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HUMOROUSLY YOURS

Mind Your Language

NAVEED MAHBUB
" T T RDU, and I only Urdu, will be the state language of Pakistan!"
Wonder what went through the mind(s) in coming up with this fateful decision.
Myopia? Well, that was not the only instance.
Ego? After all, Bangla did beat the other languages and
dialects in the area to the punch in grabbing the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ardent fans of George Orwell? 1984 saw the successful turning of the English language into a Slim Jim.
The genius in believing that English muffins were invented in England, French fries in France and the guinea pig being from Guinea (and being a pig)?
The paranoia of a language that reads from the left to the right? The decision makers must have counted their blessings that Japan, with its language reading from the top to the bottom, was not a part of the state (separated by a continent).
Was it the difficulty in pronouncing Bangla words (the closest they came to was pronouncing Bangla as Bungglaaa), rich with almost twice the letters in its alphabets covering every aspect of pronunciation (ok, we didn't quite cover the eternal dyslexia between 'z' and 'j')?
Was it thinking that there is really no difference between translation and interpretation?
Or was it based simply on humanitarian grounds? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, then a humanitarian eats...
Ugh! Getting complicated!! Just shove it down the throat with a decree. Surely, this will transcend well all throughout the country. So what if the Eastern part is separated by a huge land mass of another country, let alone being of a totally different culture and language? After all, it worked out just fine with English at the Falklands, separated from its source by the Pacific Ocean. Oh wait, that's English, the official international language, spoken even by strange aliens arriving on Earth from a distant dying planet. Bad analogy.
Repercussions? Imagine Mark Zuckerberg disabling the use of LOL and ROFL on Facebook. We're talking about a seventh of the Earth's population united in a cyber protest.
1952 saw exactly that.
The gimmick that took months to put together was translated overnight in the East as a collective, "Over my dead body!"
Literally.
Language is invented by humans, not computers. It is a human right, not to be tampered with by any watchdog. It reflects the creativity of the human race, which of course isn't a competitive race at all. Language is living and dynamic - the only constant thing about it is change. Sure, there is the ever present battle between the purist and the progressive. That is fine, as anything short of that, and we're looking at the longevity of Latin and Sanskrit, despite their inherent beauty and richness. That is why we see Google and Selfie in our every day lexicon (and in the Oxford English Dictionary) - something that makes the 1952 powers-that-be turn in their graves.
And so, no court ruling can change the way we speak. Nor can forcing the non-use of English, as was the drive a couple of decades ago (while sending their own kids overseas), position us well in a competitive world. We may have realised our folly, as seen by the stampede to learn English overnight for just 800 Takas (or your money back).
The practice of a language is not a mutually exclusive proposition. This gives us the rare upper hand of empowering us into becoming perfectly bi-lingual. After all, what do you call someone who knows just one language? English!
So, today, it is not only a tale of two languages, but of all languages. On the International Mother Language Day, it is not only just Bangladesh, but the whole world salutes you - Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar...
The writer is an engineer & CEO turned comedian (by choice), the host of NTV's The Naveed Mahbub Show and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club.
E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com