Bilingualism in Pakistan

In order to undertake the most arduous and perplexing tasks of the ultramodern world, language is the indispensable factor owing to its intrinsic nature.

Bilingualism in PakistanRegrettably, Pakistan is among the states which have been not paying justified deliberation and concentration on matters pertaining to the language and its critical ramifications on the prevalent geopolitical structure of the globe.

Owing to newfangled stratification of society, language has been linked with social stratum and class system. There is a ubiquity of unilateral language that is English which has got triumphalism over other lingua francas which are in the race to overshadow each other but are quite far to contest with their arch rival (English).

In Pakistan, there is a lot of hype about the English language. You can gauge the boom by looking at the high end English learning academies and centres existing in every nook and corner of the county and packed with infinite number of fledgling students.  

To put it mildly, these academies are becoming great proponents and campaigners for the promotion of English language in order to run their business in befitting manner and hoodwink the students by painting the rosy picture of English aura.

There should be no iota of doubt that native language can play more supportive role in filling up of the lacuna of learning in the embryonic stage of the novice student.

There has been a myriad of research that students can absorb smoothly if they are being imparted their education in their own native language rather than hitting a snag in their studies when they are encountered with any second or foreign language.

Moreover, owing to intricacies in curriculum filled with vague and verbose English terms, there has been great decline in overall output of juveniles which should be alarming for the guardians.

However, the states which are more inclined towards their own native or national language have considerably made some tremendous advancement in the realm of education. We can set the yard stick by peeping into Chinese education system.

In their five year plan of development, language is considered as jugular vein for their prospective outcomes. Various structural reforms have been instituted with some iron hands in the realm of language policy which have increased the learning output of maestros, law practitioners and technologists.

Therefore, sighting these Bilingualism circumstances, it is sine qua non for the current government to formulate efficient language policy in all public and private sectors suffice enough to introduce Bilingualism in Pakistan.

Bilingualism can be realistic target to ward off permanence and clout of English language over other native languages. Though, it does support normalcy of usage of second language like English but its main focus is to balance the influence of languages existing in any peculiar system like Pakistan.

By Junaid Ahmed Sohoo

The writer is environmental management student/ researcher and dynamic author.