PESHAWAR, Feb 18: The two-day Frontier National Languages Conference on Sunday urged the NWFP government to patronise all native languages and dialects and take concrete steps for their preservation and promotion.

A resolution to this effect was adopted at the end of the conference organised by the Gandhara Hindko Board which was attended by delegates representing 27 languages and dialects still spoken in the province and the Northern Areas.

The conference urged the federal and NWFP governments to play their constitutional roles for the preservation and promotion of regional languages. They called for making folklores of various languages as part of course of studies at educational institutions. One of the resolutions called for setting up a university-affiliated institute for studying and carrying out research on all languages.

The literati demanded of the government to make mother languages the medium of instruction at the primary level and called for hiring teachers from respective linguistic communities.

Expressing dissatisfaction at the time allotted to smaller languages folklores on electronic media, the conference called for an increase in transmission time.

The government was asked to help set up of FM radio stations to disseminate information and educate the public.

The delegates also called for setting up a well-equipped public sector resource centre and library that should serve as a repository of information by offering access to domestic and global research on languages.

The moot urged the government to include a language column in the next population census to determine the exact number of all linguistic communities, bringing credible information on mother tongues on record.

The conference urged the government to refrain from giving a controversial name to NWFP. It said that the new name of the province should be based on consensus, reflect historical evidence and free from linguistic bias.

The conference’s participants exhorted parents to encourage children to converse in their mother tongues, make them realise the importance of their respective languages, use traditional terms and create opportunities for using the oral traditions.

They called for launching community-based organisations, linking them with national and international organisations to work for the preservation and promotion of different languages. It stressed capacity-building of language activists to improve the standards of research.

Earlier, Dr Azam-Azam, a Pashto scholar, read out his paper on the origin and history of the Pashto language. He said Pashto was being spoken by 30 million people across the globe. He said the language had weathered different periods and kept it alive. He said establishment of Radio Pakistan in Peshawar had facilitated the promotion of prose and poetry in the language.