Mareeha Ahmad_Dr. Jonathan Addleton_Reimaging Linguistic Diversity of Pakistani Languages

MA: Thank you so much for being a part of this project. And we will start the interview with just a little information about your background. So could you let me know where were you born and when were you born and just you know your setup in your early years.

JA: Okay so I was born‒my name is Jonathan Adelton. I was born in Rurik, Pakistan June 27, 1957 at Kashmir Point. There's a house there, called Rock Edge, and that's where I was born.

MA: And when was this?

JA: 1957, June 1957.

MA: If I can know a little bit about your parents, what is their background, where were they born and their names maybe even?

JA: Yeah, so my father was Hubert Addelton, born in November 1929. He passed away, I guess about 18 months ago. He would have been, he would have been, 94 actually. He passed away at the age of 92. My mother is still living, Betty Addelton. She was born in 1931. Both of them were‒they didn't know each other until they were in high school or even young adults, but they lived in rural middle Georgia. You're talking about the 1930s. You're talking about the Depression. My father was one of 14 children. My mother was one of eight, both at the younger end of the family, but especially for my father, Depression era family, rural kind of childhood. My mother used to say they were as poor as church mice. My father remembers basically agriculture, just working with a mule. They didn't have tractors and stuff like that. It was basically plowing behind a mule is his memory. My father was the first in his family to finish high school, go on to college. He had this‒I guess it's a spiritual calling, that he really wanted to serve somewhere in the world. Asia was a huge attraction for him. So he was a pastor, he was a translator. I guess a missionary is what he was for most of his life and very at home in Pakistan. We can maybe talk a bit more about it, but they‒basically in 1956‒I guess doing the math, my mother would have been 25, my father was 27, they came out on a freighter to Pakistan, they were assigned to Upper Sindh. My father worked in Sindhi actually, not in Urdu, learned Sindhi quite well, but much of their working life here he was in Karachi. So I guess it was gradually moving from a smaller, almost a village like Latodero, to at the end of the time, it was in Karachi is where they finished their time in Pakistan.

MA: So your father does knew Sindhi?

JA: Yeah, so I mean this is interesting for your program. They were, and this is obviously we're all, you know, creatures of our time. This is 1950s, Second World War, America's engaging with the world in a way it hadn't before. For some people that might mean diplomatic service or military or whatever, but in this case it was missionary service. That was the reason that he came here. But there were eight couples from the U.S. that came at the same time. Four of them were in Odudu first and four of them were in Sindhi first. And my father was in the group that learned Sindhi. And the reality is every one of those four families, or the father and the mother, that learned Sindhi went on to learn Urdu. Nobody that learned Urdu first went on to learn Sindhi. And it was because, you know, Urdu is the national language. I mean, actually, it's the first language Sindhi is probably spoken more often than Urdu, but it's the national language. And so once you had mastered Urdu, you could communicate anywhere in the country. Whereas if you learned Sindhi, your communication was just confined to Sindh. And so the incentive was to learn Urdu so you could communicate across the country. There's also the simple reality that honestly, Sindhi is a harder language than Urdu. And so it's easier to move from a hard language to an easier language in the opposite direction.

MA: Did you ever pick up Sindhi from your parents?

JA: You know, my life‒they lived in Sindh, my father lived there pretty much year-round. My life was more in Murree, in the mountains, going to school. So I had my summer vacations. I can understand perhaps more Sindhi than one might realize. I think it's a beautiful language. When you hear it, it's very distinctively Sindhi, and it's, you know, almost musical in some ways. And I picked up a few phrases [inaudible phrases in Sindhi] you know, this kind of thing. And for my father, my father was serious about I mean, his much of his life was devoted to translation work. He was a missionary colleague, he developed a Sindhi language textbook. And his son who actually is an academic, you know, as a professor, turn those turn that into a really nice, attractive printed book. And it's, it's available on Amazon. And what Dan Brown, not the Dan Brown, but Dan Brown, the academic has told me is that what happens is you get these expat Sindhis who‒some of them from the‒you know, went to Australia or India or anywhere else at partition in 47. But others that went later than the second generation, in order to try to reconnect with Sindhi, are ordering this off Amazon. And it's a good book. It's basically basic Sindhi for English speakers.

MA: It might help with the cultural language preservation. It is becoming a tool.

