Khowar language is losing its essence
Pakistan is the most diverse country in the world concerning its culture, languages, and history. It is a country where more than 70 languages are spoken all over its region. Urdu is its national language while English enjoys the status of an official, educational, technological, and commercial language. However, English is also called a language of status in Pakistan, the higher class of the population, and Media (electronic and print media) always prefer English over the other regional languages of Pakistan. This phenomenon of preferring English leads towards the changing of the local and native languages of Pakistan. It is visible in all local languages of Pakistan which are losing their structure, vocabulary and their essence to English.
Khowar is one of the regional languages of Pakistan. It is spoken in different parts of Pakistan and more than 0.8 million people speak Khowar over in Chitral, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Swat Valley. Meanwhile, in Chitral, Khowar is considered as a lingua franca or the main communicative language of the area. It is a literate language, with books, magazines, radio programs, and audio/video documentation. However, it is a fact that the Khowar language is one of the most vulnerable languages in terms of language variation in Pakistan. The English, Pashto, and Farsi languages are the reasons for changing the Khowar language. And from the historical facts, it is evident that since 1980 Khowar language starts fastly losing its essence rather than other languages of Pakistan. There are two main reasons behind this problem, these include the geographical and the educational reasons.
However, from a Geographical perspective, Chitral is located in a unique position. In the northwest, it has a long boundary with Afghanistan while for economic activities it depends upon the Pashto-speaking areas like Dir, Temergiera, and Peshawar. When the Afghan war happened a large number of people had been evicted towards Pakistan. The eviction of Afghan emigrants had also occurred in Chitral. More than forty thousand Afghans had come to Chitral as emigrants. Those Afghan emigrants were mainly settled near the main cities of Chitral where the economic activities happened. And then they were intermixed with the local population of Chitral and they became a reason for affecting the culture and language of Chitral. The Khowar language adopted a lot of words, phrases and o grammatical elements from the Afghani emigrants and those became the permanent part of the Khowar language.
In another way, the Pashto language has also affected the Khowar language since the 1990s. It is because from the 1990s the economic activities have increased in Chitral and economically Chitral is entirely dependent on Pashto-speaking areas. The Chitrali people are directly or indirectly contacted with Pashto speakers and they adopted different words and phrases of Pashto language and these became the native words or phrases of the Khowar language.
However, when it comes to education, it is evident that Education has badly affected the Khowar language. The importance of English in different Educational sectors and institutions are very wrong consequences on Khowar language. The Impact of English on the Khowar language has started since 1999. The educational activities in Chitral have also increased from 1999 and 2000. It has had a lot of positive impact on Chitral and its prosperity. Due to educational activities, the literacy rate of Chitral has increased and it comes among the ten cities of Pakistan in terms of literacy rate. It has a very good impact on the social, and religious life of chitralis.
Hence, when it comes to education the Khowar language has changed due to increased educational activities in Chitral. Nowadays, almost every single sentence of a Khowar language contains one or two English words or phrases. In my recent survey at Numl university Peshawar, it is stated that the Chitrali students have almost forgotten their mother tongue Khowar. Even though there are a lot of words that exist in Khowar language, they preferred English words and phrases. They consciously and unconsciously use English words and phrases in their native language communication. And the Khowar word (Anzawo) is almost extinct from the communication of Chitral students and they use English word (Send) instead of it. It shows that English is going to change our Khowar language completely and in the near future Khowar will lose its purity forever.
As Chitrali it is our responsibility to work for the protection of our mother tongue Khowar language. The protection of Khowar language is very important and there is a need to make a Khowar protection organization. The organization should work on the development, protection and preservation of Khowar language. Moreover, there is a need to develop an application regarding Khowar language and its literature. The application should contain all those things which are important regarding Khowar language and its literature.
However, social media networks can also be used for the development and enhancement of the Khowar language. Facebook, YouTube and social media websites can play a key role in this factor. However, the educational institutions of Chitral can also play an important role in the protection of Khowar language. The education institutions in Chitral can be used to motivate the students toward their native languages. The educational institutions can furnish workshops on the importance of Khowar language and motivate them towards Khowar language and its importance.
Conclusively, it is a fact that the native language is your real identity. Respect for your native language means respecting yourself. Once Nelson Mandela said, “ If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head, but if you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart”. Please take care of your native language Khowar. It is our pride and identity.
