OP-ED: ‘Jilapi’ vs ‘Jalebi’

Changes in language are inevitable
In 2019, comedian/social media influencer Raba Khan’s book titled Bandhobi stormed the internet because of its controversial use of Banglish. Most of the people criticized and trolled Raba Khan ruthlessly but a few of them find the non-normative use of Banglish in written tradition as creative and showed support for her. 

Such controversies related to language, dialect, and accent have become a common phenomenon in recent times. The latest controversy surrounding it is the "jilapi" vs "jalebi" debate.  People are trolling the use of words like jalebi and suhoor instead of their traditional Bangla form of jilapi and sehri. They find the use of these “fancy foreign” words comical and inappropriate.  

Lexicons are one of the main structural elements of a language. With the change in the course of society, new words become part of the linguistic tradition and old words lose their usage. Bangla language has always been influenced by languages like Persian, Arabic, English, Urdu, and Hindi due to historical and political reasons. 

Hence, we see many “foreign” words have already become accepted in Bangali linguistic tradition, and even gatekeepers like Bangla Academy find the use of these words appropriate. But the new controversy brings the old debate back -- of what should be acceptable and what should be unacceptable in a linguistic tradition.