 We just re-reacted to a song Not on purpose We knew the song when the video came in. Oh, yeah, and we thought we were like have we seen the music video I didn't recognize the music video Rick did and looked up. We had reacted to it like two years ago. Yeah It happens. It's happened. I Want to say at max five times. Yeah, you can count it on one hand kind of like your IQ. Yeah A lot of times we've re-reacted a song and not known that we had that time we knew we knew the minute the song started. Yeah Sometimes a little less memorable song correct and it was like two years ago and we've reacted to I I would say probably 5,000 things and so it's easy to lose track of sure what you have and haven't but What's great is if if if we're get really old and we start to have some memory loss We'll just have fresh reactions all the time When we get old Rick. Yeah You're old as shit Hey, welcome back to our stupid erected old joke always lands Anyways, anyways Rick, this is a good one for you. Is it this is called why does Bengali sound so sweet? That's a great question. Why does it sound so sweet? Why don't you answer that for me, Rick? Because it both looks and sounds absolutely beautiful. I think Bengali and I You're saying that could you marry do Bengali? No, I'm not I'm saying that because it's a beautiful language And I'm not the only one who thinks so clearly as we're about to react to something it does It has beautiful sounds and the script of it looks really beautiful. Oh, does it? Yeah Because Bengali say oh a lot Burn, it's a lovely sound I Love listening to Indrani talk on the phone to friends and family. Well, that's good It's just it would be bad if you hated listening to your wife, Rick It's not just what her voice is glorious. She's her voice is amazing But the fact that the language she's also speaking when she talks to them. It's just it's just captivating Alright, I'm not gonna make another joke You already got what I was gonna say What she sang Rick, I don't know I don't speak Bengali yet, but my wife is teaching me Boca Choda I mean I mean Johnny The language is really sweet. It's like it does not have any sharp edges and it melts right away No, yes, that's true. Well, I agree the question has been on my mind for ages and it's time to answer it Why does Bengali sound so sweet? Res guli No guys the answer isn't rascals besides it's Russia. What are you saying? Seriously? That has evolved from Magadhi prakrit in the 10th century AD It is the sixth most spoken language in the world and second most spoken language in India But there isn't just one type of thing correct Bengalis dialects have spread all over Bengali and Bangladesh And they actually sound really different from each other. I know that Spoken in Bangladesh and Kolkata I'm good, how are you? I'm good Also notice how Kolkata-Banglia differs from Chittagongian-Banglia Notice how Chittagongian and Saletti seem to have a bit of sign of the within influence in them because the video is Directed towards India the discussion would be limited to the standard Bengali or the variant of Bengali that's spoken in the Naudia district in West Bengal. So with that context, let's come back to the initial question Why is Bengali so sweet? In our last video, we talked about the retroflex Ilda And we saw how Bengali does not have the sound or even the letter But Ilda is not the only retroflex. There are other retroflexes as well For example, the retroflex Ilda, Ilda and Ilda Bengali has the retroflex to denote these sounds, but guess what? Just like Ilda, Bengalis never use these sounds They pronounce these letters exactly like the softer N, R and R Listen to the song played in the beginning Notice how the first line, Premepoora-Baron, actually uses the letters D and R But they're never pronounced using their original sounds To give another example, here's a popular song adapted in Bollywood Notice how the lyrics read Boro Lokeer Peti, but it is pronounced as Boro Lokeer Peti Retroflex sounds lend an element of crispness to languages and by avoiding these Bengali words become easier to pronounce Always for Hindi compared to Bengalis, Hindi is a little harsher Take for example, the three sir sounds as in sir, shah and shah in Hindi Bengali has the corresponding letters, but they are all pronounced the same shah There are a few exceptions here and there, but largely shah dominates over sir Take for example, the word sanatan in Hindi Now in the word the first sir is used And when you write the word in Bengali, you also use the word sir But the pronunciation of the word happens to be shonatan sanatan shonatan shonatan suggest that the shah sound is perceived to be softer than the sir sound and that is another reason why Bengali words sound so soft Another interesting thing to notice that the Bengali script came much later after the language The script evolved from the siddham script, which was greatly influenced by sounds that were used to denote Sanskrit But the issue was that many of these concepts in the script like badiyu, chotiyu They were never really part of Bengali Therefore, even if the language uses these vowels in practical Bengali There is absolutely no difference between badiyu, chotiyu, badiyi or chotiyi Take for example, the pronunciation of din and din Now the translation into Bengali, the words are pronounced exactly the same din and din din din din din Bangla has another interesting property where it learns to simplify its consonant clusters A consonant that is attached to the sound ma for example is pronounced as the letter itself Take for example, the word Lakshmi in Hindi This word is pronounced as loki in Bangla Also take the example of Bhishma in Hindi. This is pronounced as Bhishso Also, the sound ksh is simplified to khya This property is not just unique to Bengali, but also Odeas do it Notice how this Bangla Deshi News reporter for example pronounces the name of the actor Welcome to New York, my question is Deepika and Aakhoi both So instead of saying Akshay, he says Aakhoi As you see, Bengali tends to keep this consonant vowel structure and really does not like this consonant-consonant pair and therefore the sound is softer because of the vowel present Disclaimer alert, which means the most fun part of the video is here, so pay attention One of these two shapes is called kiki and another one is boba Can you take five seconds to figure out which one is kiki and which one is boba? Kiki is on the left, boba is on the right boba is the softer one Well, if you guessed that the second one is boba and the first one is kiki, you are correct Linguists have found that we associate the O sound like in boba to be soft and rounded while the E sound is harsh and spiky, which is why we associate with boba Do you love me? Are you writing? And as some of you might have guessed, that brings us to the point why Bengali sounds so sweet Consider these pair of