Should We Romanize Bangla?

April 13, 2010 / by  / 4,139 Comments / Filed under Society and Culture

Bangla is spoken by millions abroad by Probashi Bengalis (Bengalis abroad) and non-Bengalis. In my observation a lot of Bengali youth of America have forgotten a lot of Bangla; they either speak Banglish (Bangla+English) or banga Bangla (broken Bangla).

What’s stopping the spread of Bangla
More and more people including Bangladeshi youth know and can speak Hindi/Urdu because that language has been Romanized, as in the language uses Latin letters. India already completely romanized Hindustani, which is slowly replacing the Sanskrit script; we can see in on Bollywood movie titles, such as for love they write “mohabbatein” or for life they write “zindagi”.

Bengali youth abroad want to speak Bangla as we can see New York City based singers like Stoic Bliss or Blazin Annex using Bangla in their hip/hop music but many have limited vocabularies of their Bangla. The youth have a hard time picking up new words because we have no access to Bangla materials. Sure there are Bangla magazines such as Pryo Bangla in Atlanta or Bangla newspaper Tikana in New York City but it’s all in the Bangla Sanskrit script; and the young generation can’t read nothing except the Latin script.

For example, I was taught to read Latin, Bangla, and Arabic in Bangladesh. However, after I moved to America I forgot a lot of Bangla because of the Latin materials all around me, plus in college I took Arabic classes so I can read and write Arabic. Not only Arabic, I can also read and write Urdu, since Urdu itself is 90% Arabic.

Bangla, being the 5th or 6th most spoken language in the world, seems to be disappearing in USA and UK among the young Bangladeshis. Here in USA us Bengali youth speak English or sometimes Urdu (with our Indian-Pakistani friends) over our beautiful Bangla. And we want to speak Bangla (with other Bengalis), but our vocabularies are limited.

We Should Go For It
The world is changing and the Latin letters seemed to be universal in many languages. We should always preserve the Sanskrit letters of Bangla, but at the same time we should have a standardize Roman letters for Bangla for the changing Bengali youth. My little sister, who was born and growing up in America, cannot speak Bangla that well; she can’t read Bangla magazines or newspapers.

The world is changing and we can’t let our pride of being Bangladeshis keep us from staying in the past. If us Bangladeshis don’t change with the world then we will, with no doubt, fall behind.

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