Jan 15, 2021: Chitral
Forum for Language Initiatives (FLI) held a three day workshop for strengthening of writing system in Gawarbati language in Arandu village, situated alongside Afghan border in southern Chitral this week. In total 12 people, including government school teachers, language researchers and activists attended the sessions held under FLI’s Orthography and Writers’ Workshop series. This event was designed by FLI to support community based partner organizations working for development and promotion of their respective languages. The idea of this event came up from the community as for this particular event, FLI let its partners to devise plans for their language based on need they felt and share with FLI for financial and technical support. The event was facilitated by FLI’s external facilitators.
Gawarbati (gwt), a Dardic language is spoken in southern part of Chitral valley. FLI’s first intervention of language documentation for this language took place in 2016 in which a writing system was placed and also some researchers from the community were trained in basic language documentation. Alongside, some initial publications were brought out in the language and ten folktales were recorded with Urdu translation. Since then, this indigenous language is being worked on by those who got trained by FLI.
This was among three events FLI designed for its partners in northern Pakistan, under which the partners were allowed to come up with their own proposals. Earlier, an event in Palula, also spoken in Chitral was supported by FLI and second in Indus Kohistan.