East Pakistan lost due to lack of appreciation for mother tongues: Altaf Shakoor.

KARACHI -- Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Altaf Shakoor here Friday on the international day of mother tongues said we lost the East Pakistan because our leaders failed to understand the delicate and sensitive language issue, adding it is a pity that we created our country, Pakistan, but still we could not create a true Pakistani language in it.

In a statement here, he said Urdu is our national language. It is a rich and respected language in literature and history, but it is spoken by less than 8percent Pakistanis as mother tongue.

He said had our leaders worked to localize Urdu by assimilating Bengali language in it through a generous localization, today the East Pakistan of past and Bangladesh of present, would still had the part of Pakistan. He demanded to localize Urdu by adding more and more words and idioms of all major languages of Pakistan, generously and deliberately. He said we need Urdu as even a more common and more localized language which could be understood by every citizen of this country, irrespective of whether it is their mother tongue or not.

Altaf Shakoor demanded unification of Alphabets and scripts for all languages of Pakistan including Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi and Pashtu. He regretted that scripts and alphabets of some Pakistani languages are based on Arabic and of others on Persian. He said even a letter with same pronunciation is written differently in Urdu, Sindh, Pashtu and Balochi languages. He said one...

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