Pervez Hoodbhoy with Renowned Linguist Dr Tariq Rahman on Urdu Language with Ejaz Haider

Courtesy: Capital Tv

India rolls out red carpet as China President Xi makes maiden visit

By AFP

AHMEDABAD: India’s new prime minister rolled out the red carpet for Xi Jinping in his home town on Wednesday, as the Chinese president began a maiden visit with both sides seeking to reset the relationship between Asia’s rival superpowers.

Narendra Modi has pulled out all the stops for Xi’s arrival, organising an intimate riverside dinner in Ahmedabad, the main city in his home state of Gujarat, where giant billboards in Chinese, Gujarati and English have been put up to welcome him.

Read more » DAWN
http://www.dawn.com/news/1132526

No more English, Modi chooses Hindi for talks with foreign leaders

Written by Pranab Dhal Samanta | New Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it appears, has taken a call to hold his diplomatic conversations in Hindi, with interpreters being deployed in almost all his meetings, including those where the dignitary on the other side speaks in English.

While Modi is quite conversant in English given that many New Delhi-based diplomats have met him and never found language to be an impediment, sources said he seems to have decided to stick to the national language in his interactions. That he is reasonably comfortable with the English language is clear by the fact that interpreters are not required to translate from English to Hindi.

For instance, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa spoke in English during his bilateral meeting with Modi and at no stage did the PM require the interpreter’s assistance to understand what the Lankan President was saying. However, his responses were always in Hindi for which the services of the interpreter were used. In fact, he followed the same protocol with the Special Envoy of the Sultan of Oman, who spoke in English.

But with those who spoke Hindi or Urdu, the interpreter was not required, like the one-on-one with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. In fact, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who has studied in India, also spoke in Urdu with some Hindi words and so a translator was not needed.

Read more » The Indian Express
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/no-more-english-modi-chooses-hindi-for-talks-with-foreign-leaders/#.U49a19yYHAc.facebook

Sindhi: An Introductory Course for English Speakers – Hubert F Addleton (Author), Pauline A Brown (Author)

Sindhi is a major world language and one of the great literary languages of Indus civilization, with more than 19 million speakers in Pakistan, more than a million in India and growing numbers in communities throughout the world. Yet this language of poetic masterpieces like the Risalo of the great sufi poet, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, remains little known and neglected even among scholars of the Subcontinent. Addleton and Brown’s work for the first time offers linguists, students of religion, anthropologists, and second generation Sindhis in the West a practical and systematic introduction to the vocabulary and grammar of spoken and written Sindhi. First developed for English speakers living and working in southern Pakistan, Addleton and Brown’s work has recently been revised and updated, and is now the best available pedagogical introduction to Sindhi for English speakers. Sindhi: An Introductory Course for English Speakers will be of interest not only to linguists and scholars, but to anyone interested in the culture, language and heritage of the Sindhi people.

Read more » Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Sindhi-Introductory-Course-English-Speakers/dp/0977837289

‘Thank you, my dear Pakistan’ – By: PROF. JETHA NAND RAHI

MOST of the times we read and talk all the stuff that is against our sweet homeland. Here, I tell you a true story that is to thank Pakistan.

I was born in a very poor family in 1952 in Mirpurkhas district. My maternal uncles were educated up to the final class (i.e., equal to Class VII).

That inspired my mother to send me to school. At my village, ‘Dengan Bhurgri’, the birthplace of Raees Ghulam Muhammad Khan Bhurgri (the first graduate of Sindh), I studied up to Class VI. The great and selfess teachers taught very well. I studied from Class VI to Class X at Tando Jam Muhammad.

To earn for my studies, I started working when I was in Class V. The first wage was 25 paisa for a half day. It increased to Rs15, Rs50, Rs125 and finally to Rs200 a month in 1975.

Domestic circumstances compelled me to marry at the age of 20. I could not continue my engineering classes after HSC (Pre – Engineering) because of financial constraints. I did many odd jobs — at a restaurant, a fruit shop, a paan – bedi shop, a shoe shop, a cotton factory, a flour mill and at a trading company.

