I’m not too sure if Bangla is the sweetest language in the world, because to every individual his/her own native tongue is the sweetest thing in the world. But the above vote conducted by UNESCO got Bengali ranked as the sweetest language in the world followed by Spanish and Dutch.
One of my team mates in Dhaka(capital of Bangladesh), Muktadir Hossain Alvee translated the GOSH manifesto last week in Bangla so 215 million people in the world could now read and comprehend it. Yes, Bangla is spoken as a native language by that many people, 4th highest number of people after Chinese, Spanish and English. And majority of this 215 million people can only read and comprehend in Bangla.
In the year 1952, people literally had to sacrifice their lives to fight against an unjust new law which would force them to not be able to speak in Bangla but Urdu. The day when our people were martyred for our language is 21st February and UNESCO has been celebrating it as the International Mother Language day since the year 1999.
In Bangladesh, historically we love our language. We even named our country by the language… Bangla…Desh(desh means country in Bangla)… Our national anthem starts with ‘আমার সোনার বাংলা, আমি তোমায় ভালবাসি।’, which means, ‘My golden Bengal/Bangla, I love you!’. See!
It’s usually me who puts the translations on the website and I will do as soon as I can, but with GOSH coming up so soon I might not get around to it for a few days, or possibly not until I’m in Santiago next week.
Interesting statistics on language speakers, we have English and Chinese covered but not Spanish so if anyone else can translate and wants to ensure we cover all top four languages, that would be fantastic - particularly before our open sessions in Chile!
অনেক ধন্যবাদ মুক্তাদির হসেইন আল্ভি ও শামস জাবের কে গশ্ ঘোষণাপত্র অনুবাদ করার জন্য।
Many thanks to Muktadir Hossain Alvee and Shams Jaber for translating the GOSH Manifesto.
Thanks Jenny… So happy to see the manifesto up on the site in Bangla. Super happy day!
