language at stake

Language is the closest relative any human being could possibly have. Nobody can pass a day without saying a word or hearing a word. Even little babies have their own language no matter how funny it sounds.
So far linguists have found out that are having more than 60000 languages throughout the world.Does not it feel amazing to hear that? How many languages can we think of? Maybe there are several hundred.
We are really lucky in terms of having our own language to talk to someone when we have a bad or good day. But many people were not lucky enough. Their language just lost. About 2,000 languages now have less than 1,000 speakers. In no time they will be lost too.
Languages are lost mostly because of colonization. Some are lost because of not having any written form. In some language speakers wants to adopt a new language in order to communicate other than their own language.
I think Hindi and English are killer languages for Bengali speaker. Now a days, Bengali people watch a lot of Hindi drama and movie and try to plug some word in our language. As a result, we are losing our own words. It is just an outcome of globalization. Satellite, newspaper, and internet are teaching them English. For them, speaking English is very prestigious. The more they speak in English, the more they are smart. I think, now in Bangladesh there is no single college going student who can speak a whole sentence in Bengal without using any English word. So, I don’t see any hope for Bengali language. If this situation goes on, someday we might see Bengali alphabet in the museum. It would be really shameful if we lose it after so many sacrifices. We are the only nation in the world who fought for their mother tongue instead of just watching while other people were taking over our language.

language as a barrier

‘Me Talk Pretty one day’ is an example of how some people misuse word in their daily lives. Some people do it unconsciously due to their limited vocabulary in terms of speaking a particular language. I have found some sentences that are not grammatically correct. For example, one of Sedaris fellow student was saying, “Sometime me cry alone at night.” Now, in English, ‘me’ always been used as a passive form of I when the subject is not in the center of interest but the work. In the following sentence, the girl (me) is the one who is describing her act, not somebody else. So, she should have used the 1st person singular number to refer herself. Therefore, the sentence should be, “Sometime I cry alone at night.”


I have seen a lot of people trying too hard to learn Bengali. At that time, I used to think that Bengali is very simple and easy to learn as a language, yet they are struggling to say a simple word. I was obsessed with the idea that they are not listening very carefully or they have something wrong with their vocal cord. That why, whenever they said something, it sounded more like foreign word than Bengali. I thought they were doing it on purpose. For example, they would pronounce ‘ami’( which means I) as ‘hami’ , tumi ( you) as tomi, hath (hand) as hat etc.

Since I’ve learned about morphology, grammar and syntax, I know now that was not intentional. Actually they cannot recognize the phoneme which stands for any meaning distinguishing sounds in a language. They cannot differentiate the vowels and consonant sounds in Bengali. Moreover, our grammar has significant distinction which they cannot understand so easily .In English, we have a simple form of sentence structure which is sub + verb+ obj. But if somebody wants to use the same rule for Bengali, it would be hilarious. Our sentences often use verb after the object which look like sub + obj + verb. For instance,
English - Bengali
I love you- ami tomakey valobasi (I you love)
I like you- ami tomakey pochondo kori .( I you like) etc.
There are lots of examples like those. It is may be easy to learn some word in a particular language but hard to fit them in a sentence.

Chapter 9, ‘Syntax’ is about the rules to form a sentence in a language. If the sentences of a language can be seen as a finite or infinite set of words, there must be a set of explicit rules that can produce all sentences. This type of set of explicit rules is called generative grammar. This grammar will generate only the well formed sentences , not any ill formed structure which has been called ‘all and only’. The chapter shows us the close relation between some extremely close different sentences. For example, we can say, Charlie broke the window and then in a different way, the window was broken by Charlie. Both of these sentences seem to mean the same thing, even though their structures are different. If we read the sentences carefully, we will find that in first example the person Charlie was on focus, not the act, however, in second sentence, the window was focused. Repetition rules also have to be applicable generate a structure .we have to be able to put sentences inside other sentences. We can use and repeat any types of phrase as long as the sentence make sense.
Syntactic also discuss symbols, such as s (=sentence), N (=noun) etc. There are some other symbols that has been used broadly and they are- arrow, ( ) and { }. Any large number of sentences could be represented by tree diagram. For instance, a sentence can be divided by two ways- Noun Phrase (NP) and Verb phrase (VP). Then NP holds two part- Article and Noun and VP consist of Verb and Noun phrase. For example, the girl saw a dog. Here, the (Art), girl (N), saw (V), a (A) and dog (N).