JA: I think it does. He worked with a professor called Dr. Norman Zaidi, who was a linguistic professor at University of Chicago. In some ways, it's part of his legacy, the Sindhi language textbook. He also did translation work. The translation, especially when it comes to the scripture, is a very long process. It's not one person sitting in an office translating. It's a committee process, a review. Sarvajna was the Sindhi scholar he associated with. They worked together, became a colleague and a friend. But basically, when they were around in the 50s, the Sindhi translations were of the Saboer and the Angeal, and you know, basically the scripture, the Christian scriptures were quite archaic because they were the late 1800s. So the intent working with what's called the United Bible Society, which is based in New York, was to do a translation that they call common language. So, you know, Sindhi changes in 60 or 70 years. Also, the Sindhi at that time, I think, drew quite heavily on Hindu tradition and this kind of thing. And of course, Cindy changed in the inner and inner years. Anyway, what be that as it may, he basically worked with the Cindy scholar, and together they did the translation. And when they do this, it's line by line. It's very, very methodical. And then the question of beating the committee and, and, you know, even some of the basic words, which word to use. So yeah, I think I, the question was, of course, did I ever pick up Sindhi? I didn't pick up Cindy to freely speak. I did understand it to some extent, but I do view my father as, you know, he‒my mother to some extent‒but it was really my father who worked in the language and did translation work, which is the ultimate test of that. I mean, the other, some of these great classics, Pilgrim's Progress, which actually appealed to people, he worked on the Sindhi translation of that as well. So he did do some other kinds of translation too.

MA: What is your earliest memory of living in Pakistan?

JA: So, you know, I really, I was born in 1957, and in 1960, my parents went back to the States for one year. And if I'm honest with myself, I think the earliest, and you think about when children have memories, I don't know your earliest memory, but 1960, Christmas 1960, I'm three and a half years old, and this time we're in the States. You know, we live in a sort of somewhat rural setting, and you know, it's the classic childhood memory that you go out with your dad and your siblings to get a Christmas tree. And so that's what I remember. So that was December, would have been December 1961. In July 1961, this is December 1960, in July 61, we returned to Pakistan. So I would have been four years old. And I just have vague memories of the house in Murree. And by this time, actually now that you said it, early in this memory, wow‒it must have been in Chikarpur before I went to boarding school. So I was living in Chikarpur. It was called the Scott Bungalow, which my parents were renting outside town, a sort of old style house. And my father had picked up our Land Rover and driven it up from Karachi. And I woke up before the rest of the family and I looked out the window and there was our Land Rover, which I might say took us many, many hundreds of miles in the next few years around Sindh. But, you know, maybe it's a boy's memory that you look at it. Wow, that's our car. So that was my first memory.

MA: In Pakistan, you studied here, right? So maybe any early memories from school life, from your early years at the Christian school in Murree?

JA: Yeah, so Murree, of course, it’s that tradition. There's St. Denny's, and there's the Convent of Jesus at Murree, and there's Lawrence College. And then the Murree Christian School, small college, but part of that tradition, I guess, and it was a boarding school. People nowadays, at least in the US, are shocked that my parents sent me to boarding school when I was six years old. They say, how could they have done it? So the early memories are actually my father, you know, you actually had to be six and a half. So I couldn't start in the fall. So it was halfway through first grade that my father took me up to boarding school and dropped me off. And I have a, I mean, one of the things for young kids is I often say that if you're privileged enough to be able to give your kids a sense of beauty from a young age, then you're lucky, you're fortunate. And for me, I feel privileged because I did have that sense of beauty. Murree has changed, arguably, people might say, oh God, I had all the, you know, the too many hotels, all the buildings, and boy, next earthquake, that Murree gonna slide down the hill, and you wonder what's gonna happen then. But the reality is when you look beyond the, you know, the buildings and the hotels and all that, you know, it's beautiful. You're looking toward Kashmir, you're looking toward the Pir Panjal Range, you know, the Himalayas are the Himalayas. And so those are the early memories. And I think if you think about it, you know, some memories for some people are about family relationships, some are about, you know, a trip to the countryside or the farm or something. For me, it's probably really looking at those magnificent mountains, which is an image that stays with you the rest of your life.

MA: So like when you were going to the boarding school, it must have provided you with an environment to immerse in the language and culture of the people there. I'm not sure how diverse boarding school was in terms of the ethnicities of people there. But how did that experience affect your language use and cultural identity?

