Page:Dialogues, Intended to Facilitate the Acquiring of the Bengali Language.djvu/9

iv gain a flexibility of expression, which could not be soon acquired by constant and rigid attention to grammatical rules alone.

I do not suggest by this, that these conversations are ungrammatical; even those Dialogues are strictly regular which are inserted on purpose to show the difference of idiom among the lower orders of people in different situations.

A Khansaman, or a Sirkar, talking to an European, generally intermixes his language with words derived from the Arabic or Persian, and some few corrupted English and Portuguese words: examples of this, in several varieties, occupy the first thirteen pages of the following work. From the thirteenth to the nineteenth page are instances of the grave stile. At the twentieth page is an instance of the common talk of labouring people. Women speak a language considerably differing from that of the men, especially in their quarrels: instances of this, both in the friendly and contentious stile, will be found from page 52 to 56, 65 to 67 and from 77 to 87 inclusive. The proverbial expressions, and sudden transitions, in these dialogues, will make them appear difficult at first, but the difficulty will soon be surmounted. The dialogue, page 56 is the greatest instance of irregularity; it is the language of fishermen, and is peculiar to that class of people.

There are some contractions, the principal of which are the substituting of এ or য়া, instead of ইয়া; and sometimes the total elision of the ই, in the different forms of the verbs: চ is also substituted for জ at the end of a very few words.