change for words

Bill Bryson’s “Where Words Come From”, I found it very much interesting. It was really very amazing to know that all these words around us neither created by only English speaker nor they had been used to mean the same meaning as they are now. For example, we have been using ‘Nice’ for something which is pleasant, precise, luxurious and elegant but in Latin, it means stupid and foolish. Not only this, some words like enthusiasm, politician, manufacture etc had used to describe something totally opposite. Enthusiasm used for a term of mild abuse which now means a word of praise. Politician was a sinister word and manufacture signified something made by hand and all of these are adopted from Latin in English.
It is almost unbelievable that some words are created just by error. But in English it is really common that some words came from mishearing and somehow their existence is admitted while the original one is forgotten. For instance, buttonhole was buttonhold, sweetheart was sweetard and asparagus was sparrow-grass.
Shakespeare always has been my favorite writer. It was really nice to know that he gifted English vocabulary a bunch of words that nobody uses before him. He created- barefooted, critical, lonely, hurry, countless, excellent monumental etc. I wonder what an English speaker would have said when he felt very alone. How were they able to express their feelings with these right words? I want to say like Bill Bryson, “How would we manage without them?”

Tan's language concern

After reading the "Yes or No" by Amy Tan, i was finally be able to dissolve some of my misunderstanding about Chinese people. we always talk about their politeness which is not often refer as a appreciation rather sometimes it sounds as a wit. now, when i learn that they have no such word as yes or no, i was really fascinated by the idea that they can not express their opinion at first place as we do. But Amy Tan made it very clear that two different language does not have to mean the same meaning for same word.Therefor, in Chinese language , it might not necessary to put any direct word for specific yes or no. They just say it in a different way. And that does not mean that they don't know how to say no when they need to as Tan was saying,"There is no word for yes or no- but not out of necessity to be discreet. if anything i would say the Chinese equivalent of answering Yes or No is discrete, that is specific to what is asked."(pg-34)
i really like it when she talked about being a bilingual. she brought up in America but in a mainland Chinese family. so she know both language more or less very well. that's why she could question herself what she knows about language when she needs to compare between two language. i like her example about this matter. we really don't know much about our language.
While reading this one, a question popped out in my mind and that is why we akways compare other language with English?

Kawser , sounds like " Kɑʊʃəʳ" in IPa. It’s a voiceless word that produce in velar with stops.

Some people do pronounce my name in a different way. Though I understand that is absolutely unintentional, it makes me feel weird when I think I got such a tongue twister name that nobody can pronounce it right. Sometime, I have to tell my name twice even three times when I introduce myself in public and, then I see some surprised face as they are thinking," wait, what did she just say?”But now I came to know that in some language, they don’t have the word for my name. Therefore, they are not familiar with my name’s sound. For example, Spanish American people will pronounce it as ‘ kausal’ “kaizer” as French and ‘cowser’ for Indian people. Actually it is an Arabic name which means a stream in heaven. So, I think those who cannot pronounce my name correctly, should listen to me very carefully first how I say my name and then try to follow the words sound.

Since English is my second language, sometimes I face the same problem about pronunciations. i have to think twice before I say something, especially before I call someone by name. I want to make it sure that I got it right. I always wondered why American people call ‘lisa’ as ‘liesa’ or ‘jose as ‘hose’ and ‘sugar’ as ‘chugar’ and so on. Now i know why and it makes me feel real good.

“What is a language” by asking this particular question one might feel stupid to others because we are wired to learn language from our earliest moments, and we learn with lightening speed. So, we think as a human being, it is natural to speak a Language no matter what it is. But what if a child grow up all alone, let’s say like “Tarzan, the jungle man”, would he be able to speak in a human language? No, since language means interaction and share between humans. Thus, Language has something to do with regular basis practice and that’s what a child does when he starts pick up the word. He would pronounce something wrong on first day but he would not do it next day.
Now, in an easy way we can say language is a system for communicating ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs, or marks. Basically, it is the symbols we use in order to communicate with one another, and the rules that govern how we use them. A word is one or more sounds that in combination have a specific meaning assigned by a language.
i think language is a identity of who a person is.everybody should proud of their own language. Being a Bengali, i always feel so proud when i remember we are the only nation who had fought for their language. so, when i am abroad i am not upset at all beause i know i have something to feel important. Everyday, somelanguage are dying because nobody use them now or nobody practice them anymore.
Can we do something to save them from being lost?