JA: Yeah, well, early on, it was probably more of an American presence, although with the passage of time, we did get students from Norway and Germany and even from, well this is more after my time, that the Koreans began to enroll. There were some Pakistani students, honestly, mostly the children of medical doctors at some of the Christian hospitals, that, you know, Taxila and, well, UCH here as well, and other kinds of schools. So that was, you know, part of the setup. In that sense, I mean, English was absolutely predominant. And I did take lessons. I did take French lessons. I will say there's a handful of my classmates that were really, really good. One of them is, I'll mention his name, Joel Dehart, who he was just very good with languages. His Urdu was wonderful. He learned Pashto. And he traveled, I mean, he was sort of drawn to the KPP and even Afghanistan, and he was just good with languages. And then a guy called Paul Stock, who works in Sindh, he works in the Sindhi language, he works in the tribal languages, and Thar Park, and those places. Those are two, there are a handful of others of my generation that were exceptional, and I admired them, and maybe I could say I envied them. I wasn't in that league, but I did take Urdu. We did do Urdu for shopping in Jekagali and going into Murree. Different times, we hitchhiked. People are sometimes surprised as a 16-year-old hitchhiked from, essentially, Murree to Peshawar, you know, which I don't think almost nobody would do it now, but certainly a foreigner would be a little bit intimidated by that. And so, you know, I used the language in that context, but I didn't use it in a literary kind of way. At first I was a little surprised when the invite came, oh, you can participate in this, because I mean, probably you're in that category as well, that you grew up with some English, but of course you also had Urdu, and maybe there was some Punjabi in the mix as well. I was exposed to those languages. Maybe it's a factor of history, maybe it's a good fortune or privilege or what, but English gets you around, so you kind of do it. So again, I think that generation, we look back and we think, well, maybe our elders should have done more to, maybe not just the 45 minutes of Urdu language, but maybe they should have done some more introductions to the language.

MA: The other local languages as well.

JA: The other local languages as well, yeah. But anyway, we're all creatures of our times. And I do feel, I mean, I use it now, and a lot of it came back. I tell people, ma pakistan mai paday wa, bachpan main nai mari main para, kaafi sal doi leh, leh kenab tak mujhe kuchh doati ha. So I still, even after all these years, I still do it. And coming back, I've been back three years now, I don't have time to study it, but my comprehension is really quite good, and I'm in many environments where I hear the language spoken, and I understand it pretty much, you know, 90% of it, you know, government stuff or education or even students talking or whatever. So that part's good. I do speak sometimes, and I don't know, I try to speak when I can, but I'm also acutely aware of the mistakes, so there's sort of a self-conscious kind of, you know, I'm making mistakes and I don't know, maybe some people...

MA: Especially with native speakers when you're communicating with them.

JA: I mean, that's the irony is that, and you got it right. I mean, you know what it's like is that when you're, I mean, and also in Pakistan, you're sitting here and you're talking to somebody you haven't met before, and you quickly establish, okay, I know the language this well. This person knows, I know their language to some extent. They know my language better than I know their language. So even if I somewhat know the language or even medium-sized know the language, the communication becomes the language of the two people who speaks both languages the best. And maybe it's a credit to Pakistan or whatever that, or you know, I mean, our campus here. I mean, there's just wonderful, lots of English speakers. But so you kind of revert to those languages. I remember, this is a funny story I suppose, but you know some American was talking to, was just talking about, oh Benazir Bhutto's English is so American was talking to, was just talking about, oh Benazir Bhutto's English is so wonderful and you know I felt like saying, well // that, or you know, I'm in our campus here. I mean, there's just wonderful, lots of English speakers. And so you kind of revert to those languages. I remember, this is a funny story, I suppose, but some American was talking to, was just talking about, oh, Benazir Bhutto's English is so wonderful. And I felt like saying, well, look, she grew up with English. But people outside Pakistan don't necessarily realize the bilingual aspect of certain Pakistani households that grow up speaking Urdu and English and correct me if I'm wrong, but sometimes there's a third language. They don't necessarily do the literary aspect of that language, but they pick it up in terms of the home village or talking to people. So it's not unusual for someone in Pakistan to grow up with... I mean, I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong. It varies, but you know generally speaking you'll have a lot of people in Pakistan, especially in urban areas who grow up speaking order to English equally well and then have some facility in a third language. And rural areas, I think they pick up their language the local language first I feel like yeah, it's the national policies as well.

MA: Yeah, I feel like Urdu is sort of forced upon people when really the connection that they feel with their local language cannot be replaced. And with English, we have a long history of colonization, so that's just a different aspect. But I think our local languages do play a huge role in our day-to-day life, and we do pick them up. As a student of linguistics and language acquisition, we do see how local languages are often prioritized, especially in rural settings.