Hindi Sanskrit words Notice how Sanskrit adds an A sound to the end of each letter While Hindi does not, almost like there is a halant on the end of each letter The A sound that Sanskrit adds is called shwa And this isn't just unique to Sanskrit, several languages have shwa in them A shwari or I Or for example, you would call this word usako and not usko Oria calls this word ghora, while a Hindi person would call it ghar Bengali similarly has shwa in it, but interestingly it's not A, it's O Therefore the Hindi word vasanth, which in Sanskrit would be vasantha, in Bengali becomes boshonto Similarly this word in Hindi is bhat, in Sanskrit is bhatha And in Bengali becomes bhotho, anth, antha, antho And therefore this isn't Vivekananda No, not even that, it's Vivekananda Could have really gone without saying that man The O sound is abundant And to connect it to the experiment in the very beginning, we saw how rounded sounds are associated to be more softer That may be one reason why Bengali in general is perceived to be soft Well to conclude this video, let me leave you with some cultural trivia Do you know that from the 18th century to the early 19th century, there was a cultural revolution in Bengal called the Bengal Renaissance This revolution questioned the existing customs and rituals of the Indian society of that time From the caste system to the Tauri system and to the practice of sati, all of these customs were questioned Bengal was seeing this cultural progress in all its fields, science, religion, arts and literature There was this hero, in particular who I want to talk about, Ishwachandra Vidyasagar Among many other things, he was a Sanskrit scholar and a polyclot At that time, Bengali was considered to be an inferior form of Sanskrit It didn't have an identity of its own Vidyasagarji was the one who formalized the script to 12 vowels and 40 consonants And removed the letters that were redundant, like dir ghori and dir ghori at that point He made all efforts to make the language of the masses and of the commons It was this literary revolution that was triggered by the likes of Robindranath Tagore and Vidyasagar That Bengali became a language that people loved and celebrated Well guys, truth be told, I feel I have made a good case, but I'll admit that sweetness is a subjective term All the examples I gave you are based on certain assumptions about what makes sounds sweet For example, some people find German harsh Avio Aeroplane Avio Flugzeug It depends on many other factors, like how you enunciate the language, what is your education level, what is your background And even your gender Linguistics isn't a hard science like maths It requires an amount of subjectivity and that isn't a bad thing So I don't want you to take away from this video that Bengali is the sweetest language Bengali is sweet on its own terms But other languages can be just as sweet or even more I only hope that you got to learn about this beautiful language And think about how similar or different it is from your language Very Thank you so much for watching this video I speak American So I didn't know that was a, did you know that was a stereotype that Bengali is known as being sweet? Yes You've heard that stereotype? I've definitely heard that stereotype Yes In fact, probably my first trip there was one of those things of being introduced to it And in Drani explaining how it's, what it's known for and the beauty of the language And I remember her writing the very first, she bought me a book, My First Trip of Hidden Palaces of Kolkata And inside she wrote to me in Hindi Bengali and in English And I just, yes I do have a prejudice toward it But I just, I love the sound of Bengali I think it's a beautiful language Oh, do you? I do Oh That's the only stereotype I know, it's just about the O's And it's got very soft edges to it Do all their Kersh words have O's in them, like Boko Choro Most of the words have O and A and Cha and Bah It's lots of softness Oh no, it's Cha Like take it off the phone, she just Ha ha ha No, let's take it, she's just taking Or ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta Ha, which is oddly, if you type it, it's spelled H-Y-A-N But it sounds ha to say yes Ha I've been saying that forever. I've been speaking. Yeah, I do that on a regular basis and so much So now that we can be doing something and like I shall see something and I'll just naturally just go. Hey, I Go, huh? Like a white man. Yeah Good video though. Very educational. He covered a lot of yeah, like Scholarly territory. I'm guessing he's probably says you to be honest all about linguistics. Yeah, and all those cool I would love to see that with every language in India. Yeah, I think The Irish have a very sweet language English No, just the way they talk, you know, some people can't understand it always it boggles my mind that like when Irish people talk Yeah, some Scots. I understand if they especially if they're not speaking gale or like they don't know There's some serious Scottish, but if they're like speaking just English like people just like They can understand they can't understand some Brits. Yeah based on whether maybe I'm just good Accents and I can I think that's part of it. I've never I'd never had a hard time understanding because I can Johnny is Masterful at English. Mm-hmm. She can read it. She can she's collegiate level English. She's very very good at English However, if she hears English with a strong strong accent like she has a good friend Hi, Cara, who is in Scotland and and Cara's boyfriend has a she has a thick Scottish accent her boyfriend is even Way heavier. I love the Scottish and when I it's so I told them when I've talked to him on the phone I've said forgive me I'm gonna slip While I'm talking to you, it's gonna be really hard for me to not start talking like this What are you talking at me and that's how hard he is. How you doing it? You know instead of Rick It's I don't it Yeah, I agree. I love the Scottish and I yeah, but there's even though she's she's she's got mastery of English She sometimes does not understand Strong accents of the English language whether it's Scottish Irish or even some English accents She'll have a hard time comprehending what's being said. I've heard her talk to somebody She was talking to someone recently who he has a Middle Eastern accent and every sentence She was when she was talking to this this gentleman. She was like what I was picking it up Because I've heard a lot here in LA. You have a lot of Middle Eastern people You have a lot of Mexican people his accent was thick. She couldn't understand one sentence. It's fine It's a really good video. Please let us know other educational videos and if you're Bengali, please let us know Tell something in the comments curse this curse out of the sound care just write something in Bengali Down in the comments below helps out the algorithm