolved from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali languages. The core of Bengali vocabulary is thus etymologically of Magadhi Prakrit and Pali languages. However, centuries of major borrowing and reborrowing from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sanskrit, Austroasiatic languages and other languages has led to the adoption of a wide range of words with foreign origins. Thus making the origins of borrowed and reborrowed words in the Bengali vocabulary numerous and diverse, due to centuries of contact with various languages.

Classifications of origin types

Sources of modern literary Bengali words

  তদ্ভব Tôdbhôbô (native)

  তৎসম Tôtsômô (Sanskrit reborrowings)

  দেশী Deshi (indigenous loans) and বিদেশী Bideshi (foreign loans)

The typical Bengali dictionary lists 75,000 separate words, of which 50,000 (67%) are considered তৎসম tôtsômô (words directly reborrowed from Sanskrit), 21,100 (28%) are তদ্ভব tôdbhôbô (native Bengali vocabulary with Sanskrit cognates), and the rest being borrowings from দেশী deshi "indigenous (Austroasiatic)" and 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, minimising their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly 67% of native tôdbhôbô words, while tôtsômô 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.

Differences in Vocabulary

This table below compares the differences of spoken and used vocabularies in Bangladesh and West Bengal.

Examples of borrowed words

Due to centuries of contact with Europeans, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, and East Asians, The Bengali language has absorbed countless words from foreign languages, often totally integrating these borrowings into the core vocabulary. The most common borrowings from foreign languages come from three different kinds of contact. After centuries of contact from Persia and the Middle East, followed by the invasions of the Mughal Empire, numerous Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words were absorbed and fully integrated into the lexicon. Later, East Asian travellers and European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and most significantly English. Some very common borrowings are shown below.