Language issue
I thank Syed Badrul Ahsan for his article on 'Bangla…the way it was'. I assure him that it is just as painful to me to hear so much English being spoken badly in Bangladesh as it is for him to hear Bangla spoken badly! There is, indeed, the danger of developing a mongrel language that is not worthy of either because, in neither, is the art of true literacy taken seriously…..
Since the mobile phone arrived, an alarming number of bosses run their organisations from their mobiles, rather than by written memos and meetings with agendas and minutes. Thus they strike terror into the lives of staff by making them remember snatched mobile conversations that suddenly invade their lives (usually when they are doing something unrelated to the topic raised) and thus prevent them given the considered opinion that would have been possible if they had been given time to think about it via a written memo never name the value of properly run meetings for shared discussion. Moreover, heads of organisations tell me that they have to write their own letters as so few of their office staff can do it - in either language! Even teachers are sometimes so nervous of their ability to write accurately that they lapse into meaningless phrases at report time and fail to write accounts of important incidents in pupils' folders.
I assume that most of your readers will agree that we should share the noble aim that both languages should be written as well as spoken well. One small section of the problem is that there are in existence a few Bangladeshis who are snobs about English. Their children are in English-medium schools and they actually turn up and say that they do not want their child to read books in Bangla but only in English! I am glad to say that they are a very small minority and the Heads of the better schools are quite capable of trying to convert them from this obsession, and, failing that, of suggesting that they might try and find a school which agrees with them and admit their children there…..
In any language, I suspect it is not until a pupil gets a good teacher in the literature of the language, that they start really enjoying it. The study of grammar alone can be intensely boring, especially if it is taught using only the sentences in the books and with no opportunity to practice what is learnt using the students' own words, thus releasing the wonderful Bengali creativity and sense of fun that badly taught language study too often suppresses.
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