In January 1975 I took a bold step of quitting the job that meant losing Rs200 a month and sought admission in M.A. English literature at the University of Sindh. It all became possible because of Mr Fayaz Ahmad — my best friend — who gave me Rs200 a month for two years. His salary was only 350 and he was married too.

I studied 14 hours a day at the university hostel because there was no room for any sluggishness. I did my MA and got second position.

The great Principal, the late Capatin Shukuruddin, and the late Prof. Tariq Mustafa Khan selected me for the post of lecture in English in 1977 on merit.

I taught English at Cadet College, Petaro, for 35 years, and retired as Vice Principal this year.

The boy who earned Rs25 a day in 1962 was receiving Rs133,000 a month in 2012. Now, I am receiving a pension of Rs55,000 a month.

My head bows down to God Almighty, all the time.

Thank you, my dear Pakistan. Thank you, Cadet College, Petaro. Thanks to all those who helped me, especially Mr Fayaz and my late mother.

The moral of the story is: never be without hope, never be discouraged. Just keep working hard with a total faith. Time does not remain the same. Stop talking and writing against Pakistan.

We have, recently, been declared the 16th happiest country in the world while India is 32nd and the US is 105th.

We do have our problems but it is we who have to rise above the self and steer the ship out of the troubled waters to the island of safety, happiness and prosperity. Just keep the faith. Things have changed for the better — you must try further to make more good changes to make Pakistan great and strong.

23rd March 2012 Freedom March Rally in Karachi JSQM Chairmen Bashir Qureshi’s Speech – English Version

Long live Sindh Long live Sain GM Syed − The heirs of Sindh, My dear sisters and brethren! − I welcome you all cordially who came here from nook and corner for gathering in the capital city Karachi which is not only capital city but the heart of Sindh. − − عمر يست ڪه آواز منصور ڪهن شد − من از سرنو جلوه دهم دارو رسن را − (Time has elapsed that the voice of Mansoor has been obsolete; I want to re-embellish ropes and hang) − Sons of Sindh! − Pakistan has never been a country in any episode of history but the Sindh has remained such a motherland since thousands of years and has been bestowed with bounty of natural resources including fertile agricultural lands, roaring Indus River and coastal belt. Therefore the populace of Sindh has been the custodians of civilization when it was newly evolving elsewhere. − Out of excavation of Moen-Jo-Daro it reveals that the Sindh has traversed the different periods of olden civilizations since the period of Euphrates, Samaritans and Babylons. Comparative it was more civilized and prosperous then the contemporary civilizations of that period.

Help promote Sindhi, Siraiki and other languages!

The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland is a research institute dedicated to promoting communication within the United States in languages other than English. We are currently working on a project that provides adult language learners with interactive online tools to reinforce their foreign language skills. We focus on less commonly taught languages. We are currently looking for several individuals to help us launch projects in the following languages (Parsio-Arabic script): Brahvi, Hindko (Southern), Punjabi (Western), Pothohari, Sindhi, Siraiki.

Minimum Requirements: Native, or near-native, proficiency in the target language

English proficiency: Ability to conduct Internet research and submit Word documents and/or audio files

Desired Qualifications: Knowledge of ILR scale of language proficiency

Specifically, we need educated native speakers of these languages (or individuals with equivalent proficiency levels) to review online activities and cultural notes for online foreign language learning modules for their native language using software we provide. In addition, we are looking for speakers to find authentic reading and audio passages, to record audio files, and to perform various editing tasks in these languages.

The work is part-time, contractual, and most of the work can be done from your home computer. All candidates must have permission to work in the United States.

If you are interested in working with us, or if you know a qualified candidate who would be interested in working with us, please contact the NFLC via email at recruitment@nflc.org. Submit your current resume and include the language(s) you speak in the subject line. Thank you!