JA: Right, right, right. And it's interesting, I mean, Pakistan is a country with so many languages, and it complicates things, but one might also say it enriches things as well.

MA: So you had a lot of colleagues who, I believe, if I've got this right, they worked in language preservation and just really were involved in works related to language and culture. Like, for example, you had that colleague who took up Pashto and then your father himself was doing work for Sindhi. How would you say that your early experiences of the cultural immersion that you perhaps got in your, through your experiences in Pakistan, living in Pakistan in different areas, how has that led you to implement the strategies in FC? I'm sure there was a vision, I'm sure there's still a vision, so how do you think these things are related?

JA: Yeah, I mean, I feel, I mean, to be completely honest, I think what the, you know, the gift of my child, if you will, was more at ease in different cultures more than different languages because I haven't mastered... I mean, Urdu and Hindi, I get around very well. My wife is from Scotland and by the way, the project is about preserving languages. Her father grew up speaking Gaelic and Gaelic in the West Coast of Scotland, and even in the whole country, was really discouraged, actually, it was in the North of Scotland where he lived. And so that was part of it. Fiona grew up with, I mean, she grew up French and German, and I mean, her languages are still a part of the mind. We always used to say that, you know, Jonathan will get us by in India and Pakistan and Dubai, you know, the Gulf, because you can, you know, you can use those languages there as well. So that's, as a family, we have three kids. That was my responsibility were those three parts of the world. And of course, as a diplomat, we traveled to many places. We lived in Mongolia, we lived in Jordan, we lived in Yemen, we lived in Kazakhstan. So she would say not fluent in any language, but she was the one that would go out to the shops and bazaars. So she had to learn the numbers quickly. And especially in a place like Kazakhstan, where English was not spoken much, Yemen as well. So, I mean, you can see I admire my wife because I think that she picked up again, not fluency in terms of intellectual fluency, but at ease in a country where you're able to do the greetings and the shopping and stuff like that. So, I mean, her list includes Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, a bit of Afrikaans, because we were in Africa for three, we were in South Africa for three years. And even when we traveled in Europe, her high school, French and German has got us good mileage. So I think what I'm at ease at is the crossing boundaries of culture, language. Again, those guys I mentioned, it was a small school in any case, I only had 30 or 40 kids in high school, but the examples I've given were more the exceptions that I admire than the general thing. Some people went out of that school, hardly speaking a word of or do. Some people, you know, they're, well, my parents brought me to Pakistan, why did that, you know, and they, you know, haven't been back in decades, or they've never been back. And so it was like a childhood episode, which must really be a childhood memory. For me, I've come back on different occasions. I came back to do a certain amount of study at a university. I did my dissertation on economic impact of migration from Pakistan to the Middle East, which, you know, that was part of your family history perhaps. And then I came in when I joined the Foreign Service. I had two assignments. One was my first assignment back in Pakistan and then I had my, after the earthquake, I was the USA mission director and involved in traveling in northern areas and stuff like that. When I came back as a university student, I was sort of a bit sheepish and embarrassed that I didn't speak Urdu as well as I should, so I did some self-study. And I also studied Arabic, now that I think about it. And that, I mean, I already knew how to read the script, but that consolidated the script. I don't read or do freely, but at the same time, I don't have any problem, you know, reading, you know, feeling at home with the signs. And I can struggle through a poem or something like that. But still being able to read the script, I think, I mean, that's one thing, again, the projects about languages, there's the spoken part. On the written front, I guess the scripts I know are the English script, the Russian Cyrillic script, and the Arabic script. And that gets you to different places because there's other languages that are written in Cyrillic and there's other languages that use the Arabic script and you know just as you explore the world and as you free as you feel free in the world you know I think it's it's useful to have that and some some languages people are good that you're trying and they forgive your mistakes some languages a mistake is sort of unforgivable and and I think this is obviously you prefer the ones where they're more forgiving. And I think Pakistan's in that category, by the way, I think that people appreciate it, they, you know, appreciate the effort. So that's part of it. Forman is really interesting, because think about it. Between last week, and I guess, is it tomorrow night, or the night after we have Saraki night here.

MA: Also we just had the Gilgit night.

