Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/33

Rh foreign methods of expression. We can only say that no two languages are identical, but as in the case of human races, so in the case of human speeches, absolute purity cannot be thought of. I must no doubt acknowledge that we are at times misled by some instances of mixed vocabularies and wrongly pronounce a language to be mixed on that account. If Mr. Keane has emphasized upon this proposition in stating that there cannot be any miscegenation of languages I am in entire agreement with the views of the distinguished anthropologist. As an example, I may cite the case of the so-called Urdu speech—by endorsing the valuable opinion of Mr. Keane—which is wrongly supposed to be different from Hindi and is asserted by some to be a mixture of Hindi, Persian and Arabic. My suggestion to do away with the name Urdu as an additional name for the standard Hindi language was no doubt accepted by Mr. L. S. S. O'Malley during the census operations of the year 1911, but the sentiment of some people for the ridiculously unscientific term had to be, I fear, respected. The whole structure of the speech is Hindi; the Hindi pronouns are conjugated with verbs in all tenses and moods according to the Hindi rules, yet forgetting the  fact that no amount of word-borrowing can change one language into another, Urdu has been set up as a different language. That the words of Persian and Arabic origin are much in use in Hindi and more free use of them is possible, is lost sight of. Words of such foreign origin are prevalent in Bengali and Oriā as well. If we borrow European words more freely and adopt what is called Roman script in our writing, will the Bengali language be entitled to claim another name? The vulgar people confound language not only with vocabulary but also with script. The Nāgri letters which have no better pretensions to antiquity than Bengali letters, are called