Only around core values . . .

As the ritualistic celebration of Ekushey February returns this year, I am struck by the changes that have subtly crept in the Bengali language down the years since Bangladesh emerged as a sovereign independent nation-state.  Of course, there is the generation gap.  Young people of the current generation speak the language in a way that surely would cause the martyrs of the language movement of 1952, should they be able to travel through the barriers of time and space and arrive in the year 2014, to stop and ponder if it is exactly their language they are hearing being spoken.  They will pause only for a few moments, though, and be able to recognize the language, for whose honour they gave their lives, once the initial unfamiliarity of parts of the spoken form is overcome.  Their own individual mode of speaking has been frozen in time, as their voices were silenced by bullets, but the Bengali language has moved on, and has been marked by subtle, as well as overt, changes.
Change is not necessarily bad.  In fact, a static culture (of which language is a central element) runs the risk of becoming moribund, and the society it represents out of sync with its contemporary world.  Needless to say, it does not have to reflect all aspects of the contemporary world; that would be disastrous as well as it would simply not be feasible.  But it will have to be in tune with certain features and aspects of the world it is a part of.  Furthermore, the older generation will usually lament the passing of its familiar world, and, understandably, will tend to berate the following generation and its values as having thrown society to the dogs.  Missing in their lamentation and condemnation is the critical factor of them having changed some of the customs, traditions, and value system of their prior generation, of stamping their own imprint on their generational society, of looking at certain facets of the previous generation's values, traditions and customs as being antediluvian.  
In the end, people make the world as they see fit, and, inevitably, changes must occur.  However, if the old French adage is to be believed, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  Without going into the deep philosophical underpinning of this saying, one could say that, in one interpretation, one cannot change ones, meaning society's, core values.  Therefore, whether changes are cosmetic or deep, deep-seated value systems will enable society to survive them, of taking them in their stride, of even having been enriched by them.  Certainly, one of the defining decades in the recorded history of mankind, the 1960s, defined by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, hippie culture, drugs, anti-war protests, peaceniks, global student unrest, striking changes in men's and women's fashion and personal appearances, and a host of other generational manifestations, shattered staid establishment images, and values and cultures like not many decades had done before.  And, yet, with the onset of the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher years, the post-World War II, pre-1960s era, with their values and traditions seemed to have returned to a remarkable degree!  Actually, even during the stormy 1960s, the core values of Great Britain and the United States, of what makes the British, British, and the Americans, Americans, remained intact, even if they were shaken at the edges.  
But some of the changes to societies of the two countries never backtracked.  And, new values and customs have been added on by succeeding generations.  These changes have kept their societies and culture vibrant and dynamic, without demeaning their core values.  Take a look at Great Britain.  It has preserved its most ancient historical landmarks with the utmost care while building the most modern structures to keep up with, and sometimes leading, the times.  The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics is a perfect illustration of the seamless web between past and present that marks a society and its people, a lesson that one builds on ones past, but does not let go of the essence of any particular society.  The Americans, with a much shorter recorded history, have done the same.
Embracing change is important.  Including in language use.  They say that Great Britain and the United States are one nation divided by a language.  And how their language has changed down the years!  Including even pronunciation!  I wonder if the Victorians would have had an easy time in understanding estuary English.  Or some of the usages that the English language has been put through by the British --- and the Americans.  One only has to sift through the English written in the first half of the twentieth century and compare with that written in the second half and into the twenty first century to experience the differences in style, syntax, and word usage.  Plus all those new words!  My word, English is like a sponge, absorbing and incorporating new words from so many languages, and making up new ones, and continuing to do so.  Good for English!  Its, or rather, its native speakers' and users' efforts have kept the language vibrant, dynamic, and, crucially, reflective of generational demands.
Now let us take leave of English, and zero in on the language whose struggle to uphold its honour has given the world the International Mother Language Day, which, as people are aware, falls on this day.  Bengali itself is vibrant, subject to changes, absorbing new words and phrases, discarding old ones, and generally keeping up with the times.  Purists are often aghast at these changes, lamenting that the language has been defiled, but the hard truth is that such modifications have occurred before, are occurring at present, and will no doubt keep occurring in the future.  If it stops changing, then it seriously runs the risk of becoming moribund.  However, the demands of generations of the substantial number of people for whom Bengali is their mother tongue will ensure that the language is kept alive and vibrant by introducing a variety of novelties.  And it will remain a proud standard bearer of the Bengalis as long as the core values of their society remain intact across generations.
In the Internet age, we are witnessing usage of Bengali that is reflective of the influence of the net.  A striking, and to some, discordant, note is to be found in the peculiar admixture of English and Bengali (with the latter predominating) in the spoken language of a number of the current generation of Bengalis.  Is this a passing fad that will fade sometime soon?  Who knows?  Does it reflect a degradation of the Bengali culture?  Difficult to answer, but, no, not if that admixture does not mark the speaker as anything but a Bengali.  That kind of usage does not necessarily signify that the person has shunned his/her core values and traditions that mark him/her as a Bengali.  Not even if some of those values and traditions undergo some slight changes.  However, if the changes invoke any drastic overhaul of core values and traditions, even of their total discarding, then the essence of the language, of what it means to be a Bengali, is severely threatened.  And that will not bode well for a rich language, steeped in tradition, expressive, full of imagery, lending itself to imagination, and spoken by a sizeable chunk of the world's population.  Bengali does not need to be humiliated a second time.  

Shahid Alam is an actor, academic and former diplomat