Media Matters for Lesser Known Languages

“The teacher was furious at me when she saw me last time using my mother tongue to converse with my son. Since then, I communicate with my elder son in English and Urdu, and with the younger one in Pashto as he is yet to start going to school”. This was shared by Tariq Ullah while speaking at a group discussion about the lesser known languages of Pakistan. Tariq is working with BBC Pashto, promoting his mother tongue through this international media house, but, interestingly he is not allowed to speak it at his home, especially with his school going child.

The discussion was about to amplify what the lesser known languages were going through. Lehaz Ali, also from Peshawar who works with AFP, was happy to know about FLI, its services for lesser known languages.

Fazal Hadi, one of the speakers, put his focus on major things; that the indigenous wisdom, knowledge and roots of people’s history will disappear once we lose our indigenous languages. Fakhruddin, the executive director of FLI, said that first we are to come out of this confusion that learning a language, be it the English, can never be an alternative to ‘getting education’. “Let’s let our children get educated first and go to learn the language then” he suggested. He shared that Swedish were the most fluent in English among non-English speaking nations. But in Sweden’s schools, he said that English classes are conducted only twice a week and that’s also from the grade eight.

Earlier, the discussion was started by Zaman Sagar, a senior man in documentation of indigenous languages, who started working on his mother tongue, Gawri in 1993. Gawri is spoken in Upper Swat Kohistan area, including the tourists’ heaven, Kalam. He, in his presentation, showed what the current position of the languages spoken in north Pakistan and how multilingual the region was.

A get together for media persons to discuss the issues the lesser known languages, especially those spoken in the northern part of the country are going through was organized in Islamabad last Monday.  Ten media persons, working with national and international media houses, all belonged to Peshawar participated in the event. Mr. Sagar while referring to the findings of Hywel Coleman, a British author who conducted a survey in Pakistan on why Pakistanis, despite having sixteen years of education in the language are unable to get proficiency in English, said that because we don’t begin our schooling in our native languages.

Hadi added that UNESCO has made it clear, after years’ long research, that ‘children learn quickly when they are taught in their mother tongue’. The discussion ended up reaching the understanding that our lesser known languages deserve much more respect than how we treat them. Early education, especially pre-primary, must be in the mother tongue of children. And also, that our society must accept its linguistic and cultural diversity.