Bong word of the day: Ye

Of the few languages I know, I have not heard of any of them having such a powerful, multi-purpose word as the ubiquitous Bengali word, “Ye”. Pronounced as “Yeah” without the stylish ending, more like a “yay” or for those who know Hindi, “yeh”. But it’s not the pronunciation that really matters. In fact it doesn’t matter how you used the Ye word in Bengali. Ye is like your universal placeholder in Bengali. It could be used to substitute any object, place, name, person, adjective or for that matter, could just be used as a stop-gap word. How many times does it happen to you while speaking that you forget the word you intend to say, or the name you want to mention? How many times do you have to resort to “what-do-you-call-it” or “what’s-that-word-damn-it”? The Bengali does not have to fret so much. All you need to do is to utter a “Ye” and with that one word, all the excuses and semantics and information are conveyed, much to everyone’s satisfaction.

Some usage examples:

• “Aarey, o ye te geche” (Oh, he has gone to ye) — when you can’t remember the place name.
• “Ye ke bole dish jeye ami eshe chilam” (Tell ye that I had come) — when you can’t remember the person name.
• “O boddo ye hoye geche aajkal” (He has become very ye these days) — when you can’t remember the adjective.
• “Ye, bolchilam jeye…” (Umm..I was saying) — Umm (the stop-gap utterance) is replaced by Ye.

Sometimes you don’t even have to get back with the correct word you actually wanted to say when you replaced it with “Ye”. The context of saying it conveys enough information to the receiver and he/she will reply to it in perfect sync.

• “Ye ta eshe geche ki?” (Has the ye arrived) — listener knows what the Ye you are talking about if the Ye has already been discussed and the context set.

So you get the drift, right? Ye your way into happiness when you speak Bong. Everyone loves it, everyone uses it. You might have noticed that I always mentioned that this word is spoken. Yeah, “Ye” is not a gramatically correct Bengali word. Use it in your next Bengali essay and you are going to get back a lot of @#$$^&s or you know, “Ye”s. It is a popular Bengali-as-a-spoken-language innovation. A Ye here and a Ye there doesn’t break a purist’s heart and rather, it saves a lot of time while conversing and basically adds that casual, informal, easy-going feel to the conversation which is what a Bengali always loves to do.