Mr. Sanai pledges to support FLI’s endeavors for preservation of the languages spoken in the Gilgit-Baltistan.
“Preservation and promotion of indigenous languages are great services as our languages are inevitable components of our cultural and linguistic diversity”, this was stated by the Minister for Education of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) who visited FLI’s office Islamabad today (Jan 30, 2020), and added that the appreciable services of FLI will serve the unique cultures of northern Pakistan long into the future. Mr. Sanai met with FLI team members and appreciated the organization’s effort. Earlier he was introduced to the FLI team members and briefed about the future programs. Mr. Sanai resolved to extend his support to the language development works in GB and pledged to play his positive role in enhancing the initiatives of GB government for languages. The honorable minister also applauded the publication work of FLI and expressed his happiness while observing books FLI has published in various indigenous languages of north Pakistan. Mr. Sanai hails from FLI’s target region, and speaks Balti language. Balti is classified among Tibeto-Burman group of languages, spoken in Baltistan region of GB and FLI has had many interventions for development of this language in the past. FLI has also prepared many programs for strengthening this language in the near future and it hopes to enjoy the good support of GB leadership during implementation process of its programs.
FLI reaches another milestone by taking up the Kataviri language, the 20th language the organization has targeted to preserve and promote. FLI conducted a survey during the second week of October in Shekhandeh, Bamburet- Chitral to find out what was the exact status of orality, identity and literacy of the language among the community by using of its famous tools, the Sustainable Use Model (SUM). Six to eight people including young, aged and learned people from the Kati community attended the sessions throughout the six days. The Kataviri language was found vigorous in orality with strong position on identity scale but lagging behind in literacy. Currently, the language lacks a writing system.
The Kataviri language is spoken in hilly peripheries of Chitral valley, sharing the borders with Afghanistan from where the speakers immigrated to the area some 130 years back. The areas the language is spoken include Shekhandeh, Gobor, Langorbat, Badugal, Urtsun etc. in Chitral. The language is called Shekhani by locals which is a group name of Nooristani languages spoken in Chitral; Kataviri and Kamviri, however the native speakers like to be identified as Kati speakers.
Based on the survey outcomes, FLI is planning to strengthen the language in literacy area by helping the community in placing a writing system for their language. For the purpose the basic orthography and writers’ workshop for the community people will be held who will be turning their purely oral language into a written one. FLI has so far enabled hundreds of people from 19 language communities in northern Pakistan to document and develop their native languages and Shekhani is the 20th language FLI has started to develop by enabling its speakers in language documentation.
FLI reaches another milestone by taking up the Kataviri language, the 20th language the organization has targeted to preserve and promote. FLI conducted a survey during the second week of October in Shekhandeh, Bamburet- Chitral to find out what was the exact status of orality, identity and literacy of the language among the community by using of its famous tools, the Sustainable Use Model (SUM). Six to eight people including young, aged and learned people from the Kati community attended the sessions throughout the six days. The Kataviri language was found vigorous in orality with strong position on identity scale but lagging behind in literacy. Currently, the language lacks a writing system.
The Kataviri language is spoken in hilly peripheries of Chitral valley, sharing the borders with Afghanistan from where the speakers immigrated to the area some 130 years back. The areas the language is spoken include Shekhandeh, Gobor, Langorbat, Badugal, Urtsun etc. in Chitral. The language is called Shekhani by locals which is a group name of Nooristani languages spoken in Chitral; Kataviri and Kamviri, however the native speakers like to be identified as Kati speakers.
Based on the survey outcomes, FLI is planning to strengthen the language in literacy area by helping the community in placing a writing system for their language. For the purpose the basic orthography and writers’ workshop for the community people will be held who will be turning their purely oral language into a written one. FLI has so far enabled hundreds of people from 19 language communities in northern Pakistan to document and develop their native languages and Shekhani is the 20th language FLI has started to develop by enabling its speakers in language documentation.
