These views were expressed by linguistics at a symposium on International Mother Language Day organised by the Pakistan Academy of Letters on Saturday to observe the International Mother Language Day.
Speaking at the occasion, Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Senator Pervaiz Rashid urged for promotion of the mother language and underlined the need to promote and uplift the language with an aim to enrich the nation’s knowledge.
The minister said Urdu being a national language was indeed a treasure trove of knowledge adding that national and mother languages also play an important role in the development of literature.
He emphasised that culture cannot be promoted by adopting other languages and that only the mother tongue was the most powerful instrument of preserving and developing national heritage.
“When a nation is deprived of its mother tongue, it ceases to develop. It is perhaps due to this reason that the nations around the globe have started to observe International Mother Tongue Day,” he maintained.
“No language can survive by only external support unless its speakers stop considering it as an inferior to other languages In the future only those languages would survive which would have power to compete with other languages,” said writer Dr Attaul Haq Qasmi, adding that many international languages like Sanskrit are dying due to their incompetency.
“There is a struggle between regional languages and Urdu, scholars complain that the regional languages do not get the proper attention because of Urdu, which is wrong,” said professor Fateh Malik.
Dr Atish Durani argued that “Some language experts are responsible for death of their respective languages; the high collective reading habits can help languages in existence,” he stressed.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 22nd, 2015.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