Feelings

Why these words come first

A learner reaches for a feeling word before almost anything else — to say why they are crying, laughing or hungry — so happy, sad, cry, laugh and hungry 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, which is why a state like hungry sits beside emotions like happy and sad: all five get used with the same urgency.

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.