People

Why these words come first

A learner sorts the people around her before almost anything else — boy, girl, man, woman and child are the words that name everyone in the room. That is why they sit in tier 1 of the TotWord catalog: tiers are ordered by how often a word turns up in everyday life, not by subject, so the basic words for people are taught alongside the family words the learner already knows.

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.