Daily Mantras and Such

You may have mixed feelings toward disciplines such as contemporary art, architecture, media, literature, politics etc with their border-crossing,
de-colonization,deconstruction and other cryptic postmodern traits…but one fact that you have to agree on, is the accelerating rate at which their significations/meanings change. If anything is constant about the ‘contemporary world’, it is ‘change’. What is ’in’ this instant may turn into history in a split second…Linda Hutcheon puts it perfectly when she says, “It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it “(Hutcheon 1989: vii).

In order to remain a part of this planet, Bangladesh has to participate in this ceaseless circle of change that has become symptomatic of life in the 21st century. Yes, change has seeped into the social fabric of Bangladesh and as a matter of course, it has affected the way we speak, dress, think and act. In this globalizing era of shrinking borders, satellite television, the internet, seamless fusion of different cultures, it would be way too ambitious to claim that we Bangladeshis been left unaffected by it all.

Now, English, needless to say is the language of this ‘change’, the lingua franca of the 21st century. It is the language of most popular TV shows, magazines, social networking sites, books, satellite channels, podcasts, blogs etc. The majority of Bangladeshi people, especially the youth, are bombarded with it every second. It has crept into pretty much all disciplines and in the process, intermingled with spoken bangla and produced a language (an atrocity to many) that goes by the name ‘Banglish’--a mutant, 21st century offspring of Bangla and English.

*[Indian media culture has a bigger influence on Bangladeshis and hindi words have bled into our lingo as well (e.g. ‘maasti’, ‘yaar’, ‘josh’, ‘dost’) but English remains more dominant as English is a mandatory subject in almost all schools in Bangladesh].

A lot of people, especially academicians detest Banlish and feel Bangla language is going through its worst phase and decaying right before their eyes. For years there has been a growing panic across the nation that our language is deteriorating into something unrecognizable, and quite frankly, bad. Those who bewail the loudest that the sky is falling apart are concerned that English words, slangs and abbreviations have contaminated Bengali Language and turned it to something decrepit and twisted.

Yes, it scares me at times....but after giving it some thought, i feel that this anxiousness isn't really about the obliteration of Bengali or Bangla words, it is stemming from this deep rooted fear of change--the belief that anything new is bad-- the bigotry sentiment that Bangla is best in its purest form and that languages should not change.

I mean isn't it the fate of languages that things will change, blend, and mesh together to form different breeds and hybrids that become the language of future generations?

If we look back, we will see almost all languages have undergone major changes. English has been changing since there was such a thing that we could even call “English.” Old English was a conglomeration of Germanic and Celtic dialects. Middle English was a cross between Old French and Anglo-Saxon. Though we recognize Shakespeare’s words, the way his English sounded would sound nothing like our own. And eventually, English will move into a new stage beyond our own.

All that is fine.

Now, seeing as the English language has a suspiciously larger vocabulary than the Bangla one, some words will and should cross over. There are certain English phrases that convey a meaning that can hardly be replaced by a bangla equivalent. But at times there exists a Bangla word that means the exact same thing. Not a little different, but exactly the same, e.g. the chanting of the youth: ‘you know’, ‘awesome?’, ‘whats up?’, ‘yo’ can easily be replaced with bangla equivalents that convey the same meaning, flavor and context…yet the English words are more popular amidst the youth. No matter how much I appreciate the interrelationship between languages to better express one’s self, in this case, to me, this reeks of laziness. Yes, I know that almost all developing nations especially the countries that were once British colonies are growing more bi-lingual (for their own benefit) every day. And I also know that trying to fight this is ridiculous, but this usurpation does seem to indicate that in some time some bangla words will totally be replaced by English equivalents.

Needless to say languages progress by changing. But I am not sure if I would be comfortable calling the eradication of once up and running words exactly…."Progression”. Some people say that the eradication of words/ languages is a natural process. It filters words that have become hackneyed/obsolete. Tbe death of a word gives life to new words and in the process rejuvenates language.

And when we look at English, can we really say that change makes a language weaker or worse than it was before? English has undoubtedly undergone some major changes …it has embraced the changes that SMSing/Text messaging and chatting has brought forth, it has accepted the internet lexicon, it has endured the television jargons…but can you put a hand over your heart and say that English is spiraling downward? Or would you rather say because of these changes, it is the melting pot of a language, the voice of numerous people all around the world, the language of the press, internet, television etc and it is pretty much chugging along at the same pace it’s been going for the past two thousand years?
You decide.

My concern? When talking (or singing) in bangla, people should really lose the American accent (what’s with that?) and use bangla words instead of English equivalents…. Bangla will survive. Bangla has too much history, baggage and a bloody carnage behind it to just die out like that…..