As a Bengali citizen, 21st February is a special day for us, historically and emotionally. But how many of us think that what the word Bengali even means? What do we understand by saying mother tongue? Can we grow the value of this day among our kids? or just dolling them up in black and white dresses is becoming our only priority?
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As a language studies student, I got the chance to analyze these questions. According to our Shishir sir, Bengali is a mixture of all the dialects spoken in the Bengali-speaking regions, including Bangladesh, West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. But most of the time, we don't even care about our other dialects. We consider the standard dialect of Bengali as the one and only matrix in this country.
Now two major problems are arising in our culture. For the Tyrannical power of Shuddho Bangla, many ethnic groups in our country don't let their kids learn their own ethnic dialects. They prefer and encourage their kids to catch the standard Bangla. Because they think tribal language can't help their kids to survive in their upcoming city life. One of my professors works with the ethnic people's language and in her recent research, the findings resonate with this statement. Our government had made some excellent primary books in our tribal dialects for the ethnic community. But the unfortunate thing is there are few teachers among them who can truly teach this community language, and if there are some good teachers, very few amounts of parents want their kids to learn these dialects. If the locals don't want to keep their own dialects alive, then how can we help, right? Now the thing is, we aren't keeping any scopes or creating an environment where people can cherish their own heritage. We are bullying directly and indirectly who can't get rid of their local dialects. And through this, we are losing the diversity in our linguistic ecology.
Almost the same hypothesis goes with our urban parents too. Let me share a story, last day, my family were coming from a wedding. In the car, baba was telling a story to my 3-year-old cousin for keeping her calm. When he started with the line ekdeshe ak rajkonna chilo her mother warned us saying that she doesn't know the meaning of rajkonna, say princess. I was shocked for a moment then slowly realized most of the kids are now going through this problem. Well, I don't think their parents see it as a problem, but I do. I can imagine the degradation of Bangla when these kids will teach the language to our upcoming generation. I'm not opposing English as I too a student from this area but my point is why do we have to learn English eliminating Bangla? Why can't we teach both languages equally to our children?
When I tutor my English version students, I've to explain each and every line with the meaning of their Bangla books, which they could improve by reading Bangla story books. But I only find the Harry potter series on their shelf.
I don't know how we can get rid of this issue only by putting flowers in our Shahid Minar,singing Amar Bhaier Rokte Rangano without even realizing the meaning. Please let your children learn about their own culture. One can't shine high forgetting their own roots. There is no shame in using our native dialect.
Though the harsh truth is,
A dialect that is supported by an army becomes a language, and a dialect that lacks such an army remains a dialect forever.