Bengali Language and Culture [Contributions to Bangladesh Studies]
Dr. Afia Dil, a front-raking Bengali linguist with her Ph.D. degree in Linguistics from Stanford University and a number of important research papers and books published in English, has selected a dozen of her outstanding writings scattered in different national and international publications and put them together to make them readily available to scholars in the field. The most notable of these essays of linguistic importance that deserve to be mentioned here include: English Loanwords in Bengali (1966); Bengali Baby Talk (1975); The Sociolinguistic Variable (s) in Bengali: A Sound Change in Progress? (1979); Diglossia in Bangla: A Study of Shifts in the Verbal Repertoire of the Educated Classes in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1986); Muhammad Shahidullah’s Approach to Indo-Aryan Parent Speech and the Common Bases of Urdu-Hindi and Bengali (1991); Arabic Impact on Bengali Language and Culture (2013); Some Contributions to Bengali Linguistics in Bangladesh (2013). For teachers of Applied Linguistics and languages her papers on teaching Urdu to Bengali speakers and teaching Bengali to Urdu speakers should serve as a model for teaching a second language. Her translations of twenty-four Bengali poems and songs into English deserve the attention of all who aspire to introduce Bengali literature to international readers. It is a book worth reading by all educators not only in Bangladesh but also in other countries. – Professor Sirajul Islam, President Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka
Afia Dil, born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and educated at Eden Girls High School and Eden Girls College at Dhaka, earned her B.A. Honors and Master’s degrees in English Literature from the University of Dhaka, Post-graduate diploma in education from the University of New Zealand, Master’s degree in English and Applied Linguistics from the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University. She was Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Eden Girls College, Dhaka (1954-61), Professor and Language Specialist at the East Pakistan Education Extension Centre, Dhaka (1961-62) and at the West Pakistan Education Extension Centre, Lahore (1962-65). Since 1975 she has taught graduate courses in Linguistics, Women Studies and Leadership Studies at United States International University, San Diego, California. At present she is a Professor Emeritus at the Alliant (former US) International University. Her publications in Bengali include, among others: New Zealander Patra (Letters from New Zealand) – a series of thirty weekly articles published in The Begum Weekly, Dhaka, 1953; Bengali version of Caroline Pratt’s I Learn from Children (1955); Je desh mone pare (1957) – her travelogue of the United States of America on the Leadership Exchange Program; and her Bengali translation of Helen Keller’s My Teacher, published serially in The Begum, in 1959. The most notable among her translations from Bengali into English are Syed Waliullah’s Taranga Bhanga, a play in three acts, published as The Breakers (Bengali Academy, Dhaka, 1985) and his novel Chander Amabasya published as Night of No Moon (writers ink, Dhaka: 2006).Among her linguistic publications in English, mention may be made of her monograph Two Traditions of the Bengali Language (Cambridge, 1991; Islamabad, 1993) on the sociolinguistic study of the Hindu and Muslim dialects of Bengali that has been hailed as “a valuable contribution to sociolinguistic research in a neglected field.” She is co-author (with Anwar Dil) of a 744-page book, Bengali Language Movement to Creation of Bangladesh (Adorn Publication, Dhaka, 2011), hailed as the most judicious research work on the creation of Bangladesh as a nation-state. Her Bengali Nursery Rhymes: An International Perspective (Adorn Publication, Dhaka, 2010) has been hailed as a major contribution to intercultural literature: “It is a treasure trove for all who love poetry.”