How do you talk about language in 2026? I have to admit, for the first time, I feel a little out of step. For pretty much all of human history – millennia that is, more time than my feeble brain can comprehend – the study of language lived in the human domain. Words felt connected with deep truths about identity and emotion. In this land of ours, many even felt that one’s own language was a thing worth fighting for. The history of Ekushey February is well-known: on that fateful day in 1952, many young people defied a brutal crackdown from the Pakistan regime. Their demand was to have Bangla as the mother tongue. Their names are now etched in history: Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar – the martyrs of Ekushey. Their deaths galvanised a movement that snowballed over time, gaining layers and texture, finding a climax eventually in the birth of Bangladesh. This is why the date of February 21 stands on the podium shoulder-to-shoulder with our two other most important national days: March 26 and December 16.
February, in an independent Bangladesh, evolved as the bhashar mash – month of language. This has been true under all regimes, one of the few constants through the eras of Ershad, Khaleda Zia, and Sheikh Hasina that I have witnessed in my lifetime. February has always been the month of the boimela, a cultural fixture that, in my lifetime, has never not been there. It has been the month of playing and replaying that famous song (you know which one) in honour of the shaheeds. And it has been – and I myself, as a journalist and writer, am certainly party to this – the month of a cycle of op-eds and think pieces. Popular topics to dig into in February include this history of Ekushey itself, examining the sacred place of Bangla in our lives, the predictable bit of (in some quarters) handwringing over the supposed corruption of Bangla through the influences of English medium schools coupled with globalization, and, increasing popular in recent years, lamenting the suppression and erasure of the many indigenous languages that exist within our country, which are also, for many people, mother tongues. What you talk about when you talk about language will depend on your priorities, and the angle you choose to take. When the topic is language, the possibilities of debate and destruction are endless.
Language is a beast that evolves with time, but for a long time, the spirit of Ekushey, in a way, tried to hold on to something primal and pure – the idea that language was as dear to us as mother’s milk, the idea that it was or could be worth dying for.
Or should I say overwhelming? Language is a beast that evolves with time, but for a long time, the spirit of Ekushey, in a way, tried to hold on to something primal and pure – the idea that language was as dear to us as mother’s milk, the idea that it was or could be worth dying for. The discourse of Ekushey is inseparable from the discourse of blood (amar bhaiyer rokte rangano …), and thus it is a discourse human, all too human. And here I return to my question: How do you talk about language in 2026?
Seeing language as a purely human treasure bound up with emotions and history seems insufficient. That thread is so nineties! In 2026, we have to admit, grimly and reluctantly, that language is the chief weapon of the attention economy – the little rabbit-hole that exists within your smartphone or PC on which you are probably reading this piece right now, and this economy is powered by the almighty algorithm. Secondly, we have to admit, even more grimly and even more reluctantly, that generative AI has been inflicted upon the world, and a lot of what you end up reading – posts, captions, life advice from gurus, even overly glib op-ed pieces in newspapers you (used to) trust and respect – were not even written. They were generated. As everybody now knows, these Large Language Models (language again!) can “understand” what are asking of them, and carry out your instructions. If you have noticed a certain uniformity in the things you are reading, a certain smoothing out of syntax and a lack of diversity or personality, if you are receiving grammatically flawless copy replete with pseudo-slick but meaningless phrases like “it’s not just an app, it’s a no-hold barred weapon” from someone who you know very well is not capable of composing a sentence on their own, you know you’re looking at AI. To even begin to talk about language in 2026, then, I think it is best to humbly acknowledge the decoupling of language from what we saw as its core humanness.
To even begin to talk about language in 2026, then, I think it is best to humbly acknowledge the decoupling of language from what we saw as its core humanness.
On social media, this generative machine that never rests, sometimes guided by the content creators wishing to maximize followers, will churn out hooks. We’ve all seen those tried and tested phrases that make you pause while you’re scrolling, to look a little longer at a post for that little dopamine hit.
“I was today years old when I learnt that …”
“POV: you are [insert something]”
“Watch till the end”
“Number 3 surprised me”
“STOP doing this, do THIS instead!”
“Why is nobody talking about this?”
This is the language of algorithms – it offers no nutritional value, no insight, no truth, but serves the sole purpose of increasing engagement for the content creator thus fuelling a complex machinery of commerce, where the platform (Meta) takes a cut. What is all of this worth? Plenty to tech barons, and the shareholders hoping very hard the bubble won’t pop. The gap between our present moment and the year 1952 is 73 years, but if you look at the evolution of the use and abuse of language that has happened in this time, it might as well be a million.
Abak Hussain is a writer and journalist.