Three Gawarbati language researchers have started their training in Islamabad. The purpose of the workshop is to help the participants enhance their skills in language documentation. The training is being supervised by the head of Linguistics Department of University of Stockholm, Sweden, Associate Professor Dr. Henrik Liljegren and facilitated by Mr. Fazal Hadi, the Research Team Coordinator, and Mr. Afsar Ali Khan, a Khowar language researcher. FLI’s training manager Mr. Naseem Haider is also moderating sessions during the training. The participants, who have come from Arandu, Chitral are getting hands-on experience in using various tools required for language documentation. These researchers have embarked on a project to document their language to the advanced level with the support of University of Stockholm. On completion of this project, Gawarbati will be among few languages of Pakistan having advanced documentation of the language.

Gawar-bati speakers live along the Kunar River, predominantly in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area near the village of Arandu in the Chitral District of Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan forced many people to move north into Chitral. The word bati means speech of, and some experts say that in Pakistan, Gawar-bati speakers call themselves Kohistani while in Afghanistan they are known as Nuristani. Gawarbati researchers claim that their population in Pakistan has risen to around five thousand.

FLI helped Gawarbati language speakers turn their language into written form, under a one year project in 2016 enabling at least four people from the community to document their project. This project provided a functional writing system for the language with basic publications as well as preserving some folktales. This project motivated many people from the community who continued their work to strengthen their language. FLI published more books in the language in the following years which were authored by the Gawarbati researchers. The current project is hoped to help the language get to the next level of documentation. We highly appreciate the great interest the Gawarbati speakers are showing to work for their language, and extend our assistance in their efforts.

‘‘We may offer a doctoral program in Language Documentation focusing on lesser known languages spoken in nooks and corners of the country, and I would consider such proposal if submitted while collaborating with FLI”, this was said by the chair of Linguistic Department in Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Mr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar. The initiative will pave the way for indigenous languages to be studied at the university level, he added. Mr. Gulzar was speaking at the concluding session of a language documentation workshop, FLI organized in Islamabad. The event concluded yesterday. The five-day workshop was organized in collaboration with University of North Texas (UNT) and Allama Iqbal Open University exclusively for university faculties and students. Twenty eight people including professors, researchers and students from the linguistic departments of eight universities participated in the workshop. Additionally, some individuals from FLI’s partner organizations also attended the workshop.

While addressing the ending session, Dr. Muhammad Kamal termed the event a successful activity which, he thought was helpful for all the participants, and suggested to make the workshop a regular part of the language development program on the pattern of summer institute.  Dr. Sadaf who travelled from UNT to facilitate the workshop also spoke on the occasion and pledged to continue with FLI in future.

Around a dozen languages were represented in the event. The workshop enabled the participants to use new tools and technologies in documenting the languages. It’s hoped that the event will benefit our languages and cement FLI’s relationship with universities’ linguistic departments for future collaboration.

Click here to see the initial report of the workshop