Done!

Bangla test is over!
The test went well, but I am more excited about having my life back.
First thing on my to-do list: lots of sleeping.
Back … eventually.

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The news is … no news

You know how in English, we tend to open conversations by saying “what’s up?”
Does anyone know how you actually answer that?  Saying “good” doesn’t really make sense.
Bangla has a similar greeting – Ki khabor – what’s the news?  And I never know how to respond.  I’m good?  Just got done with work?  I usually say [...]

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Back in action

My blog-writing has taken a backseat of late to the general craziness in my life. I’m getting married in a few months, and it turns out the whole wedding thing is rather time consuming. Also, my fiance is a foreign national (and not, as USCIS seems to think, an alien) and navigating the visa [...]

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You too Bangla can talk

One of the tricky aspects of Bangla (once you get past the alphabet – one friend says it looks like Klingon) is that they use Subject-Object-Verb construction. I hadn’t really thought about it, but English is Subject-Verb-Object form. Essentially, this means in Bangla you talk like Yoda.
It is surprisingly difficult to think [...]

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Some days I have a hard time just speaking English…

and Bangla homework is about the last thing I want to do. Unfortunately my Bangla teachers, while not really sticklers on the whole homework issue, do seem a tad disappointed when I drag myself in to class totally unprepared.
Luckily, now there’s an excuse, and it’s even semi-legit: Bangla TV! I can watch tv [...]

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A brief diversion …

So I’m straying from the promised book post for an entertaining tidbit from Bangla class today … we discovered today that to say “to fall down” in Bengali you say “eat a pickle.” As in, “It’s pretty icy out there, be careful you don’t eat a pickle!”
In reality, the two words aren’t exactly the [...]

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A strange new world …

In a rare burst of Bangla-learning motivation (or desperation – I actually seem to be regressing this week) last night I explored the world of online language exchanges. There are tons of pages out there, I discovered, the idea being that native speakers of different languages come together over the internet to chat and [...]

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