Are regional languages slowly becoming extinct?

Pashto faces endangerment despite millions of speakers, requiring urgent steps for revival and preservation.

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Pashto and other regional languages may appear to be thriving with millions speaking it as their mother tongue, but there is another more important aspect to a living language: its place in education; its political support; its role in business, administration, law and state policy; and its internal corpus in grammar, literature and history.

A language consists of not only the mother tongue which, by all accounts in so far as Pashto is concerned, is alive, but also the written cannon, the grammar, the literature, history, syntax and idiom, which by all accounts, is languishing under threat of other predominant languages like Urdu and English.

David Crystal in his classic, Language Death (Cambridge 2000), observes that the gradual extinction of many minority (regional) languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern in terms of cultural identity and regional national existence and character. By some accounts, 600 of the 6,500 or so languages in the world are "safe" from the threat of extinction. On some reckonings the world will be dominated by a small number of major languages in a few hundred years with the devastating loss it will cause to the culture, history and literature of numerous languages.

The Quebec 1992 UN Charter succinctly described 'the disappearance of a language as a threat to mankind".

Imagine what could happen if English continues to grow, as it has, as a dominant or national language in the face of regional languages. Maybe one day it will be the only language to learn. 'If that happens that will be the greatest intellectual and cultural disaster the planet has ever known.'

What is language death? According to the Encyclopedia of Linguistics there are 6,000 to 6,300 languages in the world.

The world's languages have a highly uneven distribution: 4 per cent are in Europe; 15 per cent in the Americas; 31 per cent in Africa; and 50 per cent in Asia and the Pacific

A language is said to be dead when no one speaks it anymore. It may be present in records or archives but unless and until it has fluent speakers it would not be a living language.

Deprived Languages

A language which has a large number of speakers (like Pashto spoken by nearly 65 million people on both sides of the Durand Line) may yet be in danger of death because of domination of other languages like Urdu and English due to state policies in primary and secondary education and overall attitude towards regional versus national languages.

In most countries like Pakistan, census data is not recorded on language basis. A safe position for being adopted is that 50 per cent of all languages will be lost in the next 100 years which means 3,000 language loss in 100 years or one language may be lost in every two weeks or so.

Michael Krauss makes the following classifications of danger to indigenous languages: a) safe; b) endangered; c) extinct; and d) moribund

Moribund languages are no longer being learned as a mother tongue; there is no intergenerational transfer of mother tongue.

The intergenerational transfer may occur at the colloquial, speech level but there is no learning or transfer of language at the written, grammatical, literary levels.

Thus Pashto may not qualify to be called a 'moribund' language but one critical aspect it lacks from being a vibrant, living language is that it is no longer being learnt as a mother tongue in schools and education and at the literary, syntax, grammatical and lexicological levels.

Pashto is an endangered language spoken by enough people to make survival a possibility. But in the case of regional languages, the state policy regarding the place and patronage of indigenous languages in education, media, arts, cultural organisations, place in job market and community support is critical.

Pashto and other regional languages in Pakistan can be aptly called 'deprived' languages where an indigenous language has come to be less and less used in educational, political and other public situations - courts, media, government - because its roles have been taken over by dominant languages like Urdu, English and other lingua franca.

Pashto like the Dutch language has danger of becoming a more 'colloquial language' - a language you speak at 'home' with your family or friends which best describe your emotions but not as a 'full blooded' language used as a cultural tool and in the multifarious dimensions of the society, economy, politics and literature, as a means for expression of serious things in life like work, courts, money, sciences and technology.

What are the steps required to revive an endangered language?

1. The most important step towards revival of an endangered language is to introduce it as a compulsory subject at primary and secondary levels of education with adequate attention to teaching materials and teacher training.

2. An endangered language will progress if their speakers increase their prestige through access to media and enhance activity in community settings like mosques, churches, social centres and town halls, increasing visibility in more and more sectors of public domain like business, commerce, law, courts and public administration. Public support is required for using indigenous names for road signs, place names and public signs.

3. An endangered language will progress if their speakers increase their wealth relative to the dominant community, for instance, through tourism in the case of Romansch in Switzerland.

4. An endangered language will progress if its speakers increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community. Under the 1992 EU Charter for Regional or Minority languages, it is legally binding on the ratifying countries offering protection for regional languages in crucial walks of life.

If the experience of the children in speech and writing is through a dominant language, the indigenous language will fail to thrive.

Knowing a language's history, folklore and literature will be a great source of reassurance.