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Key to speaking English well is to speak it often with others who have decent proficiency..


I used to speak like the average Indian expat until a couple years ago.. when I started played online games, I would spend atleast 6 hours or 7 hours in voice chat with Englishmen..

It hit me that speaking English merely isn't enough, communication is about getting your message across to the other party and if you can't speak English in a manner that is legible to them then it's as if you don't know English at all. This is the case with Bangladeshis who claim to 'speak' English.


Anyway , I just listened to how they speak (the Englishmen) and tried to replicate it..


It's not just how they enunciate their syllables.. it's also their sentence structure..


The sentence structure taught to me by Indian schools was so... Simplistic.. it lacked any flavour whatsoever, like speaking English for the sake of it.



I guess what I'm trying to say is.. if you want to master a language, listen to native speakers speak.


That brings me back to my point, BD kids couldn't give a flying **** about fixing their English they're busy singing Teri meri and so on...


I can read and write Hindi, when I revealed this info to my relatively young cousins they thought I was a God and all of them wanted to hear me speak it..

I ask... Why this thirst for Hindi but not for English ? The world wonders

Indians speak English as the common language all over, how is that helping them ? You need English to communicate with your foreign counter part, but not in Bangladesh.

We need chemist, physicist, engineers, and metallurgical engineers. Technology transfers are pointless if you can't study and learn from those technology.

We need to start opening research universities and pouring money into those for projects.
 
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Lol i have trouble communicating with Sylhetis and they have trouble understanding my Bangla.

I don't have trouble understanding any of the Bangladeshi dialects, my linguistics skills are not up there but the etymology of words gives it away. Sylheti spoken here primarily comes from the divisions of Sunamganj, Maulvibazar, Habiganj etc, where Sylheti is much more thicker and complex coupled with Bangladeshis being in the UK for decades has turned it into its own language.
Think becomes fink lol

That's more UK street slang for chavs.
 
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Heck, we do not even speak or write in good Bengali!!
All are just habit. Few people use pure bangla in their daily life,although a huge number can speak on it.

However there are ample evidences that people are forgetting their pure regional dialects, because of lack of practices.

Also People from khulna division speaks languages closer to pure Bengali , still not pure ;I would say their regional accent is closer to pure Bengali ( districts vary).

But even in extreme cases you will have hard time understanding their original regional tone if you are from different region;although they are not nearly as hard as the regional tones in many other part of Bangladesh.

Also basically nowadays things are changing. Now people tend to speak in mix of pure regional tone and original Bengali.

However in daily life its also not necessary to use pure Bengali, no problem with regional language, but yes modification should be fine.
 
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Indians speak English as the common language all over, how is that helping them ? You need English to communicate with your foreign counter part, but not in Bangladesh.

We need chemist, physicist, engineers, and metallurgical engineers. Technology transfers are pointless if you can't study and learn from those technology.

We need to start opening research universities and pouring money into those for projects.
You are certainly correct in your assumptions in your post. But, nothing substantive will be gained in knowledge of different subjects unless the students master the English language. Simply speaking, there are no real academic or reasearch books in Bengali and Bengali cannot be a medium of communication with other people.

No wonder, we remain in a Ghetto country. It is because all the high-quality books on knowledge are written in English. Indians excel because they learn at least three languages including English. We can only understand our local colloquial Bangla that even people from other districts cannot understand.

Moreover, a single language is responsible for the non-growth or slow growth of a person's brain. No wonder, we remain a group of mental pigmey.
 
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Why on earth will anyone in BD watch hindi series? Doesn't make any sense at all. I don't speak hindi in India, so why should someone speak hindi in BD? That's just preposterous.

You have to ask Bollywood film watchers in Bangladesh - not me.

Personally not a Bollywood movie fan.
 
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Indians speak English as the common language all over, how is that helping them ? You need English to communicate with your foreign counter part, but not in Bangladesh.

We need chemist, physicist, engineers, and metallurgical engineers. Technology transfers are pointless if you can't study and learn from those technology.

We need to start opening research universities and pouring money into those for projects.


Indians are being hired abroad straight from home left and right, Indian engineers are in high demand atleast in the middle East,..


English opens up the doors to scientific education.


English is beyond essential.



I'm too tired to type it all out but if you were to ask me why India is ahead of us in fields of science and research... I would put it down to a better education system starting with their focus on English.
 
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You are right. Even for educated folks, the level of English comprehension/diction in Bangladesh is quite poor.

As a result, a khatash (smelly civet) like me has become a ladykiller tiger locally in Dhaka. I am the life of Iftaar parties. :-)

English starts shooting out of my mouth - I start attracting crowds....
Lady killer? Iftar? 😱 :astagh:
 
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Wasn't Hindi cinema banned for some period?

It still is, I believe commercial Indian movies cannot be shown.

However there is always streamed downloads, one can even watch on their cellphones.

IMHO - watching low value Indian trash movies is a frigging disease, people need their 'fix' just like drugs.
 
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Indians are being hired abroad straight from home left and right, Indian engineers are in high demand atleast in the middle East,..


English opens up the doors to scientific education.


English is beyond essential.



I'm too tired to type it all out but if you were to ask me why India is ahead of us in fields of science and research... I would put it down to a better education system starting with their focus on English.

how do you explain why China, Japan and South Korea are far ahead of India despite having poor English? Clearly English is not the limiting factor then.
 
