Today our topic of discussion is – Bengali Loanwords French
Bengali Loanwords French
The historical background
French establishment in Indian sub-continent began in the second half of the 17 century. The French colonies were in Pondichery, Karikal, Malabar coast and Chandannagar. Chandannagar was the French colony in undivided Bengal.
The earlier people knew the place by the name ‘Farasdanga’, where ‘Faras’ means French and ‘danga’ means land. Chandannagar was established as a French colony in 1673, when the French obtained permission from Ibrahim Khan, the ruler of the then Bengal, to establish a trading post on the right bank of the Hughli river.
Bengal was then a province of the Mughal Empire. It became a permanent French settlement in 1688. For a time, Chandannagar was the main center for European commerce in Bengal.
Because of the French contact with Bengal for a time, a few French words were received in Bengali language. Such as, atat, /olondaj/, /kafe/, /kartuj/, /renesă/, /restorā/
etc.
Linguistic analysis of French loanwords
Phonological analysis
There are three processes which are accountable for the sound change of French loanwords. These are-
1. Final vowel elision
2. Final vowel insertion
3. Nasalization
Final vowel clision:
We get this process of sound change in the following examples. where a vowel is deleted finally –
Final vowel insertion: In this process a vowel is inserted at the final position of a word.
For instance –
Nasalization: In this process a sound becomes nasal. Such as-
Morphological analysis
Morphological nature: From the point of view of nature and characteristics, Bengali language received the French words in the form of noun. If we go through the French elements which came in Bengali vocabulary, we will find those all are noun. For example-
Semantic analysis
The meaning of French loanwords in Bengali vocabulary retained intact while borrowing in all cases. For example-
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