Latest issue of Hindko Academy’s research journal published

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Journal of Languages —— the biannual research-based publication of the Gandhara Hindko Academy — has been published which offers good reading material to the people inclined to linguistic and cultural research.

The editorial board of the journal comprises of Muhammad Ziauddin, chief editor of the publication and chief of executive committee of the academy, Dr. Muhammad Adil, editor and director of the academy, Dr. Aamir Sohail, a research scholar, Dr Muhammad Nawaz, Comsats University, Islamabad, Dr Shahida Asghar, NUML, Islamabad, Dr Tazeen Gul, and Dr Gul Naz Bano, Jinnah College for Women, University of Peshawar, Inamullah Torwali, linguistics coordinator of Hindko Academy, and Ms Gul Arbab, writer and researcher.

The editorial defines mother tongue as the primary or inborn native language of a person. It is a tool through which a person can express his thoughts more smoothly and effortlessly.

It says primary education in the mother tongue is an easy way to accelerate the learning process of the children. The editor suggests to the parents to converse with kids in their mother tongue to foster improved learning.

The journal, according to the editor, is a bid by the academy to create a standard linguistic study publication which covers not only Hindko but also 24 other related Pakistani languages.

Setting the guidelines for the contributors, the editor says, the research articles are published after they are scrutinised by the editorial board.

Dr Rukhsana Qamber in her article titled “Purely Pakistani: Hindko in National Integration” highlights the importance of Hindko as a language that exists in other parts of the country as well, albeit with different proportions, apart from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Hence, she argues, Hindko can serve as a useful tool of integration among different regions of the country.

The author says those who speak Hindko are non-aggressive, humble and accommodative as their language transcends boundaries. She has cited Hindko Sufi poetry, especially composed by a great 19th century mystic poet Saien Ahmad Ali of Peshawar and some international references to validate her point.

The write-up by Inamullah, a Bahrain (Swat) based research scholar, is about Torwali, a language spoken in upper parts of the scenic Swat Valley of KP. The subject matter is “Process and challenges of developing a digital dictionary for Torwali, a lesser-studied language.”

The first dictionary of the language has been published and made available online. In the write-up, the author has dwelt at the challenges for lexicography of Torwali which was previously unwritten but now has a dictionary compiled after data collection.

The piece by Zuber Torwali is captioned “Revitalization of endangered music - a case ofTotwali music”.

The author has focus on the contributions made by his Idara Bara-e-Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) to Torwali music, its significance in fostering the identity-based development and the challenges it had has to overcome in the era of rapidly advancing globalisation and neo-modernity.

The article by Dr Aneela Gill of NUML Islamabad is titled “Trilingual Memory and LexicalAccess: a phenomenological perspective”.

It looks at two of the psycholinguistic phenomena -trilingual memory and lexical access phenomenologically without disregarding the insight gained from psycholinguistic studies. The study employs the phenomenological framework and explores the experiences of Punjabi-Urdu-English (P-U-E) trilinguals to find out the processes these trilinguals utilised for learning and using the three languages.

The write-up “Role of contemporary high-tech in promotion of mother languages” has been co-authored by Dr Muhammad Adil and Omer Rauf.

It talks about the importance of mother languages, the role which technology plays in their promotion and the essential role that the local communities can play in learning and promoting their mother tongues through the use of computer technology.

The article “Languages of Jammu and Kashmir” has been authored by Mian Karimullah Qureshi Karnahi. It gives a basic overview of the land of Kashmir and discusses the languages spoken there, some of which include Kashmiri, Pahari, Gojri, Dardi, Broshiski, Ladakhi, Tibetan and Kundalshahi.