Amy Menjivar

Program Coordinator, National Foreign Language Center

University of Maryland

amenjivar@nflc.org

http://www.nflc.org

Courtesy: Sindhi e-lists/ e-groups, 16 Sept 2011

First Punjabi English Film – Bashira in Trouble

This Video clip is from the Pakistani Comedy Show Fifty-Fifty. Old is gold, 50/50 one of the best Super comedy shows of PTV during a golden era of television in Pakistan. The language of talk show is Pinglish.

Courtesy: → PTV → YouTube

Remembering Jaun Elia a Marxist wirter and poet

Jaun Elia (Urdu: جون ایلیا, December 14, 1931 – November 8, 2002) was a notable Pakistani Urdu poet, philosopher, biographer and scholar. He was widely praised for his unique style of writing. He was the brother of renowned journalist and psychoanalyst Rais Amrohvi and journalist and world-renowned philosopher Syed Muhammad Taqi, and husband of famous columnist Zahida Hina. He was a man of letters, well versed in Arabic, English, Persian, Sanskrit and Hebrew.

Jaun Elia was born on December 14, 1931 in an illustrious family of Amroha, Uttar Pradesh. He was the youngest of his siblings. His father, Allama Shafiq Hasan Elia, was deeply involved in art and literature and also an astrologer and a poet. This literary environment modeled him along the same lines, and he wrote his first Urdu couplet when he was just 8.

Read more : Wikipedia

Playing to the gallery – George Fulton

Nor is Talat alone in suffering from this forked tongue affliction. The Quilliam Foundation, a UK anti-extremist think tank, recently held a function in Islamabad. The event gathered together some of Pakistan’s media elite, youth activists, reformed terrorists and foreign journalists. One of the speakers at the event was Hamid Mir. I have it on good authority that Mr Mir was the voice of rational moderation that day. He talked unequivocally of his disgust with the intelligence agencies, he explicitly condemned the Taliban as anti-Islam forces and passionately argued — in English — that the only future for Pakistan was democracy and that it should be protected at all costs. Yes, I am talking about Hamid Mir, host of “Capital Talk”. Version 2.0 of Hamid Mir had transformed, becoming the personification of enlightened moderation. But then he was speaking in English and not to his usual Geo constituents.

Of course the reason that the Hamid Mirs and Talat Hussains of this world can get away with this duplicity is due to the linguistic Berlin Wall that the establishment likes to retain. Project an urbane, liberal image to the West with your (mostly) rational, logical and relatively free English media, and feed the wider public bile, conspiracy theories and irrational, simplistic nonsense in Urdu, thus ensuring that a suitably malleable, impressionable public can be whipped up when said establishment is fed up with the present government.

Do you remember when AQ Khan was forced to apologise to the nation for giving away nuclear secrets for personal gain? In what language did the disgraced scientist speak to his countrymen? English, of course. The establishment didn’t want the father of the bomb discredited as a money-grubbing chancer in the eyes of the public. Change the language and you change the audience. …

Read more : The Express Tribune

Laloo Prasad Yadav Speaks in ENGLISH

Ultimately hilarious video. Laloo tries to translate his Hindi words in English. If any person can’t speak English doesn’t mean he is nothing. He’s taken the Indian railways (the most intricate railway network in the world) and turned it into a profit making machine for India. He may not be able to speak English… who cares. He’s been the most successful railway minister in the history of India. He is such a genuine person and most of the people love him a lot.

– Link

Translation of Sindhi poet Aasi Mehmood Zamini [Sindhi to English]

Translation by Hisam Memon

Come down

For a while today!

Speak thee

And let me speak!

Come down

For a while

Do watch the world,

Engineered by you!

Some are inferior/poor

Some are superior/rich

Who belong to you?

Do mark them!

Wrinkled is the veil,

Torn shirt she puts on,

The naked she looks,

Who daughter is that girl?

She begs before stranger men,

Offer alms to your people!

Without breakfast

And bare-footed,

She ploughs

In the scorching beam,

Unbuttered pieces of meal,

She takes with spoilt molasses

Come down to taste it

A single time!

‘AASI’ was bestowed with insight

That utters the truth and tormented for,

“Why I am called atheist then”

Come to get [insight] it back!