It is encouraging to see that the Universities of Pakistan have started taking the subject of linguistics in a positive manner. The Air University Islamabad, a reputable institution in the private sector is working ardently to strengthen its Linguistic Department and has been organizing training workshops to enhance the capacity of its faculty members in certain areas. More fascinatingly, FLI helps this university in its endeavors by helping it equip its students and faculty through training workshops.

We take the pride that one of the FLI’s trainees; Mr. Afsar Ali Khan has been facilitating a series of trainings on Phonetics & Phonology in the Air University assisting the participants to understand the very technicalities of the theme. His participants included not only the students but a number of faculty members, from the various universities also attended the training.

FLI held this orthography workshop for the Wakhi language in the last quarter of the year 2017 in Passu, Hunza- GB with the objectives of discovering the unique sounds exist in the language, the characters to describe such sounds, orchestrating alphabets and resolving other orthography issues aiming to develop a systemic writing system with the consent of concerned community.

Wakhi is spoken in the sparsely populated upper portions of four of the northernmost valleys in Pakistan: Hunza (Gojal), Ishkoman, Yasin, and Yarkhun. The latter is located in Chitral District while the others are in the Northern Areas. The total number of Wakhi speakers is estimated to be between 7,500 and 10,000. FLI has the objective to flatten the orthography disputes among many groups within the communities by collaborating with community members so that not only our main goal of language documentation could increasingly be achieved but also the confusion faced by young writers with regards to adopting any standardized writing system detached amicably.

 

 

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FLI for the first time, with the partnership of Payap University, Thailand, was able to offer a year-long course to any of its language development trainees that provided a certificate from an accredited international university. This was very valuable partnership FLI has had in its history which enhanced organizational management skills of the participants. 12 participants from eight language communities; three from south and nine from north Pakistan benefited from the program.

The main objectives of the 13 credit course, among many were:

• Introducing the participants to the interplay of interpersonal skills and diversity in an organizational setting;
• Ability to identify the benefits and challenges of a diverse work environment and understand the unifying and motivating effect that effective core values can have on an organization;
• Understanding the system thinking and identity the strengths and weaknesses in their organizational systems;
• Identification of the essential habits of high performing teams and ways to strengthen the effective habits of their teams etc.

The certificates were awarded to the trainees in Islamabad on 12 Apr 2017. FLI also distributed experience certificates among those who facilitated the course while the services of our Language Consultant and Training Coordinator were appreciated and honoured by presenting them shields from Executive Director of FLI.

Another Khowar Book “Khowar Muhavirey” (Khowar Idioms) has been brought up by Mr. Afsar Ali Khan, a language researcher from Chitral (Khowar). This collection of Khowar Idioms is the second book from this young writer who has translated the native idioms into Urdu. He wrote “Khowar Matalan Gurzain” last year by collecting Khowar Proverbs. Both of his books have been published by FLI along with providing the writer other technical services; designing.