Bengali Language and Culture

I feel extraordinarily lucky in living as a life-long student. I am not referring to the degrees that I have acquired and the excellent educational institutions where I have been privileged to acquire formal education, but to be blessed with love of reading and research. A part of my continuing education has been to write on subjects requiring more careful reading on some subjects. Among my essays in English that have been published in newspapers and journals that are not easily accessible there are some that deserved to be put together in a book form. I decided to select some on Bengali language and culture that comprise this book. These writings are part of my studies and research in Literature, Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and Anthropological linguistics at the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and Stanford University as well as my teaching career in the field at the University of Missouri, Stanford University, San Diego State University and United States International University at San Diego. Since my retirement in 2003 I am serving the non-profit Intercultural Research Forum at San Diego, Islamabad and Dhaka. Some of these papers have been presented at conferences in different countries except the in-progress chapter entitled ‘Some Contributions to Bengali Linguistics in Bangladesh’.