Bengali / বাংলা
Bengali / বাংলা
Dozentin: Mala Al-Farooq, M.A.
Bengali (Bangla) belongs to the Indo-Iranian sub groups of the Indo-European languages and with its 215 million native speakers it ranks 7th among the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh with 140 million native speakers. Furthermore, there are about 75 million speakers in India. After Hindi, Bengali is the second largest endemic language of the Indian subcontinent. Bengali is also the official language of the federal states of West Bengal and Tripura, being also spoken in parts of Bihar and the Southern Assam. There is a big Bengal diaspora in Malaysia, Nepal, Saudi-Arabia, Singapur and the Arabian Emirates, Great Britain and the US.
Bengali is written in its own script with 36 general characters and 11 vocals which possess similarities with the Devanagari-script. It differs however disctinctly in its phonetic shifts.
Courses in the winter semester 2017/18 
Bengali I
Bengali 1
Bengali is offered at the HU in the Modul 16 (Ergänzende Sprachlehre).
The language class Bengali opens in the winter semester and takes place twice a week. At the end of the semester an exam will be written. Bengali 1 equals A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In the course the script will be taught together with the elementary grammar and a basic listening comprehension. At the end of the semester, students will be able to contribute in simple conversations and read and write basic texts in Bengali.
Bengali 2
Bengali 2 is the continuating course of Bengali 1. It equals the niveau A2 of the above-mentioned framework. Again, the class takes place twice a week and an exam will finish the semester work.