Introduction to Bengali Part 1: a basic course in spoken Bengali with emphasis upon speaking and understanding the language

The following materials for a basic course in spoken Bengali represent a revision of the work first produced by Edward Dimock and Somdev Bhattacharji and dated September, 1959. This revision has been made by Edward Dimock, Somdev Bhattacharji, and Suhas Chatterjee,. on the basis of their experience with two years classroom work with the materials, and with the helpful advice and comments those to whom the first draft was sent for criticism.

Since the first draft of these materials was finished in l959 the first several units of Spoken Bengali by Ferguson and Satterthwaite, as well as materials for other modern South Asian languages, have become available. While we have profited by these, our materials differ somewhat in emphasis from them. As has often been pointed out, a language with the richness and breadth of Bengali warrants two, or even several, treatments in teaching materials Our conversations and drills are oriented less toward practical situations than toward cultural concepts, facts of Bengali life and history, and selected grammatical points; to these considerations we have occasionally sacrificed the illusion of reality. This does not mean that we neglect the structure of the language and do not attempt to train people to speak. On the contrary, the heavy emphasis of our basic course is upon speaking and understanding the language. But in our approach we have aimed at a compromise between purely structural and purely cultural orientation. Student aims, as well as teachers1 interests and methods, differ.