National conference ponders over future of Sindhi language

HYDERABAD: The Sindhi language is apparently neither under any threat nor will it face any resistance, Sindhi Language Authority (SLA) Chairman Dr Ishaq Samejo pointed out on Sunday. However, he wondered, in the age of modern technology, where will the Sindhi language be, and what can be done about it.

The SLA held a national conference at the Sindh Museum in Hyderabad on the topic of ‘Artificial Intelligence, Technology and the Future of the Sindhi Language’. Mehran University of Engineering & Technology Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Tauha Hussain Ali presided over the opening session of the conference.

Dr Samejo said work has started to save and preserve through AI the dialects that are dying or disappearing, so we should also play our role in bringing our dialect to its original status in modern technology.

Dr Ali said AI is a technology that is greater than robots. Even they have not been able to reach this thought, but kudos to the SLA, which has made a new beginning by holding a conference on this topic, he added.

He said that the youth are our future. Today’s youth have more knowledge than their teachers, because a teacher’s job is to teach and guide, but in today’s age there are many opportunities for training and guidance, he added.

Addressing the teachers and experts in attendance, Hyderabad Commissioner Khalid Haider Shah stressed that educational institutions have a primary role to work on AI and advanced technology.

Experts emphasised the need for all institutions to act as task forces to collect more and more Sindhi language vocabulary on an internet portal to provide opportunities to students, teachers and scholars working in the IT sector.

In the second and third sessions of the national conference, experts and scholars in various fields of IT and modern technology presented their papers and gave suggestions on the future of Sindhi dialect in AI and modern technology.

Those who spoke included Dr Ehsan Ahmed Ursani, Dr Azhar Ali Shah, Muhammad Yaqoob Kondhar, Dr Sakinah Shah Rashidi, Hassanin Mehboob, Zulfiqar Ali Maher, Dr Ayaz Kerio, Amar Fayyaz, Dr Mazhar Ali, Dr Mutiur Rehman, Dr Muhammad Nawaz, Dr Waheed Kalwar and Dr Rafiq Ahmed Bhatti.

At the end of the conference, SLA Secretary Dr Ehsan Danish said that to secure the future of the Sindhi dialect, there is an urgent need to connect it with the modern world.

“This conference was the first attempt of the authority to promote the Sindhi dialect using technology in the era of AI, from which we have yielded many results, and we’ll be able to work on the basis of them.”