India-Bangladesh relations: A different stroke

[DalalErMaNodi]

If you two continue speaking Chatgaiya, I will be able to understand; maybe speaking or writing it will not be possible.

And that is great, that you're able to understand, perhaps it helps that it is in written form.

Listening to us speak would be another thing, what we we're conversing in; is the unofficial 'Modern Standard' Chittagonian.


I believe we both speak different dialects at home, since he is from the villages, he most definitely speaks the village dialect of Northernmost reaches of the Chittagonian language belt and I'm from the city so I speak the city dialect.


It's all mutually intelligible, just that the city dialect is spoken a bit slower and makes more use of the standard 'Bangla' vocabulary.



Anyway, we were speaking Chittagonian not to have a 'secret' conversation but rather for our own benefit, you don't often find people online to converse with in Chittagonian.


Fun fact : 80% of native Chittagonians struggle to speak Bangla, we can talk alright but our sentence structure is horrific and we have a terrible accent, when we don't know what something is called we just switch to the Chittagonian term and pretend nothing happened.

It's all very embarrassing.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Anyway, we were speaking Chittagonian not to have a 'secret' conversation but rather for our own benefit, you don't often find people online to converse with in Chittagonian.

Never thought that; I was being facetious in calling it bad news, in that one more interloper is now going to mangle your language. After reading your post, I realised to my horror that my wisecrack might have meant that I think you two are taking refuge in this. Not at all.

[LATER: I just realised another mistake made - saying reading or writing it may not be possible. What I meant was that my comprehension even in future might not extend to learning to read or write that dialect.]

Besides, reading the conversation made it clear that there are misunderstandings, in the proper sense of that word, and better communication is needed between me and @gom poa. Once I cool down a little, I will definitely reach out to him, and try to understand him better.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Fun fact : 80% of native Chittagonians struggle to speak Bangla, we can talk alright but our sentence structure is horrific and we have a terrible accent, when we don't know what something is called we just switch to the Chittagonian term and pretend nothing happened.

Yeah, right.

You haven't heard me trying to 'do' Urdu. I have never lived down using 'bewafadari'.

I try to pretend nothing happened, but the smirks on these damn' Urdu-speakers' faces give away their continuing amusement.