International Mother Tongue Day: ‘Teach children in their mother tongues’

Call for preservation and promotion of endangered languages.

SWAT: Linguists and scholars have stressed the need for preservation of endangered languages and suggested steps for their promotions, including teaching at primary level in mother tongue.

“No language can be developed and nurtured until its structure is worked out and mass literature is produced in it,” said Muhammad Pervez Shaheen, a language researcher and noted writer of Swat Valley.

He was speaking at a seminar on the occasion of International Mother Tongue Day that was observed in Swat to highlight the importance of languages. The event was organised by Svastu Art and Culture Association, in collaboration with Suchha Likwal Swat and Bacha Khan Trust Foundation.

“Today, dozens of languages spoken in this area are rapidly becoming extinct because the people connected with them are not serious about their revival. They have to structure their languages, develop literature and curriculum books to help save them from extinction,” Shaheen said, who has conducted research on 52 local languages spoken in
northern Pakistan.

Assailing the successive governments policies towards this issue, he said: “It is a great tragedy that whenever we spoke in favour of mother tongues, we have been called anti-Pakistan.”

He further said that the Hindu Kush is like a mine of languages and it is unfortunate that the region’s heritage is likely to die out. “No one will come and learn our languages until we ourselves feel pride in speaking them and make efforts for their promotion and making them the language of science and technology like other developed nations,” the linguist exhorted. “Only those languages that are advanced in science and technology
can survive.”

He also noted that conferences are not the solution for the development of a language; rather it will take proper research and hard work to keep them alive. “History, culture and civilization, everything declines when a language dies,”
he added.

Abdul Aziz Gujjar, upholder of the Gojri language, said “Gujjar is a great nation”, which according to him produced great personalities like Choudhry Rahmat Ali, who coined the name Pakistan; but it is very sad that his grave is in London. “Major Tufail Shaheed also belonged to our nation. We are the real inhabitants of this area,” he claimed. He asked the government to help save Gojri language and culture from decline by starting programmes on TV and radio and including it in the educational syllabus.

Explaining the importance of the mother tongue, Prof Ahmad Fawad said, “The sweetest word of every language is one that means mother. The first word that anyone learns is mother, the first voice that opens the doors of one’s ears and breathes life into his heart and soul is that of a mother. Perhaps, that is the reason that has brought all of the world’s great psychologists, educators and linguists to conclude that the only method of teaching that truly bears fruit is to teach the child in his own language.”

Our world’s rich tapestry of cultural diversity is fading fast as some of our languages are dying, the expressions which were unique and related to this land are diminishing.

The observance of the day highlighted a clear message to all that we have to save our fading languages because they are the only tools by which we preserve and develop our tangible and intangible heritage.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2011.