The O syndrome

Placenames, even the names of people, in Bangladesh, may be in other places too where English is not the first language, and some Bangla words used in English have an eerie habit of getting respelt over time, especially in newspapers where language corrupts most. A few weeks ago, a budding editor asked if Amar (Ekushey) should be spelt with an 'o' as 'amor' (Italian for love, not a bad idea!). But is it not likely to leave people, not initiated to Bangla, to pronounce the word rhyming with 'labor' (AmE spelling for BrE labour)? Ay, there's the rub. The spelling of a foregin word in English should not chime in with the pronunciation. No one writes 'fraca' for 'fracas' (French), just because the -s remains silent. It is to let people know that the words are foreign and they need to put in a bit of effort to spell and pronounce them.

About a decade and a half ago, some city places were spelt Dhanmandi (dhan, rice and mandi, open-air farmers' market), Maghbazar (habitation of the Maghs) or even Mahakhali (maha, great). Old maps and some city corporation road signs, in some cases, still speak of the fact.

A place in Gazipur was spelt Tangi in a railway network map of the mid-1940s. The place now spells Tongi. What is now Lalmonirhat was Lalmanirhat in a similar map. There were once two standards: the way the railway spells them and the way the postal service spells them. When one of them wrote Paksey, another wrote Pakshey and both were considered correct. But they too have now ceased to be standards as the people working on such chorse have conveniently been slackers over time.