Bongolification!

Mamta Di has done this nation a great service by renaming West Bengal as PoschimBongo, at least I hope that is how she plans to spell it, because spelling it any other way would be a gross injustice to the English language and to those who are used to pronouncing things the way they are written. I mean why write 's' when you actually mean 'sh'. Why write 'a' when you actually mean 'o' and why write 'rh' when what you mean is 'd'. I will now proceed to elucidate with examples. But before that, let me describe the incident which has goaded me to write about Bongla (or is it Bonglo or Bangla) once again!

I had gone for some interviews (take interviews not appear for them that is) in Kolkata with a Bong and a Tam colleague of mine a few days ago. Having stayed in the Eastern part of the country for almost 2 years now, my ears have gotten tuned to the various words uttered by these easterners and I can say fairly confidently, that I have overcome the language barrier. But on that day, my confidence was proved to be sorely misplaced.

There was this Bong candidate who when asked how do you prevent rusting of Iron, replied that (let me put this as phonetically as possible) "Ham Irawn ko wrong korte hain". Now, this candidate was not the smartest/brightest candidate to have appeared that day, so my first assumption was that he meant that 'He discarded the rusted Iron piece".  Utterly surprised, I looked at my fellow (Bong) panelist, who showed no signs of confusion and proceeded to ask the next question. I immediately took out my mobile, and sought to type an sms to seek clarification from him as to how could he move on to the next question after such an absurd answer, when it struck me- The candidate meant that (this one is in phonetic Hindi) "Hum Iron ko rang karte hain!". I was barely able to control my giggles throughout the interview!.

This was not the only case... For many candidates "Where" was "Oohair", or even 'Bhair', "Rubber" was "Dabad", "World" was "Bharld", "Varnish" was "Ooarnis" and so on...

And everyone is aware of the legendary "The lion roared in the middle of the road" in Bengali, where it (phonetically) becomes "The liawn doad in the middle of the doad".

And thats not it, pronouncing Bangla names by reading them as they are written in English is next to impossible. You'll never know which 's' is to be read as 'sh' and which 'a/aa' to be pronounced as 'o'!!

Let me also clarify , lest I become the victim of a Bong murderer , peeved at me for writing this, that I have nothing against the language. Bengali is genuinely one of the softest and most melodious  languages but the way it is transliterated into English is just hillarious!