On 09/14/2011 12:25 PM, delex r wrote:
I think now naming the script as “ Bengali” that too by stealing two unique letters from the Assamese alphabet list and coloring them with Bengali hue is part of that notorious linguistic invasion.
Look -- Unicode is an international standard. English is the international language of science and technology, whether you like it or not. And as Michael Everson as pointed out, the script is more commonly known in the English language as the Bengali script. That is hence the representative name that was chosen for the script in the Unicode standard. Technical issues of stability dictate that the name cannot be hereafter changed. Please read the publicly available Unicode Standard document and understand it before complaining further. Finished.
And the reasons for the script to be better known as the Bengali script rather than Assamese are obvious. As per records (http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size), Bengali is the *fifth* most widely spoken language in the world with a speaker population of 181 million (closely following Hindi with 182). Assamese is at place *fifty-four* with speaker population of 16.8 million, less than *one-tenth* of that of Bengali. It is even behind Chattisgarhi language with 17.5 million speakers, and the separate state of Chattisgarh was only even formed recently. Given this, you should not expect special treatment for the name "Assamese".
Be realistic and understand in what world you are living in. It is but natural that in the absence of a pre-agreed name for a script for other reasons (such as the Latin script), a script is better internationally recognized by the language that it is more (in terms of sheer volume) used for.
I feel bad when my compatriots don't even try to understand the principles of an international technology before complaining about it. Our great Indian intellectual tradition is not reflected in these results of putting emotion above reason.
-- Shriramana Sharma