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You are certainly correct in your assumptions in your post. But, nothing substantive will be gained in knowledge of different subjects unless the students master the English language. Simply speaking, there are no real academic books in Bengali and Bengali cannot be a medium of communication with other people.

No wonder, we remain in a Ghetto country. It is because all the high-quality books on knowledge are written in English. Indians excel because they learn at least three languages including English. We can only understand our local colloquial Bangla that people from other districts cannot understand.

Moreover, a single language is responsible for the non-growth or slow growth of a person&s brain. No wonder, we remain a group of mental pigmey.
Indians are being hired abroad straight from home left and right, Indian engineers are in high demand atleast in the middle East,..


English opens up the doors to scientific education.


English is beyond essential.



I'm too tired to type it all out but if you were to ask me why India is ahead of us in fields of science and research... I would put it down to a better education system starting with their focus on English.


It is always good to know a second language.
However, My point is there is not enough proper English teaching school besides some fancy O and A level schools. There is not enough money to hire decent English teachers to teach 10s of millions of kids. I have seen Dhaka University English teachers translation from Bangla to English, some of the translations were simply appalling to say the least. I heard an Englishman teaching Shakespeare in Dhaka University English department saying these honors students have no idea about Shakespeare.

In this case we will just have to wait until we have a sizable population of English speaking youth. There is a very good chance that occurrence will not see the light of the day. Therefore I think we have to be realistic about this approach.

It is much easier and cheaper to translate technology books into Bangla, you can always use the English terminology in translated books.

I agree with @FairAndUnbiased that English language is nice to have , but not a necessity to teach in Technology schools.
 
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how do you explain why China, Japan and South Korea are far ahead of India despite having poor English? Clearly English is not the limiting factor then.

Some observations...
  1. China is a disciplined country with centralized planning and control, India is not.
  2. No one cares about the poor in India, story is different in China.
  3. China sells actual goods, not knowledge services like in India. English is not a requirement for China.
  4. Indians are notoriously bad at quality control. Pretty much everything they make is horrible quality, even incense sticks. Root cause is that Indians are notoriously cheap and don't care about bad reputation.
  5. The same Indian Hyundai cars sold in Europe get zero stars in NCAP safety testing. While Hyundai cars made in Korea sold overseas get four stars when NCAP tested. Indian products completely ignore safety. Their exports are hated and get very little market acceptance.
  6. It takes four days or more for a container to get from a factory to dockside for export in India (every state has borders, paperwork, red tape etc.). In China it takes less than a day (most large SEZ is on the coastal areas). Bangladesh is following this model as it wants to develop using exports. Indian exports take too long to put on a ship. Their infra is atrocious.
  7. India has stifling labor regulations, China does not (or has a lot less than India). However Indian laborers are still the most exploited globally. Look at Covid and lack of healthcare etc. Poor people in India now are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Human life is cheap in India.
  8. In India the leadership is just happy to maintain the status quo by exploiting the uneducated and underprivileged class. None of the leaders want India to become "enlightened, educated and developed". All their propaganda are to dupe the poor and keep them in power. They have no interest in having Indians becoming more educated.
  9. Long story short - India is not a manufacturing nation, will never be. India will not use its poor for grassroots development using lower level semi-skilled value addition and export like China did initially. They simply will not try starting any new industrial factories because they think labor problems are not anything they want.
  10. In India development will not come from the ground up. They planned it that way. They will use some pseudo educated middle class folks to go do service work locally and overseas (mainly Backoffice and IT work) where English will be helpful. The poor are supposed to depend on income from these middle class folks. Poor Indians are not educated and do not know English. They have very few avenues to earn any income.
  11. There is no health/education or safety net for the poor in India. India leads the globe in poverty and they don't care squat about it. Quite shameless about it too.
  12. Indian industrialists frequently run away to Europe owing hundreds of billions to the state controlled banks, the bankers and politicians get part of it and are in cahoots with the industrialists to empty the state treasury like this. The poor in India will never get a chance to better their lives. Bangladesh has this happen as well but the theft and looting in India is at a different gargantuan level.
 
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It is always good to know a second language.
However, My point is there is not enough proper English teaching school besides some fancy O and A level schools. There is not enough money to hire decent English teachers to teach 10s of millions of kids. I have seen Dhaka University English teachers translation from Bangla to English, some of the translations were simply appalling to say the least. I heard an Englishman teaching Shakespeare in Dhaka University English department saying these honors students have no idea about Shakespeare.

In this case we will just have to wait until we have a sizable population of English speaking youth. There is a very good chance that occurrence will not see the light of the day. Therefore I think we have to be realistic about this approach.

It is much easier and cheaper to translate technology books into Bangla, you can always use the English terminology in translated books.

I agree with @FairAndUnbiased that English language is nice to have , but not a necessity to teach in Technology schools.

I asked one guy (supposedly an MSc in English) to translate a paragraph saying what he had for breakfast.

Ek ghonta badey aisha dekhi mokkel ballpoint er nib bhainga falaisey.

Allah ma'abood !

This is the state of our educated class...
It is much easier and cheaper to translate technology books into Bangla, you can always use the English terminology in translated books.

I have often thought about a project in here where we would contribute Bangla translations for Apparel terms and industry terms in English to help BGMEA folks. I'm game if you guys are. We can also list the equivalent term in Mandarin in a third column.
 
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