Abstract
Languages are the main pillars of the society. Within the Sindh province, many indigenous
languages are spoken, however within the urban domain i.e. Karachi, the majority languages
(English and Urdu) are institutionalized and less exposure is given to the minority languages.
With the advent of foreign language (Chinese) in the educational sector, maintaining the mother
tongue is really a challenging task. As a result, the native mother tongue speakers are learning
and acquiring the dominant languages to fit in the society and serve various purposes. The
present study explores the language choice patterns, reasons of language choice and status of
language shift and maintenance from the mother tongue to the other tongue in various domains.
So far the studies have been conducted in urban domain on minority language groups belonging
to the northern areas of Pakistan and mainly after a shift have been noted by the community
leaders. The case of Dhatki language is unique, as the language has not been studied before and
therefore a qualitative case study have been conducted to know about the language phenomena
of the native speakers residing in the urban domain, as they are the actual stakeholders. The
research site selected for this study was one of the Public Sector Universities of Karachi and the
target population is native Dhatki language speakers. The initial data for the study was gathered
using sociolinguistic profile from 30 undergraduate Dhatki-speaking urban youth using
purposive sampling; finding the native speakers was not a problem as many of them are enrolled
in the university. However for comprehensive data, in-depth semi-structured interviews were
conducted from 06 participants using purposive and snowball sampling, to gather accurate
results, the data was transcribed for thematic analysis. The present study provides an insight of
such a situation where indigenous speakers are exposed to multiple languages in different
domains and are acquiring majority language for academic and social needs, while adopting
minority language at the same time due to close affiliation and frequent language contact. Hence
the speakers are losing the essence in their native mother tongue. The findings provide an
interesting data for language policy makers and mother tongue speakers who can shape future
action about mother tongue using this comprehensive data. However, a large scale study can be
conducted to know more about the Dhatki language for language documentation.
Muhammad Hassan Abbasi , Mariam Aftab. (2019) 7Mother Tongue or the Other Tongue? The Case of Dhatki-Speaking Urban Youth, Balochistan Journal of Linguistics, Volume 7, Issue 1.
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