SWAT: Pashto Language experts and linguists said on Thursday that several issues erupted in written scriptures of Pashto due to diversity in its dialects.
They made the revelation at a seminar on the modern script of the Pashto Language held at the Postgraduate Jahanzeb College Saidu Sharif. The seminar was organized by the Pashto Department of the college. Pashto language experts, writers, poets, teachers and students participated in the event.
Renowned linguist of Pashto language Hanif Qais, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman, Attaullah Jan, Ihsan Yousafzai, Usman Ulasyar, Zafar Ali Naz, Dr Didar Yousafzai, Ihsanullah Shahid, Fazal Mahmood Rokhan, Fazal Mabood Diyar, Saeedullah Khadim, Rozi Khan Baba and Abdul Ghafoor Baba were among the prominent participants.
Organizer of the seminar, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman said that the correct use of Pashto script was the most important thing for students and writers of the language, which was why the Pashto department organized the event to teach the students and other people how to write Pashto correctly. “There is a long-standing issue about the use of vowels in the modern Pashto script, so we have tried to educate our youngsters about the issue and devise a proper mechanism to resolve it,” he said.
Hanif Qais, while briefing the students and participants about the issues arising in the modern script and vowels of the Pashto Language, said that the written script of the Pashto language was made more complicated than before.
“The biggest issue with the Pashto language is its diversity in dialects and the scholastic division between the linguist living in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The division caused a big harm to the language as it made the writing script more difficult than its earlier written version. In the modern script, the linguists have introduced unnecessary alphabets and silent letters, which has caused complications in writing it,” said Hanif Qais, adding that the linguist and writers from Swat and nearby regions made an effort to make the writing script easier and resolve the issue.
He said that modern linguists in other languages tried to simplify the writing scripts of their languages, but disappointedly, the case with Pashto was in the opposite direction.
They said it was high time that the linguists from all parts of the Pashtun belts got together and worked collectively to create a standard Pashto script.
