Bengali vocabulary

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 তদ্ভব tôdbhôbô (native Bengali vocabulary with Sanskrit cognates), 21,100 (28%) are তৎসম tôtsômô (words directly re-borrowed from Sanskrit) , and the rest being borrowings from দেশী deshi "indigenous (Austroasiatic)" and বিদেশী bideshi "foreign" sources.[3] There are more than five lac Bengali vocabulary in this language overall including other languages which is used as Bengali.[4]

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 re-borrowings 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.[5]

This table below compares the differences of spoken and used Bengali vocabularies in Dhaka & Shantipur in West Bengal.

Due to centuries of contact with Mughals, Arabs, Persians, Europeans, 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.[6][7] Later, East Asian travellers and European colonialism brought words from Portuguese, French, Dutch, and most significantly English. Some very common borrowings are shown below.