<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote"> Forwarded From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Fierman, William</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wfierman@indiana.edu">wfierman@indiana.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 2:54 PM<br><br>A New Language for Pakistan’s Deaf<br><br><br><br>
<div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-US">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A New Language for Pakistan’s Deaf<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">APRIL 1, 2015
<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">KARACHI, Pakistan — With one national language, Urdu, four provincial tongues (Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto and Balochi),
and nearly 300 regional dialects, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Pakistan." target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">Pakistan</span></a>’s linguistic diversity is like a beautiful carpet, interwoven with threads ancient and young. The regional languages developed over thousands of years, while Urdu came from northwestern India in the 12th century.
Then, in 1947, English was made an official language as a legacy of British rule in India.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Now a small group of educators of the deaf intends to add one more language — this one not spoken. It is called
Pakistan Sign Language, and its creators just may succeed in spreading its use across the country.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Schools for the deaf have existed in Pakistan since the 1980s; one of the largest in Karachi is the Absa School
and College for the Deaf, where initial research was conducted to develop Pakistan Sign Language, or P.S.L., as it is known here. A Pakistan Association of the Deaf, with chapters in many cities and towns, was formed in 1987, when deaf people in Pakistan were
not just misunderstood; often they were shunned or ostracized by people who considered them mentally handicapped and unsuited for normal life.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In the same decade, Richard Geary Horwitz, an American, and his wife, Heidi, from the Philippines, moved to
Pakistan from India and added a new dimension to deaf education. They are the parents of a boy who had been born deaf, and for years they had worked with the deaf in the Philippines and in New Delhi. While visiting Karachi in 1984, they learned that their
expired Indian visas would not be renewed. So they stayed here and started a program called Deaf Reach in a small classroom with 15 children from Karachi’s slums as well as their son, Michael. From it grew the Family Education Services Foundation, a network
of seven schools that now stretches across Karachi, Hyderabad, Rashidabad, Sukkur and Nawabshah in the province of Sindh, as well as Lahore in Punjab.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Today, Pakistan’s Deaf Reach schools educate nearly 1,000 students, and additional foundation programs offer
vocational and technical training, parent training and teacher education.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">It is, of course, not enough. There are an estimated 1.25 million deaf children in Pakistan, and Deaf Reach
schools educate a small fraction of them. Still, the project is considered a success when measured against Pakistan’s bleak educational landscape. It is, after all, a nonprofit network with its own curriculum that delivers high-quality education to a specialized
community. Pakistani companies and foreign aid organizations have enthusiastically donated money, and U.S.A.I.D. donated $250,000 last year to help build the Deaf Reach school in Rashidabad.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Inside the Deaf Reach schools, an emotional and social revolution is on view every day. Students are treated
not as “special,” but as normal. The one thing that sets a Deaf Reach classroom apart is that the lessons take place in complete silence. Students and their teachers — half of whom are deaf themselves — communicate in sign language, a graceful ballet of hands
synchronized with moving lips and lively facial expressions.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/bina-shah-a-new-language-for-pakistans-deaf.html?rref=world&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=World&pgtype=article#story-continues-4" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">Continue
reading the main story</span></a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/bina-shah-a-new-language-for-pakistans-deaf.html?rref=world&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=World&pgtype=article#story-continues-4" target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">Continue reading the main story</span></a> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/bina-shah-a-new-language-for-pakistans-deaf.html?rref=world&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=World&pgtype=article#story-continues-4" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">Continue
reading the main story</span></a> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">One key to their success is the invention of Pakistan Sign Language. Another is the use of digital media.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A common Indo-Pakistan sign language was in use across the subcontinent long before the 1980s, but many words
and concepts in Urdu and other regional languages had no place in it. Pakistan Sign Language grew out of this need, but by the late 1990s the books and guides developed by Absa were deemed outdated and went out of print. So the family education foundation
worked with deaf instructors in Punjab and Sindh, and with Rubina Tayyab, the head teacher at the Absa School, to develop a new online lexicon that now contains 5,000 words and phrases. On its website, a new video each day shows men, women, girls and boys
signing a phrase with its meaning repeated in English and Urdu. Aaron Awasen, the foundation officer in daily charge of the P.S.L. project, describes this lexicon not as a definitive dictionary, but as “a portal through which Pakistan Sign Language can continue
to develop.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Making technology central is typical of the Deaf Reach system. The online tools are accompanied by a book, a
CD and a phone app. Computers and televisions are prominent in classrooms, and teachers are encouraged to explore the Internet for supplementary materials.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The P.S.L. tools imprint three languages — Urdu, English and P.S.L. — on the children’s brains at the same time.
They also enable relatives and others to learn P.S.L. even if they can’t attend regular training sessions. Meanwhile, a publicity campaign called “Don’t Say It, Sign It” shows Pakistani celebrities like the filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and the cricket star
Shahid Afridi signing simple phrases in short online video clips, in an effort to remove the stigma of “otherness” and incapacity from the common perception of the deaf.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Ten thousand copies of the organization’s dictionary and DVDs have been distributed across Pakistan, and a second
edition is in print. Next, the foundation will send “deaf leaders” to 25 cities to meet with their deaf communities and provide materials for smaller villages. By distributing 18,000 P.S.L. books and 7,000 DVD sets, the organization hopes this first phase
of its project will affect 150,000 people.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In a country like Pakistan, where so many other languages and communities jostle for space, and a walk down
any street reveals a modern-day Tower of Babel, what does it mean to give an entire community its own language? If “a loss of language is a loss of culture,” as Mr. Awasen says, then the gain of a language is a gain in culture. So empowering the deaf can only
strengthen Pakistan’s social fabric; the deaf community will be proud to take its rightful position within the constellation of diversity that is one of Pakistan’s greatest assets.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Bina Shah is the author of several books of fiction, including, most recently, “A Season for Martyrs.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
</div>
</div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>