Situationer: The future of Gujarati language in Pakistan

[waz]

It's because of numbers, too few people speak it and the population of Pakistan does not have the Gujarati ethnic group, aside folks who migrated. Punjabi and Pashto on the other hand lol.

 

[Kabira]

Gujarati isn't spoken anywhere in Pakistan as native tongue. In Karachi native languages who have some future are pashto, punjabi and sindhi to some extent because of constant influex of people from other parts of Pakistan.

 

[Areesh]

well they are not much in numbers except Hyderi and old city area, why dont they integrate in Urdu speaking community?

Not really they are present in all the city. From Hyderi to Old city area to Gulshan to Karimabad to many other areas. They are well integrated but they also speak their native language which isn't a wrong thing to do in my opinion.

Why dont make a mixture of four provincial languages [Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, Baluchi] and start calling it Pak zoban aka Pak language and make it national language.. It wont be difficult i suppose.

Bhai language bana rahai ho ya falooda? Mix four languages and create a new one.

Languages don't come into exist in that manner. It takes centuries for a language to come into its mature form.

 

[marbella]

a whole lot of people from various communities can speak gujarati and memoni kutchi sindhi. most of the bohras,agakhanis , memons use it as their home language or as code language.
marhoom edhi sa'b used to speak gujarati.

 

[Max]

Not really they are present in all the city. From Hyderi to Old city area to Gulshan to Karimabad to many other areas. They are well integrated but they also speak their native language which isn't a wrong thing to do in my opinion.



Bhai language bana rahai ho ya falooda? Mix four languages and create a new one.

Languages don't come into exist in that manner. It takes centuries for a language to come into its mature form.

according to wikipedia there number are less then those illegal bengalis living in Karachi. I agree they have presence in other area's too but other ethnic group dominate those towns hence i only mention 2 of their most populated area's.

As for language, falooda is need of time, linguistic experts will take it to perfection with time if govt take interest, i am not saying make this fussion now and impose next year.. Ofcourse it will take time.

 

[PK_Patriot]

The Gujarati language is facing an uncertain future in this country, to put it mildly. At least its written form is in danger of a slow death. Although a living and vibrant language in India, Gujarati is suffering from an apparent indifference from the very people who speak it as their native language in Pakistan.

A recent decision by the National Database and Registration Authority sums up the plight this language now finds itself in. Nadra has omitted Gujarati from the column asking the applicant about his mother tongue.

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Interestingly enough, both Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi spoke Gujarati. Mr Jinnah, by the way, knew Persian as well because his mother spoke the language.

Spoken by over 50 million people, Gujarati is the 26th most widely spoken language in the world. The majority of native speakers of Gujarati lives in the Indian state of Gujarat. Apart from Gujarat, the regions where the language is spoken as first language include some area of Maharashtra (like Mumbai), Pakistan (especially Karachi), Bangladesh, a few African countries — where Gujarati-speaking Indians had settled centuries ago — and, of course, countries where Gujarati-speaking immigrants live in large numbers, such as the United Kingdom and the United States.

A branch of the Indo-Aryan family of languages, Gujarati evolved from Sanskrit and Prakrit, according to linguists. But modern Gujarati took shape in the early 19th century. It has its own script that has evolved from Sanskrit and Hindi scripts and many letters in the Gujarati alphabet are almost like the ones in Hindi’s Devanagari script. However, the Gujarati script does not have a horizontal line that is put above every word in Hindi.

The Gujarati literature’s oldest written record dates back to the 17th century. But it was Alexander Kinloch Forbes, a British officer and scholar in the government of British India, who gave a fillip to the language and literature of Gujarati by encouraging local writers.

Forbes was instrumental in getting the first Gujarati play written, the first Gujarati newspaper and literary magazine published. He also established a library in Surat in 1850 and Gujarati Sabha in Mumbai in 1865.

The number of Gujarati speakers in Pakistan is declining fast and one of the reasons is that the new generation of Gujarati-speaking does not use it. The few who do so speak it strictly within the family or community. Since most of the youth, the descendants of Gujarati-speaking communities, cannot read the script, Gujarati-language publications in Pakistan face an imminent death.

Gujarati is spoken in Pakistan by those who migrated from present-day India after the creation of this country. Some of the communities that had settled here before 1947 and did not migrate to India after Partition, still speak Gujarati. The communities that still speak Gujarati are the Bohras, Parsis, Hindus, Ismailis, Kutchi Memon and Kathiawari Memon. They are mainly settled in Karachi, adding colour to the city’s multi-lingual, multi-ethnic scene.

Although a minority language in Pakistan, Gujarati is the official language of India’s Gujarat state, where Hindi is the “additional official language”.

Many senior citizens would recall that Gujarati was taught at many schools in Karachi. There used to be Gujarati-medium schools and students were allowed to use it as the medium of answer in secondary and higher secondary examinations. Special arrangements were made to assess such answer scripts. This was in vogue from independence till the early 1970s, when schools were nationalised.

In those days Gujarati journalism in Karachi was doing well. At least two daily news papers, Millat and Dawn Gujarati, were brought out from this city. In addition, there used to be an evening newspaper, Vatan.

