Kalkoti language gets first intervention for its documentation

FLI took up the 22^nd language, Kalkoti, to work on, by initiating the developing steps first with identifying the issues the language is facing. The three day long intervention, called Issues in Language Development (ILD) workshop just concluded in Kalkot area of Upper Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In total, 13 people from the community attended the activity. The purpose of the workshop was to lay the foundation of development work for the Kalkoti language by identifying the primary issues which may come in way of its documentation in future. The participants showed great interest to serve their language by taking part in all the sessions and contributed in successful implementation of first activity. They resolved to preserve and promote their native language and pass on to their young generations.

Kalkoti, a Dardic language is spoken by more than 6500 people in Kalkot village of Dir Kohistan. Although merely verbal and not in written form, the language is vigorous as all age groups of the community uses their native language for oral communication. However, due to close proximity, most of the community people are bilingual using Pashto side by side, the largest language of the province which has threatened the language as many linguists fear of a language shift in future.

Therefore, by expanding its services, FLI has reached out to Kalkoti before it’s too late. More interventions will be carried out to strengthen the language by involving the community people and by providing language development training to them. It’s hoped that the language will soon be turned into a written form to facilitate the educated people including youth from the community to use their language also for written communication and publications.

So far, FLI has formally provided various development services to 21 languages spoken in the northern Pakistan focusing on enabling the community researchers so that they could work for their languages. It makes us glad that the Kalkoti language finds itself ready to get developed and ask for documentation. We assure the Kalkoti language researchers of a full cooperation with technical help and available resources in future.