JA: Exactly, exactly. So we have three different nights here. We have the Pashtun night, we have the Saraki night, and we have the Gilgit, the Baltistan Chitral night. Now, the interesting thing is that the Northern areas probably has more languages than any other place in Pakistan that it's such a mix of different languages. And again, I always say that those students from all those areas and from everywhere in this country enrich our community. And so it's really good. I think, I mean, you can discuss about English and legacy of colonialism, I suppose, is one aspect of it. Although, English wasn't always a colonial language, but I think it was resilient because it wasn't always a colonial language. It goes back many years and there's other been colonial... It has its unique history. It has its unique history separate from that. Again, the accidents of history, maybe French would be spoken more widely or even German. The Germans arrived late and they didn't forge an empire like the people before them or even Italian or whatever. But anyway, English, obviously the 1800s was the, I mean, ironically, when the British lost their North American empire, they turned their attention to the Asia and built their Asian empire. Africa was even, I suppose, a little bit later, but it is what it is. I mean, it is an international language. And I think that, I mean, it's an advantage that people from Pakistan actually have. If you've been, if you study in the States or Europe or anywhere else, your students from South Asia are very likely to speak English better than anybody else in the classroom or any of the other international students in the classroom. And of course, it's the language of instruction at Forman, but it's not just Forman, it's the university language of instruction quite broadly. And so, again, in terms, I mean, I guess, the markers for me are certainly partly the language, but they're also the cultural markers. And there's also the recognition that, obviously it varies to an extent, but I hate to use the cliche, oh, diversity or whatever, but it's diversity and it's not just, because again, because of its heritage, origins, and the Presbyterian Church and all that, it's partly a religious diversity that's here, but that's not the... and the diversity is... The Pakistan Christian Church has every stripe of Christianity. Christianity, the Muslim community in form and has the different diversity within the religion, but you have religious diversity. But beyond that, you have the linguistic diversity you're talking about, you have the geographic diversity from KPP or...

MA: And all of these are tied with one another.

JA: Yeah, yeah. And then you have the socioeconomic diversity, which I think looking back at my own, I mean, I grew up in Pakistan, the missionary families tend not to be from the elite of the country. And I've benefited from scholarships when I went back to the States for my higher education. And I think that we do provide also opportunities in terms of socioeconomic diversity. That's also, you know, this is four years that people have to meet people different than themselves. And I think that's what we work toward and that we honor in this institution.

MA: I think the students really appreciate that aspect of FC as well. That's one of my most favorite points, you ask anyone on campus and that's something that will come up in the conversation that you have with them. You shared a lot of your experiences as a diplomat and then you just work experience upbringing so you must know a lot of languages. You've mentioned a couple of scripts as well. So as a multilingual, how do you navigate those language dynamics, especially in a country like Pakistan? Just generally as a multilingual. How do you navigate those dynamics? How do you pick and choose between languages and especially in Pakistan and then in FC as well? We have both native speakers of English as well and then local speakers of languages who might struggle with Urdu as well and then people like me who've probably lived abroad and then shifted back here. There's diversity in that aspect as well. In these three levels, globally, in Pakistan, and then just in FC, how do you navigate these language dynamics?

JA: Well, like I said, there's different ways one does it. As a family, I mentioned that my wife, I mean, I studied those languages. I mean, you'll meet foreign service officers who say, oh, I speak six languages or whatever. I don't necessarily believe them, because taking a course in a language doesn't give you, certainly doesn't give you fluency. So, you know, I think my Urdu and Hindi, I feel a high degree of comfort level in India, Pakistan, and the Gulf. I mean, because I can speak it, and I can do what needs to be done. The other languages that I've studied, it's not at that level. Fiona does a better job of it, and although she would say, I'm not, and she's not fluent, but she even in terms of functioning in Pakistan, you know, I guess I will say that one of the delights of coming back was the realization that I can Retrieve my order to even if I haven't spoken it in years and that I can get around and it gives me sort of psychic satisfaction Especially when I understand conversations that people think that I'm not understanding, you know, because they you know They look and think all the skies doesn't speak English. I did that a few times in Chicago. I went to Northwestern for my undergraduate, and I'd be sitting in a subway, and someone, not necessarily from Pakistan, maybe from India, they would be thinking they're having their secret language or whatever, and they're talking to each other, and at the end I might talk to them and say, sort of imply to them that I knew more about your conversation than you might realize. So I mean, that's sort of a fun aspect, I suppose. I do think it's a plus. I'm self-conscious about my accent and I don't necessarily think it's great, but I mean you heard my little few words there. I mean I think, you know, some people say that it's not bad as an accent. I mean it doesn't sound as awful as some of the foreigners speaking it. It's interesting my own kids because they had a, I mean, my childhood was always in Pakistan. Their childhood was two years here and three years there and moving from place to place, so much so that they didn't really master any language, although now Cameron, our second son in particular, we were in Cambodia, he had to do Khmer. When we were in Kazakhstan, they went to a Russian Deskisa kindergarten. So that's another example of what your project's about, is both our boys went into, Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan, but a lot of education like in Pakistan is in a different language, Russian. And so we just put them in the Russian kindergarten. So it's kind of like sink or swim. So years later when, we have it on video that they once upon a time spoke Russian, but of course they lost it after the age of six and went to five other countries or whatever, but we have it on video. But when he traveled through, he did a Mongol rally from Paris to Ulaanbaatar, and they went through Kazakhstan, and in Mongolian they speak Russian as well, and his accent was pretty good, and he did a little bit of self-teaching, and he was the one that, this was four of his college friends were taking this little beat-up car across, and having been exposed to the language in kindergarten, all those years later, he was able to reach back and retrieve at least the pronunciation part. And he's, of the kids, he's probably the one that experiments and doesn't mind making mistakes.