Daily Millat and Vatan are still alive, but face a bleak future as the number of readers is falling steadily .

‘Millat’, launched by Fakhr Matri in 1948, added a few pages in Urdu about 20 years ago to win over younger readers, but the experiment does not seem to have paid off.

A few Gujarati magazines, too, appeared from this city till the 1990s. Newspapers, magazines and books were imported from India and some of them enjoyed immense popularity.

For instance, many people (this writer among them) would recall that their elders used to read Chakram and Chitralekha, magazines imported form Indian Gujarat. These were very popular among Gujaratis in India and Pakistan. N.J. Golibar, the editor of Chakram, was a well-known figure among Gujaratis of Karachi back in the 1960s. Some columnists of Chitralekha were household names.

Mushaeras
Gujarati ‘mushaeras’ were a regular feature in Karachi. And attendance at such events used to be good. But with the passage of time, all this seems a distant memory.

The second generation of Gujarati-speaking migrants from India, who settled in Karachi, knew Gujarati and were able to read and write it.

The later generations, however, lost interest in this language as they did not see any prospect while the Urdu and English languages offered lucrative jobs and were useful in education as well as for everyday communication in society.

Nowadays only the elderly read and write Gujarati while most of the younger ones (young only in a relative sense) cannot even speak it fluently.

The loss of a language is indeed a matter of concern — not for linguists or anthropologists alone but also for anyone interested in culture.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017

Gujrati Dosa has a brighter future as compare to Gujrati language in Pakistan

 

[Mamluk]

it wont, Baluchi, Pashto, Punjab, Sindhi are local languages which have nothing to with gangaland..

And what is India? Ancient name of indus valley later extended by foreign invaders into ganga plains..

we dont have any problem to associate ourselves with real india, indica, Hind, Hindush which is drived from our land and civilization aka land of indus. I have problem associating with fake one in ganga plains.

India is just a bastardized term for Sindh. Like Bombay is a bastardized term for Mumabi.

So we already have India. We are not part of India, but India is one of the regions that constitute Pakistan.

As for language, falooda is need of time, linguistic experts will take it to perfection with time if govt take interest, i am not saying make this fussion now and impose next year.. Ofcourse it will take time.

Too complicated.

Just take Dari and develop a Pakistani flavor.

 

[Max]

India is just a bastardized term for Sindh. Like Bombay is a bastardized term for Mumabi.

So we already have India. We are not part of India, but India is one of the regions that constitute Pakistan.



Too complicated.

Just take Dari and develop a Pakistani flavor.

leave this complicated work to linguistic experts, we already have our version of Dari called urdu..

You didnt understand my point, why should we speak foregin language when we have our own..

 

[Spring Onion]

lo idhar pashto bhi risk pe hay peshawari hindko bhi aur inko sirf gujrati ki pari hay.
waisay isnt there Raj Rasoi restaurant in Karachi?

 

[Mamluk]

You didnt understand my point, why should we speak foregin language when we have our own..

Well I'm happy as long as we can distance ourselves from Ganges - no matter what language we speak. Having things in common gives the tropical guy the impression that they belong to our civilization.

 

[_Khawaja]

A lot of the Pakistanis I know in America are from the Gujrati ethnicity, they run a lot of businesses and most of them speak Urdu and English here. Anyways, it isn't a native language of Pakistan so it isn't the govts responsibility to preserve it.

It would be like expecting the British govt to preserve Punjabi/Potwari just cause a minority of Britons have Punjabi ancestry.

 

[Max]

Well I'm happy as long as we can distance ourselves from Ganges - no matter what language we speak. Having things in common gives the tropical guy the impression that they belong to our civilization.

so you can tolerate a Afghan or farsi on your head saying you 200 million speak borrowed language of 50 million farsis. [not inculuding Pashto, Kurdi, Balochi, Azeri, Arabic speakers etc].

I cant.. World's Sixth, soon to be fifth largest Nation deserve its uniqueness, there is no pride in being clone of other nations especially smaller Nations..

 

[Kamikaze Pilot]

Pakistan should go for Urdu and one international language Chinese and English

Why Chinese? And if order is any indication, you give more significance to it than even English!

 

[war&peace]

Why Chinese? And if order is any indication, you give more significance to it than even English!

Chinese is being taught in schools even in Sweden as China is the rising power...and that's the difference between an actual power and "apne munh mian mathoo" that the world acknowledges it. Pakistan and China are two friendly nations and after CPEC, there will be a lot of interaction between the two nations and thus it it makes a lot of sense.

 

[Kamikaze Pilot]

Chinese is being taught in schools even in Sweden as China is the rising power...and that's the difference between an actual power and "apne munh mian mathoo" that the world acknowledges it. Pakistan and China are two friendly nations and after CPEC, there will be a lot of interaction between the two nations and thus it it makes a lot of sense.

Okay. What do I care?

I was just surprised that a country like China (I wanted to use stronger words but I refrain due to mod's interference) could be so popular that you want to use Chinese language on par with English. It's a pleasant comedy to me.

By the way, please tag somebozo and let him know your views on Chinese language. Hee! Hee!