Torwali is a small unwritten language of about eighty thousand people living indigenously in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to its Dard branch of the Kohistani sub-group. Till recently it has been less exposed to the academic community of the world. Since there is no institution in Pakistan and having no national policy on languages, only foreigners and some native speakers get involved in the activities of preservation and documentation of their mother-tongues.
An unwritten language is always vulnerable to endangerment but if the trend of migration among the speech community members to urban areas remains unabated, seriousness of the phenomenon becomes manifold. It is estimated that more than half of the Torwali-speaking people have migrated to bigger cities of Pakistan, such as,Karachi, Quetta, Hyderabad and Rawalpindi, mainly in search of better economic conditions. It is obvious that after two to three decades the community will lose its language since language shifting is quite common among the grown-ups and it is not being transferring to the youngsters. Also, there are no language maintenance plans for checking the gradual decline of the language spoken by a few elders of the language in their respective urban environments.
In my paper I will discuss role of language planners for the revitalization of Torwali language by putting forward some practical propositions. I shall discuss by citing some examples that language documentation is merely a part of the language development process if there is no language revitalization program accompanied with the maintenance. I’ll also suggest uses of modern technology for the revitalization of Torwali language, especially, in connection of Mother-tongue literacy programs. According to its locations such as indigenous and the urban areas, Torwali community would need more than one set of literacy programs. I would discuss literacy prospects for both of the contexts. By arguing in support of the saying, that “books and recordings can preserve languages, but only people and communities can keep them alive”, I shall propose that some kind of mechanism must be discovered to link language development efforts with the overall development of the community in order to check the migration trend in special reference to Torwali language. |
