Ministry Affirms Support to Promoting Local Languages Initiativs
Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and Information Dr. Nasr-Eddin Ahmed has affirmed his ministry’s support for any initiative that spreads and teaches local languages in Sudan, considering that local languages promote identity, culture and heritage.
He described the linguistic diversity in the Nuba Mountains area as a national wealth that must be preserved through documentation, education and publication.
This came when the Undersecretary addressed today the Nuba Mountains Languages Festival in its fourth edition, which is hosted by the Department of Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum, which is being held for the first time in Sudan in the presence of linguists from Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain.
Dr. Nasr-Eddin praised the efforts made by the University of Khartoum in organizing conferences and seminars to document this language.
He also thanked the Franco-German University for its support for this conference.
Professor Walid Mudathir al-Sharif, head of the Linguistics Department at the University of Khartoum and member of the organizing committee of the festival, said that this event aims to introduce the great cultural diversity in the Nuba Mountains.
He added that what distinguished this version of the conference was that it was held for the first time in Sudan to allow the largest number of Nuba people to participate, explaining that the previous versions were held in the Netherlands, Paris and Germany. Meanwhile, Professor Kabshour Koko, representative of the Nuba Mountains, explained that the Nuba Mountains area has become a destination for many universities and researchers from different parts of the world to study these languages due to their ancient heritage and the useful knowledge they carry for the whole nation.
Kabshour said that some tribes have established institutions to teach their languages, and some researchers have taught local languages through social media, but these efforts, despite their importance, remain insufficient, so the matter must be organized at the level of planning in Sudan, and the state must intervene in a more committed way to the revival and development of these languages.
Kabshour called on the people of the area to urge their children to undertake the importance of this language, learn it, study it, and pass it on to future generations.