Language for the sake of language

Language is a systematic mean of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols. It is a form of expression or mode of interaction between humans. It helps them to share their views ,ideas, feelings, emotions desires, interests, hatred, anger everything one need to communicate to other person.

Every nation is known by its language and every proud nation preserves its rich cultural heritage in the form of its language. In fact culture and language has a very strong relationship. Language always takes its roots from the culture of its speakers. If a nation is highly sophisticated, elegant and respectful, having lots of historical poetic dignities the language representing such a nation would be full of flowery and eloquent words. Language also depicts the ways of living and the degree of interaction among people, for example, members of a Pakistani nation enjoy entangled family relationships so there are lots of words in Urdu language representing such relations but this is not the case with English language where only two words are used for all maternal and paternal siblings i.e., Uncle and aunty. Moreover Pragmatics and Jargons of a language are always characteristics of a particular culture.

So we can say preserving a language means preserving a substantial part of a nation’s cultural heritage as all the strong nations of the world do. They preserve their language love it and pride it. All the rich languages are highly esteemed by their speakers but unfortunately this is not the case with Urdu language which itself is becoming stranger in its own land.

Today in a country where Urdu language had been ranked by its speakers as the national language at its independence, the language is becoming vulnerable to its own speakers who are themselves losing it and deteriorating it and the major cause is influence of a foreign language…The English language.

With each passing day in Pakistan English is becoming more and more popular taking the shape of a status symbol, a symbol of education, modernism and class, ranked high above than a mere mode of communication. Somehow almost every person in our country is getting highly attracted towards this language. No doubt in this globalized world importance of English as a mode of international business communication is inevitable and to keep ourselves into the race we need to have a grasp at this language but the dilemma is we are doing so at the cost of our own language.

Here we cannot blame a particular person or a class of persons the responsibility rests on every individual of our society, including parents of this nation who are trying to pour English in the minds of their children as their mother language, the schools where a student is not allowed to speak a word of Urdu, the offices where a person cannot pass an interview without impressing the interviewer with a heavy vocabulary of English language.

Recommendations:

To preserve our national language we need some serious initiatives. Some of them can be:

1. Promotion and rehabilitation of Urdu Medium schools so that parents who want to send their children to Urdu medium government schools will not hesitate in doing so.
2. Campaigns for the development of Urdu language should be started both through print and television media.
3. Schools and colleges should also stress on the development of Urdu language by arranging lectures and workshops.
4. Conferences and other ceremonies should be held to give tribute to Urdu poets and writers.
5. Urdu development societies should be established to promote Urdu language.
6. Substantial funds should be allocated for the establishment of Urdu.

Conclusion:

The aim of all this discussion is not to it hit English language. It is acceptable as far as it is learnt for the purpose of communication but the time our own language comes at stake, efforts are required to preserve our greatest cultural heritage.