Media News - Monday, February 20, 2012

Bangladesh bans ‘Banglish’ to protect local tongue

A Bangladesh court has outlawed the use of English slang known as “Banglish” on television and radio stations, a move welcomed by experts who worry about a foreign invasion of their language. The High Court issued the order on Thursday “to uphold the sanctity of our mother tongue” and stop the “rape” of Bengali and its 1,000-year past, a state prosecutor said. The history of Bengali, which is spoken by at least 250 million people on the subcontinent, is wrapped up with the creation of Bangladesh as a country in 1971. Dozens of private television stations and radio stations that feature music and talk-shows directed at teenagers and people in their twenties have sprouted in Bangladesh over the last five or six years. Use of “Banglish” in which Bengali and English words are mixed seamlessly together is widespread, as is “Hinglish” in India - a combination of Hindi and English. “The court has ordered them not to use words which are foreign to our language,” deputy attorney general Altaf Hossain told AFP. “It asked them not to broadcast or anchor programmes using distorted Bengali language or pronounce Bengali words in a distorted form,” he said. The court said this distortion of the language was tantamount to “rape”, Hossain said, adding it had also ordered a committee to be set up to oversee how the language should be used by broadcasters. (AFP via Media Network)

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