Family

Why these words come first

A learner names the people in the room long before anything else. That is why mother, father and baby sit in tier 1 of the TotWord catalog — tiers are ordered by how often a word turns up in an ordinary day, not by theme. Family words carry a second advantage for Bengali and Hindi homes: every one of them already has a familiar word at home, so the English label attaches to a meaning the learner owns rather than to a new idea.

Each card below carries the picture, the English word, its IPA transcription, a plain-English respelling you can read aloud without training, and the meaning in Bengali or Hindi. Tap the round button to hear it in the language you picked above.

Pick one topic per sitting — five words is a full session. Say the respelling, not the IPA, when reading aloud. Play the English clip first and the home-language clip second.