The Bangla I speak isn't the Bangla they speak

I am a Bangali and they bangladeshi. There is a difference.

So, yes, technically I’m a Bengali speaking Bengali as is she, the difference is the former speaks something from their ‘native’ region while the latter speaks the lingua franca/standard form of the entire region. So effectively, they are Bangladeshis speaking in Bangladeshi. Being a Bangladeshi yourself, there is something in particular, which makes our respective pronunciations distinct, the former having a much more ‘rustic and rural’ appeal.

-- I should have written something about this since Kolkata but put it on hold for long as it’s quite an odd concept to explain unless you’re willing to face a slight to the language you don’t speak fluently yourself.

My family on my dad's end uses a variant closer to typical Dhaka Bangla along with some words and utterances influenced by my mother's side of Sylheti origin, which even other Bangladeshis sometimes struggle with. In Kolkata, people use what is generally termed the standard or, literary, Bengali. That standard which you would see on text-books and older Tagore works.

There's an obvious variation from the typical Bengali spoken in my household.

This, of course is a milder version, with softer cadences than sharper ones. Furthermore, there's a vast difference in the slang for commonly used words like food, money, etc.

My cousin there continuously (politely) mimicked certain words that I used, but it was done in a good-natured, ‘light-heart ed way, akin to teasing a cousin. I mentioned a certain word to name a snack and discovered this word was apparently only used in Bangladesh. My cousin had literally never heard this word before. Simultaneously I couldn't understand a lot of the slangs my cousin spoke, which, incidentally he mentioned is basically a cocktail of Kolkata teenager-speak, internet vernacular and a blend of Hindi as well as English – totally apart from what either of their grandmothers would speak.

There’s an unsettling feeling when you’re being told the native language, the very same vernacular you grew up using, and have been hearing all your life, to be a variant that’s less ‘standard’. To be told that your language of the homeland is a local version. While no one in Kolkata specifically ridiculed it, it's an undeniable truth that there's a clear hierarchy among people of a kind to consider some variations of a language as genuine. And sadly, Bangladeshi Bangla invariably gets shortchanged in these 'rankings', although Bangladesh has a greater majority of Bengali speaking populations than West Bengal.

I'm not sure what to make of this, beyond making a note of it. So now I am starting to pay much more attention to the words my parents and grandparents say that automatically marks us out as Bangladeshis the moment we step out of our house and enter Kolkata. They used to be just words and now, in my head, they're basically an accent I never knew I had.