Learn Bengali from German at PBC Languages

German gives you a couple of real advantages here. You already produce aspirated p, t, k at the start of words (think Tag, Kind), so the Bengali contrast between ক (k) and খ (kh), or ত (t) and থ (th), is something your mouth has practice with even if your ear doesn't yet. You also drop the whole gender-and-case machinery: no der/die/das, no Akkusativ or Dativ endings to memorize, since Bengali has no grammatical gender and handles relationships with simple particles stuck onto the noun (বাড়িতে, bari-te, roughly 'at the house') rather than declined articles. And the tu/Sie instinct transfers directly to তুমি/আপনি, you just add a third, more intimate register with তুই that German doesn't have.

What actually slows people down is the script and one specific sound contrast. Bengali is written in Eastern Nagari, an abugida with conjunct consonants (যুক্তাক্ষর) that don't look like the sum of their parts, so there's no shortcut through transliteration if you want to actually read a menu or a street sign in Kolkata or Dhaka. The other wall is retroflex versus dental consonants: ট/ঠ/ড/ঢ/ণ versus ত/থ/দ/ধ/ন. German doesn't distinguish these at all, so words like টাকা (taka, money) and starting sounds close to it can sound identical to a German ear for weeks before the distinction clicks.

Progress is fast on spoken basics, ordering food, asking directions, small talk with the honorific system, because the grammar underneath (verb at the end, postpositions instead of prepositions) isn't as alien to a German speaker as it is to, say, a French one. It slows down hard the moment you try to read independently, which is exactly why doing the alphabet with a native teacher first, then testing it live in the one-to-one exchanges, works better than trying to brute-force it alone.