Every year, a few foreigners who wanted to learn Bangla and managed to do so surface on our local media and start sermonising us on our language. They seem more Bengali than the Bengalis.
It’s like some of those people we have in our country who are more American than the Americans themselves. This section of foreigners who have been learning Bangla for several years, try to argue that using non-Bangla words is a shame for the Bengalis. And on the eve of Ekushey February, our media men interview them and tend to wow at what these foreigners try to say.
To my mind, language is like a river, and that river picks up quite a lot of things during its course. Language flows through time from its earliest sources, picking up new meanings at each confluence.
Culture, the collective experience of those who speak it, is the lay of the land in which speakers speak. The streams flowing into the great tributaries of living languages are the lived lives of the individuals who actually speak them. They are free to say anything that they want, but can only say what they can. Living language, once spoken, becomes a practice.
Every language has been like that: English is a Franco-Latin language, and is now picking up elements from South Asian, South American, as well as from African dictions. French has picked up a lot – mostly from Africa. Likewise, Bangla borrowed many Persian words when we traded with Persia, and from Persian settlers in the subcontinent.
DU linguistics Professor Shourav Sikder wrote in a newspaper article on February 21 two years ago: “Bangladesh was under Turkish-Moghul power. For this reason, influence and dominance of Sanskrit words in Bangla was reduced, and the appearance of Arabic and Persian words were noticed.”
Hasn’t English changed? Hasn’t every other human language changed? If anyone has read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Old English, they would think twice when criticising Bangladeshis who are using English words in Bangla. And if you just go back another 500 years, Beowulf had totally different English than what we read and speak today.
There are many reasons for languages to change. A language will change when the needs of its speakers change. Every day, we have new technologies, new products, and new experiences that require new words. Think of text messaging. The word “text” has a new meaning that wasn’t there 15 years ago.
Terming it khudey barta has been a nice try for a Bangla term, but it didn’t work for the majority of the people. What would be the Bangla words for modems, fax machines, cable TV, or the Internet?
If my friend and I experience the same language, what would we do? If both of us know French, the use of French words would creep in automatically into our conversation. Then again, we borrow them from other languages.
What about the word “sushi”? And haven’t we created the word “brunch” by combining “breakfast” and “lunch?”
When we speak a foreign language, we don’t add any Bangla words. Similar is the case with these foreigners who have learnt Bangla. They have learnt Bangla in a consciously-foreign atmosphere, and that’s why they don’t use any non-Bangla words.
I don’t think using English words is a shameful chapter in our linguistic life. Since the beginning of civilisation, every language has evolved and gone through many changes. Bangla will also change, and the foreign words that we use in our diction are likely to become a part of Bangla like many South Asian dictions have become a part of English.
This is true for all languages. This, indeed, is not a shame, as language is a mode of expression.
This school of pundits (remember this word?) always tend to think that older forms of language are more elegant, logical, or correct than modern forms.
But is that really true? For example, in Old English, a small winged creature with feathers was known as a “brid.” Over time, the pronunciation changed to “bird.”
Do we really speak or even write in Tagorian Bangla? Who writes poetry with Madhusudan’s Bangla these days?
In an atmosphere of having three mediums (Bangla, English, and Arabic) in our educational system, we’re bound to pick up non-Bangla words in our daily use, and consequently in our literature. Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users.
Why would this be shameful? As long as the needs of language users continue to change, so will the language. This change is usually very slow, so we hardly notice it.
Let’s not grumble by saying that “poor Bangla” is being used by our younger generation! Please judge them, if you have to, from the perspective of changing our social and educational needs.