3/3/2024 0 Comments Bengali alphabet weird in word![]() On a solo lunch trip, I walked to a buffet takeaway place in town. Conveniently, Benglish combinations centre mostly on action: To-mah-gessa-explain-korr-muh (exactly: "you explain I'm going to"), or Ah-me-try-korr-muh anyway ("I'm try going to anyway").įor two weeks last summer, I was in a small Brazilian town called Paraty, armed with less than a handful of Brazilian Portuguese phrases. Benglish apparently operates by easily identifiable rules, but it doesn't feel like it when you're speaking and doing the linguistic equivalent of trying to fit star shapes into square holes. Over the years, we have come to a strange compromise: speaking half in Bengali and half in English. I wonder if they are exactly what they appear to be: incurious, happy not to know anything that might make them unhappy. ![]() We have never used more than a single word – disyllabic at most – with each other to describe a feeling. My parents have lived in England for nearly four decades, but their English use has always been contextual, shaped by the more quotidian aspects of making a home, running a business, and putting children through school, none of which I can clearly imagine. I cannot count above 10, recite the alphabet, or say my age, and I cannot say "thank you" or "sorry". In Bengali – the first language of my parents – I cannot read, distinguish left or right, or describe different kinds of love.
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