Outdoors

Why these words come first

A learner points at the sky and names what she sees there — sun, moon and star — long before she can name things she has never seen. That is why sun, moon, star, sky and tree 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 sights just outside the door are taught alongside the people and objects the learner already knows indoors.

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.