I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that “Pohela” in the phrase Pohela Boishakh is not a Bangla word. If that was the case, I don’t think I would be speaking Bangla now.
Most of what we speak in Bangladesh today is actually foreign. Try avoiding the words “chair,” “table,” and “veranda” to name a few. (Some of them have their own Bangla equivalent, but who uses them?)
Recently in an op-ed published in the DT, the author Syed Almas Kabir said he believed that the term “Pohela Boishakh” was not correct. His reasoning was that the word “Pohela” was an Urdu or Hindi word, and therefore should not be used with the word Boishakh. He offered the word Prothoma instead, which he claims is a pure Bangla word.
But languages, by their very nature, evolve and work in a very flexible manner. In all languages, there is a group of words which are foreign.
Is it reasonable for me to say I won’t go abroad or use foreign languages to interact with the outside world because it is not a local thing to do? No. Because interacting with the outside world is critical for the development and survival of your nation.
Likewise, it is not possible for a language to avoid some influence from other languages. However, no one in his right mind would say that foreign words that exist in Bangla have remained exactly the same since when they were borrowed.
Would anyone claim that words such as geometry and trigonometry were not English words? These are two of the foreign words which have been anglicised from Sanskrit.
I can speak of many other foreign words which have become inseparable from English. They are English words. No one complains that “en masse” is French or that “harikiri” is Japanese.
Puritanism is not good when it comes to language. What would it be like to try to speak English without all the foreign words it has in it?