Comments on: For the Love of Language

By: Deepinder Singh

Deepinder Singh — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:15:34 +0000

27 Ã‚Â· Likhari said

It is such ashame Punjabis are not proud of their on language. Bengali's are.

Sad but how true it is! Punjabis, Learn from Bengal.

Salute to the Bengali Martyrs!

By: Arif

Arif — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:47:38 +0000

I was wondering, why did we become independent from Pakistan if they gave us equal status for our language? Wasn’t the war just killing ppl then since we received recognition from the parliament?

By: Likhari

Likhari — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:03:30 +0000

It is such ashame Punjabis are not proud of their on language. Bengali’s are. Recall that Tagore is the only Indian writer to obtain a Nobel Prize for Literature

By: Tasnim

Tasnim — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 05:40:58 +0000

Chapal…your Bbengali is flawed. Please remember that there is no ‘V’ sound in bengali…that it should be ‘bh’ instead. And there is also no ‘S’ sound in Bengali except in words borrowed from English and the like…so ‘gesen’ is not a word.
It is ‘giyechhhen’.

Thank you, Tasnim

By: Ramesh

Ramesh — Tue, 29 May 2007 22:35:28 +0000

But it is till sad to know that Bangladesh was not created only for East Bengal but to combine it with West Bengal. A lot of Bengladeshi refer West Bengalis as Indians which is very sad.

By: Chapal

Chapal — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:18:00 +0000

Aaami aamer Bangladesh ke prochondo rokom vabe valobhashi….. Vashar jonno jara obodan rekhe gesen tader aamra khokhon o vulte parbone….

By: IM Choudhury

IM Choudhury — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:42:06 +0000

note: The ruling coalition and Jamaat party I’m referring to above is Bangladesh’s.

By: IM Choudhury

IM Choudhury — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:15:10 +0000

The most sickening thing is no effort has been made to prosecute the war crimes in ’71, which were some of the worst since the Second World War that included mass rape and mass murder of intellectuals. In fact, the Bangladeshi government gave a red carpet reception to Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was responsible for this war. What is EVEN worse, that today’s ruling coalition is partly made up of the Jamaat party, whose members have participated in these atrocities in ’71 and still walk free today.

By: SMR

SMR — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:49:00 +0000

So what happens is that over time, the Punjabi in Pakistan has become progressively more like Urdu, in a very gradual process that people there may not even be always aware of.

And Urdu in Pakistan has become progressively more like Punjabi. I'm always struck by how Punjabi Musharraf sounds, especially when he's in fauji mode; his Delhi ancestors are probably turning in their graves.

The trend in Pakistan appears to be towards some sort of Punjabi-ized Urdu. And I agree with you Amitabh - for all their dominance of the country, Punjabi Pakistanis have an odd relationship with their language. My Punjabi Pakistani friends always lay claim to Urdu as "their" language (horrendous accent and all).

By: Amitabh

Amitabh — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 19:25:13 +0000

Part of the problem is that Urdu and Punjabi are fairly similar. So what happens is that over time, the Punjabi in Pakistan has become progressively more like Urdu, in a very gradual process that people there may not even be always aware of. It’s not like English and Hindi, say, where even though the urban elite’s Hindi has become progressively mixed with English over the past few decades, you’re still usually sure what’s a Hindi word and what’s an English word. I remember meeting a Pakistani Punjabi while travelling in Europe back in ’99. We were talking about how beautiful the girls in Pakistan are, and I clearly remember he said ‘achchiyan ladkiyan’ instead of ‘changiyan kudian’ (meaning, ‘nice girls’). That’s just on example.