Pet Peeve

ghandi poka!

Sure, and they still pronounce Bengladesh and Airaq

Quite off the topic, but something interesting I read the other day. Apparently, Pundit Nehru’s future son-in-law’s surname used to be spelt Ghandy. The young man of Parsi origin changed the spelling to Gandhi after joining Congress, years before meeting Miss IP Nehru.

This made me wonder. If the young fellow hadn’t changed the spelling, would Punditji’s daughter have used her father’s or husband’s surname upon joining politics? Somehow, Indira Ghandy doesn’t have the same brandname. But if she had done politics as Indira Nehru, the way Benazir continue to be Bhutto rather than Zardari, would Sanjay/Rajiv and their wives and kid be Ghandys or Nehrus?

But then, when you think about it, our putative heirs are not exactly using the family brands. It’s not like Sajeeb Wazed is calling himself Sheikh Joy. And Tareque Rahman publicly admonished BNP leaders for calling him Tareque Zia. So perhaps there is more to the dynasty politics than mere name recognition.

dude, typo?

Nope. I don’t think it was a typo. I’ve seen the “Ghandi” thing too many times to know that some people actually think it’s spelt like that.

Saif,

If you hear a white bloke pronounce Gandhi…you’ll see they pronounce it like Ghandi….so they just spell it like their wrong pronounciation. Kindda like Moslem…you see;)

i agree

the ‘h’ after the ‘d’ is so significant because…..?

ok, it’s not so crazy to be pedantic, I can be pedantic, but I prolly won’t make a post out of it

Joy GandHi!

Well, the point was not to be pedantic about it. I’m not a stickler for spelling in general. But something about spelling Gandhi as Ghandi riles me up.

Another huge pet peeve of mine, similar to “Ghandi”: Why on EARTH do people write Pahela Baishakh and not POhela BOishakh? Why Rabindranath Tagore and not RObindrOnath THAKUR? Sadly its our own Bangalis (not some ignorant bideshi) that write Bangla words like this!

It’s Rabindranath Tagore because he spelt it that way.

yeah I know that but wasn’t he a little anglophile anyways (his earlier days)

the list could go on of course. chatterjee, mukherjee, etc, etc, instead of chattopadhyay, mukhopadhyay. I understand these cases though, “padhyay” sounds a bit odd. Rob Tag had less excuse however.

He was a bit of an Anglophile in his later days too. But that’s not the point. Should Sajid’s surname be spelt Hoq, Haque or Hawk? Who owns the property right to one’s name?

My only point: If you’re gong to write bangla words in english, then at least write it the way it sounds in bangla. Why change Calcutta to Kolkata but use Narayanganj instead of Narayongonj?

Fuzzy,

They are slightly different issues methinks, in the way the powers that be think about all this.

Calcutta to Kolata has something to do with anti-colonial politics of nomenclature. Like Bombay to Mumbai. Madras to Chennai. I forget the name for Bangalore they are thinking up to “decolonize” its name. It’s something ridiculous. Banglaloloo or something.

The latter case, Narayanganj to Narayongonj, is a little different. Generally, whether I like it or not, when most scholars, Western and even Indian, transliterate Bengali words they do so in the way they would for Devanagari to the Roman script. So Bengali words are treated like Sanskrit words when they are written in English, for the mass market. The situation may be different for Bangladeshi authors. But many if not most Indian authors writing for a large market, and most Westerners will say “itihasa” for “itihash” and “Laksmana Sena” for “Lokhhon Sen,” “Bhadralok” for “Bhodrolok” and so on.

The “decolonized name” for Bangalore they were thinking up is actually Bengaluru, the city’s name in Kannada.

So why do we stick to the Sanskrit (Bhadralok) and anglocized (Chatterjee) versions? Why don’t we change English spellings to how its really supposed to be written (i.e. the way its pronounced in Bangla)? Just seems like a case of “this is how things have been and will be” which is a stupid reason

All I have to say is (and have it from good sources that Anthony’s not quite sold on this): Fuzzy, you’re gonna love my blog!

Phonetic Bangla spelling all the way baby! The Empire’s really writing back now!:D

I think many Bangladeshi authors already do it the way you seem to prefer.

But you will understand why for reasons of consistency, Indian and Western authors catering to readerships far more likely to be familiar with transliterized Devanagari, would do it like that.

I still maintain that it’s up to the individual to decide how their names are spelt.

Incidentally, it’s not only with the Roman transliteration of Bangla that we have trouble with. The difference between J and Z and S and Sh is often lost when it comes to words with non-Sanskrit origin.

True. Non-sanskritic vocabulary definitely suffers from a loss in transliteration, and not just when written in Roman script.