Endangered Kalasha Language and Literacy
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The current socialinguistic position of Kalasha language ” Kalashamondr” exhibits a great many of the classic ’symptoms’ of the road to imminent language extinction.
THE STATUS OF KALASHAMONR AS ENDANGERED
Within Pakistani society the Kalasha unquestionaly face enormous pressure to assimilate on all levels besides political and monetary-economic factors. Since many outsiders associate the distinct lanugage of the Kalasha directly with Kalasha peoples Pre-Islamic religion, this factor translates into pressure to abandon Kalasha language upon conversion to Islamic faith.
Futhermore, as is typical and indictive of endangered languages, among native Kalasha speakers there is already very widespread biliguilism- or rather multilingulsim. Indeed for the speakers of Kalasha language the threat is all greater in that it faces competition from not just one but several dominant languages.
Among the various forms of social pressure mediating against Kalasha, which can lead to language endagerment and decline, are school systems that impose a national language and stigmatise minority languages. Such is precisely the situation into which the Kalsaha language is now moving, as those those young kalasha who are fortunate enough to carry on thier education after primary school have to assimilate into state education system, education specifically not in the Kalasha language but in its competitor languages. This represents a very significant cranking of the pressure on the youngest generation of Kalasha speakers to switch to the official and dominant surronding languages in order to further thier studies, earn money, or travel etc. Yet it soon will be up to them whether thier language lives on, or is slowly forgotten…
Kalasha offers very much the paradigm case of how native speakers might, in few decades or even less, adopt the externally conveyed negative attitude towards their language and cease to pass it on thier children. There is thus an incipient loss of the language among native speakers at home, and pressure on the youngest generation not to speak it at school. It is certainly a stage on the road to language extinction.
Sadly, this defines the Kalasha language, and with that of a most unique and ancient culture, as unquestionably of endangered status.
SOCIALINGUISTIC FACTORS
The Kalasha People today, live among and intermingle with, several other different ethnic groups in the area. The dominant group in the social order is the Kho who occupy mos the district of Chitral where the Kalasha Valleys lie. The Kho speak thier own Khowar language and are Muslim. There are strong interrelationships between many individuals from the two groups, which transcend normal work and family divisions- meaning that the Kalash people must be able to speak, or at least understand the Khowar language.
Being a small minority group and regarded as socially inferiror, its the Kalasha people who are to accomodate to the Khowar langauge in most interactions between the two communities. Kalasha men, especially , speak Khowar fluently. Its arguably Khowar- Urdu and English that represent most powerful threat to the Kalash Language.
As for the language used within the Kalasha society itself , it is among young Kalasha men that an increasingly common attitude to thier own language is that is not as ‘fast’ as Khowar for the wider social and commercial interactions which some of them now enjoy.Most sections of the Kalasha society do though, at least for now, speak Kalashamondr still. The previous position of a clearly- defined diglossia is dissolving as Kalashamondr is fast being abandoned in a wider and wider range of sociolinguistic contexts.
Kalasha people also use Khowar not only for bussiness, but also for interaction with thier Muslim relatives. Kalasha individuals who become Muslims (usually by some degree of pressure) start to favour the Khowar language in preference to thier indigenous language. Within a couple of generations the descendants of these converts grow up with no competence in the Kalasha language at all. The number of Muslim converts whose first langauge is now Khowar and whose second or original language is/was Kalashamondr is currently in the order of about double of Kalasha. This is very significant figure in proportion to the surviving Kalasha-speakers.
A typical example of the slow death of the Kalasha language is in the case of a women, who had to change religion through marriage to Muslim individuals and who subsequently refuse to speak Kalashamondr despite still obviously having at least passive competence in it.
The current social trend for young Kalasha men or girls to go out to the city for work or education, usually Urdu- or indeed English medium. Upon thier arrival they find that they have missed learning many Kalasha words, and have become culturally distanced as a consequence. They have become some what fluent in Urdu and English or other regional languages spoken in Pakistan, and even prefer one of these languages amongst themselves when out of the Kalash Valleys. Furthermore, the constant presence of English-speaking tourists, researchers, and philanthropists also contributes to making English more desirable language to acquire, mostly for economic or educational and political advancement (English is regard as official language in Pakistan along side Urdu). A survery conducted during first Kalasha Orthography conference had positive feelings about thier own langauge, and are keen to maintain it.
The Kalasha language is under threat from all the socialinguistic forces just described. Promoting the use of its written form can be expected to confer a certain status on the language that might help counterbalance those forces.
EDUCATIONAL/ RELIGIOUS / POLITICAL FACTORS
As mentioned above, growing number of Kalasha people (especially males) are now also becoming bilingual and are literate in Urdu and English. In the North-Western Frontier Province of Pakistan Urdu is the standard medium of education in the state schools, and English in the burgeoning private school sector. English is also the language of tertiary education throughout Pakistan.
The Pakistani government is advancing literacy in Urdu and extensively in the recent decades, with limited success in most areas, but with remarkably success in Kalash Valleys. Kalsaha students are availing themselves as much as they can of the oppertunity of national language literacy through the Urdu-medium education offered at all government schools. The Kalasha are thus becoming increasingly literate in Urdu, and are assimilating into main stream Pakistani society. Indeed, many Kalasha boys now leave home to get an education (usually in Urdu) in Chitral Town and cities, and upon upon return for vocations are faced with a mild but gradually increasing treatment of ostracism for being different- the effect of which is only to nudge them further away from Kalash language.
CULTURAL FACTORS
The risk of the loss of Kalasha culture is very real, serious and immient. A number of Kalasha have already become literate in second-langauges (Urdu-English).Without first-language literacy aswell, the strong, ancient sense of purity and impurity typical of Kalasha culture, religion, language, and identity quickly vanishes among such individuals.
It does still seem reasonable to hope, however, that the oppertunity for first-language literacy has come just in time to prevent a snowballing cultural decay of whole Kalash society. Yet if current trends continue unchanged, it is an open question whether within two generations the Kalasha will know who they are – or were.