UNESCO has been celebrating September 8 every year as International Literacy Day to draw the world’s attention towards eradication of illiteracy from the world. FLI has been observing this day together with its partner organizations in their respective areas. This year the event was sponsored by FLI in three language communities of northern Pakistan; Palula in Chitral, and Gawri and Torwali in Swat. The respective community organizations invited community elders, opinion makers, influencers, prayer leaders, students and parents to the event and used the opportunity for awareness raising. Speakers shed light on the importance of literacy, especially among women focusing on literacy in the mother tongue. The community elders were also provided chance to speak on the occasion who pledged to support FLI’s and its partner organizations’ vision to empower our communities by equipping them with education. This event has become a regular part of our literacy ventures in our target area which provides our partners the opportunity to meet maximum community people and cement their relationship with them.
Mother Tongue Initiative for Education and Research (MIER), a local language development organization in Chitral held a Language Documentation workshop in collaboration with FLI in Chitral yesterday. The chairperson of linguistic department of the University of North Texas, Ms Sadaf Munshi facilitated the training. More that twenty participants who represented seven languages, spoken in Chitral benefited from the event.
The detailed news, published in a local online newspaper can be read by CLICKING HERE
Four languages of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province are being covered this year under the capacity building training by FLI. These languages have been taken up by the KP Govt to include in govt school curriculum. First training took place in Chitral in the last week of June 2019, for Khowar speaking government school teachers. Next training will be for Hindko, then for Pashto and lastly for Seraiki language will be held in their respective areas. The participants will be reviewing the textbooks to be developed in their languages.
For detailed news, published in a local online newspaper CLICK here
A language vitality survey for Burushaki speech community of Taus, Yasin valley in Ghizer district of Gilgit Baltistan was conducted from June 12 to 17, 2019 under Sustainable Use Model (SUM) workshops. The aim was to see how much the language was sustainable in areas of Orality, Identity and Literature in the above said speech community. The Burushaski, considered as an i[i]solate language by the linguists, spoken by more than [ii]70,000 people in the Hunza and Ghizer areas of GB is one of the literary languages of this country as good amount of religious literature for Ismaili sect of Islam has been developed by some local preachers. According to www.ethnolongue.com the total speakers of this language are estimated to be more than 110,000 people. However, the language faces some issues regarding the standardization of orthography in GB. Different groups use different writing systems to document their heritage language which hinders the promotional work within the community. In addition, the Burushaski language has been surrounded by the Khowar language and Burushaski speaking children are found to be simultaneous [iii]bilingual which pose great threat of language shift.
The workshop was attended by five
participants who later on conducted the survey in the community. This was first
ever intervention of FLI for Burushaski language. The GB government has started
initiatives to make the local languages including Burushaski as part of the
primary school curriculum and FLI is optimistic to support this initiative. The
need of holding a Writers’ Workshop was felt during the workshop which was also
demanded by the participants. FLI will proceed with this demand once the GB government
resolves the issues relating to this language’s writing system.
[i] www.ethnolongue.com
[ii] Participants of the workshop
[iii] Participants’ community survey
Printing books in the indigenous languages of Northern Pakistan is one of the activities of a great significance FLI has been regularly pursuing by encouraging its trainees from various language communities. These books serve well the purpose of language documentation. The latest poetry book, in Ormuri language, written by Mr. Rozi Khan Burki is the third book FLI published in the current year. Earlier a book was printed this year in Gawarbati, a language spoken in Arandu valley, Chitral. The second book FLI published was in the Indus Kohistani language, spoken in the Kohistan area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
FLI has achieved another landmark in the promotion of endangered languages of Pakistan. It has developed Android keyboards for two more endangered languages of its target area, northern Pakistan. With the development of this milestone the Yidgha, spoken in the Lotkuh valley of district Chitral and Indus-Kohistani, spoken in the Indus Valley of Kohistan, KP have joined Shina and Khowar languages for which FLI has already developed keyboards and that are being used by their community people. These keyboards which are ads free and very simple to use, have been made available, like earlier one, on Google Play Store for those in the community who use cell phone. The keyboard for Khowar has got green ticket on the Store for been heavily downloaded and used. Below are the links of the keyboards
