Info minister says about 80 languages are spoken in Pakistan, out of which 26 facing extinction due to various reasons

ISLAMABAD    -   Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurang­zeb said on Monday that ‘mother language’ was the identity of ev­ery individual and it was imper­ative to protect and preserve all languages.

Addressing the inaugural session of International Training Work­shop on ‘Language Documentation ‘ at Allama Iqbal Open Universi­ty (AIOU), she said that global ac­tion was needed for protection and preservation of languages.

“In the modern world, many lan­guages are on the verge of extinc­tion and their documentation is needed for the protection of en­dangered languages,” she main­tained.

Appreciating the AIOU for this initiative, she said that languages bring together different cultures and societies.

The minister said that the younger generation needed to be made aware about their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Marriyum Aurangzeb said that multilingual culture was essential for the development of any society and country as languages bring to­gether different cultures and seg­ments of the societies.

“Our history shows the impor­tance of language, but in the pres­ent age the young generation is detached from its culture and history”, she said, adding it was the need of the hour to teach the young generation about the im­portance of languages.

She said that about 80 languag­es were spoken in Pakistan, out of which 26 were facing extinction due to various reasons.

The minister said that the im­portance of one’s language out­side the country could not be de­nied as language represented the culture and heritage and was the identity of any person.

The minister said this work­shop was the beginning of a chap­ter that would help in understand­ing the importance of languages; she said adding the government would provide all possible sup­port to AIOU for a linguistic man­agement system.

She said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif himself spoke six world languages, and he was well aware of the importance of lan­guage as “Language fosters social relations and language is a force that strengthens cultures.”

“Unfortunately, our curriculum lacks all these things. We have to make our young generation and children aware of the importance of languages. We have to increase our children’s connection with our language,” she said.

She said PTV and Radio Paki­stan’s platforms could also be used to promote the initiative, and this program would be aired regularly to create awareness about the im­portance of native languages.

She said that this initiative of the Open University was not only a documentation of language but also a documentation of culture, history, heritage and national identity, which should also include schools, universities and colleges.

The minister said that this ini­tiative could be easily incorporat­ed in the curriculum of the Federal Directorate of Education and dis­cussions would be held with the provinces in this regard.

She said that language documen­tation could be started in schools, colleges and

Universities and various meth­ods and tools could be used to make this initiative a success.

The four-day workshop has been organized by Allama Iqbal Open University’s Centre for Lan­guages and Translation Studies and ORIC in collaboration with the University of North Texas, USA and Englishers LLL Interna­tional Turkey.

The workshop is being attend­ed by Eric Englert and Dr Sadaf Munshi, Director of Workshops from the University of North Texas USA and Jonathan Paramore from the University of California.