The Death of a Language, By Dr. Tariq Rahman

The Death of a Language

Dr. Tariq Rahman

In March 2004 a linguistic field researcher, Muhammad Zaman, visited the Bishigram valley on foot. They started from Madyan (Swat) by jeep but had to complete their perilous journey on foot as the road ends before the valley begins. A tribe called Badeshi lives here. All the accounts by linguists used to report that they speak a language called Badeshi which was said to be a variety of the Persian of Badakhshan. Once upon a time they come from Badakhslan and must have spoken the language but now it is dead. The tribe, numbering around 600-700, speak Torwali in Bishigram. This report, recording the death of a language, was given to me by Dr. Johann Baart of the Summer School of linguistics which has done more work to record the languages of Pakistan than any other institution in this country. Dr Baart, who is leaving the country after thirteen years of dedicated linguistic research here, has done us linguisits a great favour by getting this survey completed before his departure.

The report, brief as it is, set me thinking. It also made me sad. But why should one be saddened by the death of a language which probably existed only about a hundred years ago or so? Why should one bother at all? The answer is provided by a number of linguists who argue that the death of a language is the extinction of a worldview, of a certain identity, of local knowledge, of oral literature and sayings and songs etc—of all that which adds to our rich heritage. As there are linguists who link language diversity with biological diversity it may even be true that when a language dies we lose a part, however small, of our knowledge of the world. Some people, after all, even claim that there are countless plants, herbs, animals and minerals in nature which are useful for humans. Local languages have names for them and when they die, these names also die. Thus the useful knowledge which the language contains also dies.

Linguists also advance another argument for preserving weak languages. They argue that insights into human languages can only be gained if one has a large data. This data is provided by studying more and more languages. So, if languages die, their field of study becomes narrower and the frontier of human knowledge shrink. I confess, however, that this argument cannot appeal to anyone except a professional linguist. Understandably, other people are not interested in studying the phenomenon of human language as such and do not appreciate what they stand to lose.

There is, however, another argument which not linguists but political scientists and sociologists often make. They say that a language represents a certain ethnic or group identity. This identity comes under severe pressure and gets eroded when a language dies. The speakers either merge in a larger group losing their culture, values, dress, food, norms of behaviour and so on or become shadows of their former selves. They become suspended between dominant groups with no roots. Besides harming their self-respect or authenticity as a group, such rootlessness also leads to personal crises including crime and depression such as is often witnessed among American Indians and blacks who have lost their language and cultures.

Because of these arguments linguists are paying a lot of attention to reversing language shift (RLS) i.e. ensuring that people who are leaving their own languages in order to speak dominant languages should switch back to their own languages. Although the UNESCO agrees with this point of view and emphasizes mother-tongue teaching, most people are against it.

Those who are against it are governments, educational authorities, parents of young pupils and very often the pupils themselves. Governments want to spread a dominant language in order to create a single nation and also because it is cheaper (translations and material in many languages are expensive). Educational authorities have much the some reasons and also because if they operate in one language they have less administrative headaches. The parents want their children to learn the languages which will get them jobs and prestige. And the pupils, after their initial bewilderment when they face an alien language, find it easier to work in a language which will be useful for them in the future. Moreover, they enjoy looking down upon those who do not know the elitist language they know.

With such powerful adversaries how can threatened languages be saved? They can be saved by appealing to the people’s sense of identity. By invoking the need for retaining cultural authenticity in the face of modernity and globalization. In some communities, generally when ethnicity is a political issue, such a sense of language identity is strong. In other, especially in minority language communities which are most threatened, this sense is weaker. The point is to make people proud of their language.

The government, especially the educational authorities, can help by creating policies to teach children--all children including those in elitist schools—in their mother tongues. Such an experiment has been undertaken in many countries and languages which would have died, such as Basque and Catalan in Spain, have not only survived but have become stronger than they were fifty years ago. Schools can really help because it was the schooling system which made Hebrew the living language of Israel. But besides schools the language must be used in some other jobs as well—even at the local district government level—to give it some power.

As there is much talk about creating an educated Punjab (Parha likha Punjab), we can begin with Punjabi. It is the mother tongue of most Pakistanis and it is not an unrefined form of Urdu; it is a language in its own right. It does share some vocabulary items with Urdu but that makes the two cognates as are many other languages of the world. Indeed, since most languages of Europe, Iran and North India and Pakistan are from the Indo-European family and there are similarities between them. That does not make Urdu a refined form of Punjabi. Indeed, there is no such thing as a refined language. Languages are put to different uses and words are developed according to these functions. If we start using Punjabi in the court, it will soon develop a legalistic vocabulary. If we start using it in the leisured classes who can afford to be very polite and cultured, Punjabi will develop a vocabulary of high culture.

As it is we tend to marginalize Punjabi by being ashamed of it. We even call it the language of the rustics washing our urban hands off it. Punjabi is, indeed, the biggest language of Pakistan so its spoken form is not threatened. But the written form is almost dead. Only some writers and activists—like Saeed Farani’s series of writings on the classical Punjabi poets—keep the literary language alive. Fakhar Zaman’s World Punjabi conferences and the Punjabi Lok Mela on 21 February 2004 are welcome signs that activists have not given up. But the Punjabi middle and upper classes have given up. If Punjabi is to be given life this is the time to teach it in all schools to all children in the Punjab. And why stop at Punjabi? We are rich in languages. Let us treat them as cultural assets and not liabilities. As it is, the forces of globalization and modernity are killing the languages of the world at a very fast pace. Let us, at least, change our language policy so as to add English and Urdu to our repertoire of linguistic skills without destroying our mother-tongues, our authentic selves, our culture and our identity.