Vote and Bhoot

The Assamese people have a problem pronouncing the English letter ‘V’, and so do the Bengalis. They generally use it to sound ‘Bh’, with the pronunciation of the word ‘Vote’ clearing sounding like ‘Bhot’ or ‘Bhote’ in these two languages. While the English ‘V’ sound is close to or equivalent to the ‘Wa’ or ‘Va’ in Sanskrit, those who speak Hindi, and probably Marathi and Gujarati, can smoothly pronounce ‘V’ as it should be in the English language. While the Assamese alphabet do have a ‘Va’ or ‘Wa’ letter, it seems that generations of Assamese people have been somehow or the other influenced by the spill-over effect of Bengali, a language whose alphabet does not have a different ‘Va’ or ‘Wa’ letter. Thus, Gavaskar is profoundly pronounced as ‘Gabhaskar’ in Bengali, with its impact also occurring in the Assamese language. Given this backdrop, ‘V’ has become such a confusing letter that many Assamese had used, and are still using ‘V’ to denote the original Assamese ‘Bh’ sound too. Thus Kalaguru Bishnuprasad’s surname became ‘Rava’, whereas it should have been spelt as ‘Rabha’ in English. Likewise, Hemaprabha has become Hemaprava, Durlabh has become Durlav, and so on. The ‘van’ continues to be pronounced as ‘bhaan’ in both Bengali and Assamese, while a section of the new generation using Social Media too often has made a total mess of things by writing words like ‘vaal’ for ‘bhaal’ and ‘voi’ for ‘bhoi’ while they use the Roman alphabet to converse in Assamese. And then there is one whole section of Assamese people who are unable to differentiate between the ‘O’ and ‘U’ vowels of the Assamese alphabet. Singers are often heard singing ‘tumar’ and ‘mur’ when it should be ‘tomar’ and ‘mor’, little trying to understand that ‘mur’ in Assamese means ‘head’ and it is ‘mor’ that denotes or means ‘my’ or ‘mine.’ The worst however has been happening with the King Chili; while it is called ‘bhot jolokiya’ in Assamese – ‘bhot’ denoting anything related to Bhutan and its people, the Bhutiyas – many write ‘bhut jolokiya, when ‘bhut’ is out and out the word in Assamese for ghost. The sad outcome is – some have even described the wonderful ‘bhot jolokiya’ as the ‘ghost chilli.’ No wonder people campaigning for certain candidates have been shouting at the top of their voice – ‘Cast your bhut for XXX’. Well, how does one cast a ghost for a candidate?