My task for this week was to read a Bengali poem. 😅
It was hard for me to find a poem at my level, but I found one! It is called "Bhajahu Re Mana" and it is a poem from Medieval Bengal, in the Padavali genre of spiritual poems. It was written by Govinda Das Kabiraj. "Kabiraj" is a title given to respected literary figures that literally translates to "poet king"
Here are the lyrics written out phonetically and translated:
http://kksongs.org/songs/b/bhajahuremana.html
This link has the lyrics side-by-side in Bengali text as well as transliterated: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/bhajahu-re-mana-bhajahoo-re-mana.html
The poem can also be performed as a song. I have embedded a link to my favourite rendition:
As an extra exercise, I copied out the lyrics to the poem in my Bengali notebook. I'm getting more comfortable with writing Bengali for sure! Though I sometimes get some of the similar looking letters mixed up -- I struggled between "m" (ম) and "s" (স) when writing this out; won't make that mistake again! I also wrote the numbers of the stanzas out on the side. The Bengali 2 is similar to ours (২), but the 3 is shaped like a snail shell and the 4 looks like an 8.
I'm so happy to be becoming literate in my ancestral language. 😀
Next week, I'll be watching a 30-minute Bengali TV show. I'll see what I can find on YouTube. Hopefully something with subtitles.... These tasks are definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone!
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