I remember when my mother was a teacher at Holy Cross there was an American Sister visiting the school. Naturally, she was interested in exploring Dhaka and sightseeing. One bewildering day, she asked Amma: “Mushni, have you had a chance to meet the famous Jew that lives in Dhaka?”
My mother was obviously puzzled by this question, and she pointed out that even after decades of having lived in Dhaka, she’d never heard of such a person.
The Sister then added: “But everyone in Dhaka seems to know him, and they even know where he lives. Whenever I talk about sightseeing, everyone keeps telling me I should visit the Mirpur Jew.” Needless to say, my mother was in fits of laughter. The poor Sister who had not caught on to our Bengali pronunciations was talking about the Mirpur Zoo.
More often than not, people have asked me why it is that Bengalis who speak English as a second language seem to have an issue with the pronunciation of “z”s and “j”s. The problem manifests in various ways: Either all zs are pronounced as js, eg “joo,” “jebra;” or conversely all js are pronounced as zs, eg “zoke,” “zym ” -- and the most interesting case, where they are consistently flipped, eg “joolozy” for zoology.
The “z” and “j” issue is something characteristic of Bangla speakers rather than speakers of other languages. It is primarily due to how Bangla categorises z and j in its own sound system. In standard Bangla, there is no z, only j.
Bangla does have z in borrowed words, but often they are converted to j eg “azan” becomes “ajan.” How you perceive sounds in another language depends largely on your own native language.
Another important factor is whether your language sees the two sounds as separate or interchangeable, and this depends on whether the sounds can be used interchangeably. For instance, in English, if you switch z for j, it changes the meaning of the word completely, eg “zest” and “jest,” two words which have two completely different meanings.
But in Bangla, if you say “zoutuk” (dowry) instead of “joutuk,” or “zomi” (land) instead of “jomi,” it makes no difference in the meaning.
In Bangla, every word that contains a j can be swapped out for a z without changing the meaning. So, for native speakers of Bangla, z and j are perceived as interchangeable sounds, and this perception can be carried over to their English.
For language geeks, this phenomenon is called first language interference. As a result, many Bangalis use z and j interchangeably in English without realising the repercussions it has to the meaning.
Now, the case where the two sounds are consistently flipped is a more interesting one. It appears as though the speakers know how to pronounce the sounds but they’re choosing to use the wrong ones and they do so consistently. The reality is, they are pronouncing the exact same sound for both z and j. Acoustically, that sound is not exactly a z or a j but lies somewhere in between. If you think of z and j as two ends of a spectrum, people who flip their zs and js are actually pronouncing the same single sound that exists somewhere midway on that spectrum.
So, when they pronounce “zoology” they are using that single sound for both the z and g (j). But, because it’s midway, it’s not z enough for us to categorise it as a z and sounds more like a j, and conversely, it’s not j enough so we hear more of a z. As a result, it always sounds flipped.
The flipping phenomenon can be found cross-linguistically with various pairs of sounds. Japanese speakers flip “l” and “r” in English. Korean speakers have the z and j flipping just like we do. Hindi speakers tend to flip “v”s and “w”s for exactly the same reasons, ie v and w are interchangeable in Hindi.
Speaking of “v”s, another interesting issue that Bangla speakers have is the confusion between “v” and “bh.” Bangla is completely devoid of the v sound and so speakers fill the void with bh, and interestingly, this has a bearing on their perception of v in writing.
When Bangla speakers who don’t differentiate between v and bh write Bangla in the Roman alphabet, often in social media, they tend to use v to represent bh. So “bhai” becomes “vai” and “bhabi” becomes “vabi.”
But sometimes, such usage can precipitate in some very interesting transliterations. For instance, one time my friend’s aunt posted a comment under her nephew’s photo with the intention of saying “my nephew has grown up,” but what she wrote was “amar vaginata koto boro hoye gese.” Isn’t language fun?
