My question is, what branch of the Brahmaputra? Shitalakshya, Jamuna, these are the branches of a river? Shitalakshya, if the Jamuna is a tributary of the Brahmaputra, then by definition ‘Brahmaputra’ is supposed to be a river, why do we call it a river?
What is the difference between 'river' and 'river'? - Most people give ridiculous wrong answers when asked this question. Let us see a sample of the answer-
The difference between a river and a river is - "the river has branches, the river does not have branches". Most people give this answer. Everyone gets it from generation to generation. I got this answer from my teacher at school myself. No one knows the grammatical basis of this answer (if there is a basis, you will know!). Interestingly, Wikipedia is on the same path.
Wikipedia has written about rivers and streams:
A river is a body of water which originates from a reservoir of a mountain, lake, spring, etc., and flows over different towns and falls into another body of water. Such as: Meghna, Jamuna, Kushiyara etc. When no tributary of a river is created, it is called a river. Such as: Kopotaksh, Brahmaputra, Nile river etc. Rivers like Surma, Ganga, Buriganga etc. ”
Now my question is, what is not a branch of the Brahmaputra? Shitalakshya, Jamuna, these are the branches of a river? Shitalakshya, if the Jamuna is a tributary of the Brahmaputra, then by definition ‘Brahmaputra’ is supposed to be a river, why do we call it a river? Confusion? I liked it too. Biswajit Ghosh, the current professor, essayist and researcher in the Bangla Department of Dhaka University, removed that.
He spoke on a program on Bangladesh Television about naming rivers and streams. There is no connection between rivers and streams. The difference between the two is grammatical.
In Bengali, Hindi, Persian, etc., masculine words are usually a-karanta and feminine words a-karanta or e, e-karanta. My distinguished friend Zia Uddin Ahmed Bittu who studied Bengali literature from Dhaka University also quoted Professor Biswajit Ghosh.
For example: Rahim (non-karanta) -rahima (a-karanta, there is aa at the end of the name), rajak (non-karanta) - rajaki (e-karanta) here at the end of the name In the same way - flowers, flowers, virgins, rivers, etc. So all the ‘rivers’ whose names are masculine i.e. non-karanta stars are ‘rivers’ and all the ‘rivers’ whose names are feminine i.e. a-karanta or ঈ, e-karanta stars are rivers. For example: Kapotaksh, Brammaputra, Nil, Damodar, Shankha, Amazon, all the names of the rivers. Jamuna, Padma, Meghna, Volga, Atrai, Ichhamati, Madhumati, Bhagirathi are all river names.
Rivers of Bengal
For this reason it is a tributary of the Brahmaputra. For the same reason blue is not ‘river’ but ‘river’. Many call it the Amazon River, but it will be the river for the reasons mentioned above. So from now on, the name of the river that you will see non-karanta, be sure to call it ‘river’, and the a, e and e-karanta that you will see, be sure to call it ‘river’.
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