We are thrilled to announce that Gawarbati, spoken in the southern Chitral Valley, has undergone a comprehensive documentation process, preserving its linguistic and cultural aspects. This achievement was made possible through a project initiated in 2020 by Dr. Henrik Liljegren, a renowned Swedish linguist.

The project’s success is a testament to the joint efforts of Stockholm University, the Forum for Language Initiatives (FLI), and the Gawarbati language community. The project, titled the Gawarbati Language Documentation and Digitalization Project, was financed by the Swedish Research Council and implemented by Stockholm University in collaboration with FLI. The project aimed to document the Gawarbati language by creating a corpus of 24 hours of recordings, annotations, and translations from various aspects of life. Additionally, it aimed to digitalize the existing handwritten dictionary.

To celebrate this milestone, a gathering was held in Kalkatak village, south Chitral, with esteemed guests including Dr. Henrik, FLI Executive Director Fakhruddin Akhunzada, and community leaders Haji Sultan, Mullah Adina Shah, and Abdul Majid Khan.

During the closing ceremony, the newly printed Gawarbati language cultural calendar was launched. Community leaders and speakers expressed their gratitude to Dr. Henrik and FLI for scientifically documenting their language. Dr. Henrik congratulated the Gawarbati community on achieving the project objectives, while Fakhruddin pledged continued support for language strengthening initiatives.

This achievement not only celebrates the Gawarbati language but also promotes linguistic diversity in the region.

“FLI has emerged as a heritage savior, and an organization which believes in practical work, not just with the rhetoric”, this was said by Mr. Maisum Kazim, the tourism minister of Gilgit Baltistan (GB). He said that the protection and promotion of cultural heritage would strengthen our cultural diversity leading to promoting tourism and widening the horizon of job opportunities in the region. He was addressing the concluding session of a workshop, FLI held at Baltistan University of GB for Balti language researchers. Mr. Raja Nasir, the minister for culture also spoke on the occasion and praised the services FLI has been rendering to protect and promote the indigenous languages of Pakistan.

FLI held a workshop last week in Skardu city of Gilgit Baltistan for Balti language researchers to facilitate them in identification of writing issues in their language. Twenty eight people including senior researchers and university students attended the three day event which also provided the participants an opportunity to look for how to agree on various terms primarily to finding solutions to the identified issues relating to orthography of the language.

FLI, few years back held a media seminar in the city which aimed at creating awareness among journalist community regarding the importance of indigenous language development. FLI assured the media persons of its cooperation with regards to provision of data for their research and reporting so that the wider proportion of society could be reached out with research based information and findings.

The recent workshop has involved learned individuals from the Balti language community which is hoped to facilitate the participants in their endeavor. The identification of orthography issues will help the researchers reach an agreement for their resolution. We hope that the participants will continue working towards development of their language.

Balti is spoken in the Northern Areas (Gilgit-Baltistan) of Pakistan and adjoining parts of Ladakh, India. It is closely related to those languages found in Tibet. Balti has several genres of folk and classical literature. While there are some proverbs and epic stories within the oral tradition, the existing literature is all poetry. The Balti community people claim that there are around a million people in Pakistan who speak the language as their mother tongue.

FLI held its first intervention for preservation and promotion of Bateri language last week. Four people from the community participated in the six day activity. The main objective of the activity was to develop a plan for how to preserve and promote the language and also to discover the main vulnerabilities in terms of use of the language so the future events will be based on. It was found out that lack of documentation of the language was creating challenges for those from the community who wanted to work for their language.

FLI has planned to hold documentation activities for Bateri language and soon the next activity will be conducted so that the measures to document the Bateri language could be accelerated and the community people be empowered and enabled to carry out the work.

Bateri, a Dardic language is spoken in Batera, which is in the southern region of the Kohistan district along the east bank of the Indus River. Community people say that there are 20,000 people in the area who speak the language as their mother tongue.

There are people from the Bateri language who have been participating in the enabling events FLI has, time to time been organizing but, the recent event was the dedicated event and specific to document the Bateri language. It’s hoped that more activities will be carried out for its preservation and promotion.