Steps urged to promote Wakhi language

GBE Monitor

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 14: Pakistan's noted language expert Dr Tariq Rehman on Friday endorsed the aspiration of Pamiri people for protection and promotion of their 3,000-year-old Wakhi language and culture. He said a language endowed prestige and power on a particular community that uses it for everyday communication. Dr Rehman was speaking as chief guest at a seminar on the third day of Wakhi cultural festival at Folk Heritage Museum here on Friday."Your people are giving a call for the right to educate children in your own mother tongue, so that it is protected from becoming obsolete, and it is a cause we support."The linguistic expert recalled two warnings issued by Unesco about the danger confronting indigenous cultures and languages. It had said out of the 6,000 languages spoken the world, 2,500 were about to disappear or have already ceased to exist. According to Unesco, about 3,000 languages irrevocably lose their carriers every year. Smaller community languages face danger from globalisation which wants to impose a monolithic world culture, destroying pluralism. "This in turn provokes reaction of the kind that we find reflected in terrorism," said the linguistic expert. He suggested a three tier education scheme for education in mother tongue with a bridge opening to a more appealing language such as Urdu and rounding off with education in English. But the system must be applied uniformly throughout the country including in the elite schools.A number of Gojali scholars including Neelam Nigar, Amanullah Mushfiq, Nazir Ahmad Bulbul, Fazal Amin Beg, Adil Beg and Shambi Khan also spoke. They expressed the fear that in Pakistan their Wakhi vernacular faced the danger of extinction unless it received proper attention on the pattern of its conservation and preservation initiated in Xinjiang, China. There, they said, the Wakhi language was being used extensively through comprehensive research initiatives.Fazal Amin Beg said the Wakhi language belonged to the Iranian group of languages, assimilating a number of Persian and Arabic words, but recently it had been overwhelmed by the impinge of technology. He complimented women of letters who had contributed to the richness of the language by writing poetry and ghazals. Adil Beg paid tributes to industrious scholar Haqiqat Ali who was the first to publish the system of Wakhi language characters.Through a consensus, the participants asked every Gojali to speak their own language as well as disseminate it to a wider audience through the media.A Wakhi mushaira was also held on the occasion in which Nazir Ahmad Bulbul, Asmatullah Mushfiq, Hyder Murad, Faiz Rahim, Shambi Khan, Fazal Amin Baig, Abdullah Bai and Rehbar Khan took part. Nazir Ahmad Bulbul presided over the session,Weekly Baang reports.