By Fazal Khaliq
MINGORA: Speakers at a Media seminar here on Sunday urged the government to take concrete steps for promotion of regional languages.
The speakers also called upon journalists to play their role in preserving the fast fading languages in the rural areas of the country. The seminar titled “Lesser known languages of Swat: challenges and opportunities” was organised by Forum for Languages Initiative (FLI). Culture activists, linguists and journalists attended the seminar.
“There are 30 disadvantaged languages in northern Pakistan,” said Mohammad Zaman Sagar, a representative of FLI. He said that FLI was currently working on 14 of those languages.
“Our goal is to preserve oral traditions, poetry, proverbs, folk tales and other aspects of cultural heritage and improve reading and writing skills through mother tongue-based literacy programmes and develop bilingual and trilingual dictionaries and glossaries,” said Mr Sagar.
Zubair Torwali, chairman of Idara Barai Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT), said on the occasion that languages in Swat were faced with identity crisis. “Torwali and Gawari are the indigenous and original languages of Swat but these are not given importance by the state,” he added.
Mr Torwali said that a language died automatically if it had no written script. He said that globalisation was also a threat to local languages. He said that government should take concrete steps to establish a recognised script for smaller languages and preserve those by documenting.
Mr Torwali said that the government must work for promotion of regional languages. For the purpose, it should set up an active and functional language promotion authority, he added.
Enayatullah Faizi, another speaker, said that language was one of the many signs of nature. He said that active role of media organisations was must to preserve regional languages.
“Media has the power to attract attention of public and motivate the state to promote regional languages,” he said, adding that researchers and language activists must sit together and interact with each other to preserve the dying languages.
Besides Pashto, Torwali, Gawri, Gojri, Ushojo and Badeshi are also spoken in Swat.
Published in Dawn, September 21st , 2015
