Workshop held for preservation of Dameli Language, Chitral

Forum for Language Initiatives (FLI), Islamabad held a one-week Advanced Orthography Workshop for the language community of Dameli on Jul 22-26 with financial assistance from Small Grants and Ambassador’s Fund Program of USAID. The Workshop was held in Aspar village in Damel Valley of Chitral. 15 people from the community comprising of local writers, researchers and teachers attended the workshop. FLI’s training facilitators Mr. Inamullah, Mr. Nasim Haider and a reputed Khowar language promoter Mr. Farid Ahmad Raza assisted the workshop participants in learning the language documentation processes. The main objectives of the workshop were to help the community to discover the grammatical structure and enhance the work to standardize the writing system of the language. UNESCO has declared ‘Dameli’ one of the extremely endangered languages of Pakistan. FLI with support of community language researchers is committed to preserve this language along with other national heritages of Pakistan. The workshop was one of the series of activities FLI has planned in its one-year project supported by Small Grants and Ambassador’s Fund Program of USAID. Gawarbati and Yidgha of Chitral while Ushojo of Swat are the languages to be covered by the project. The workshop will be followed –up with field works and publications in vernacular languages.