MA: And you know, that's how we learn.

JA: Yeah, yeah, I think he's probably, I mean I'm too self-conscious. That's probably why someone like Joel or or Paul Sack, you know, they just spoke it. And if you're more self-conscious like me, then you're not just speaking it, you're afraid of making mistakes and then you don't learn it as well.

MA: Do you think the environment at FCCU– I keep using the word diversity, but I don't have a better word to explain it.

JA: Yeah, no, I mean, the reason why I say this is because you have a sort of American lens to look at it. I think that we are part of a diverse community in a different kind of way, but I haven't come up with a better word either.

MA: So like the environment that we have here, a lot of like, when I shifted to Pakistan, I would struggle, I struggled with Urdu as well, because, and especially Punjabi, because I don't understand Punjabi at all. So when I come on campus and in classes, I hear like, they're like, oh, your ethnicity is Punjabi, you must understand Punjabi. I'm like, no, not really. But I found it easier to pick that language up in FC, because a lot of us are learning languages simultaneously. And then we all have our own journey of, you know, discovering our own mother tongues, even if we're shifted from abroad or parts of ourselves like local languages that weren't taught at home. And we're now rediscovering them through the environment at FC. So do you think the multilingual community at FC has contributed to language preservation in any way?

JA: You know, actually, that's a good point. And, you know, I've long I'm here, I've met not a lot, but I've been a handful of students in your category that grew up in the Middle East or the Gulf or whatever, and I love to see that. I don't know your own story about coming to Forman, but I love to think that maybe families are comfortable here. I met one other person who said that their teacher, I think this was in Tehran or in Saudi Arabia, was a Formanite and had said, oh, why don't you consider going to Forman? I think if I'm not mistaken, his mother might've been from Russia or Tajikistan or something. So I love the fact, I mean, in the 60s, if you look at Forman, they had, for example, they had African students here. And so we don't have that visible international presence, but I think that, I tell my friends when they come to Lahore that what they see is when they get off at the airport, a crowded airport and you know, you step out there, it's just, wow, you know, welcome to Lahore, welcome to Pakistan. I said, everybody you see there is far more connected than you realize with, you know, with the diaspora, if you will, with the UK, with Australia, with the Gulf, with the US, with Canada, whatever. So, I mean, that's part of it is that they're far more connected. But I think you're right. I mean, someone would maybe look at you and say, oh, you're doing what's fantastic, or of course she speaks Punjabi or whatever, and yet you're learning like other people are learning as well. And I think, I guess I would probably attribute that to what we try to cultivate, and I know none of us live up to our ideals, but what we try to cultivate is this sort of honoring people and respecting people where they are. And, you know, if you're in an environment where someone's apt to be ridiculed or made fun of or whatever, then you don't have room for that kind of experimentation. And, you know, again, I don't, I guess people sometimes think I'm an idealist, but I think we do have an atmosphere that, you know, we welcome multiple voices, and that multiple voices, just as it applies as language that you're talking about. And I realized we're mostly in English. I mean, again, thinking of kind of examples, Jim Tebbe, my predecessor, I think, was better at Urdu than I was. He could preach a sermon in Uddu, which I can't do, and he had formally studied it. But his thing, which we still keep to some extent, is we have a sort of end of the week staff meeting, and probably not as much as when he was there, but we go back and forth between English and Urdu, and I understand pretty much all the Urdu they're talking about, and sometimes I'll be in Urdu, more often I'll be in English. But I think, I mean, this is kind of another unique aspect, that it happens in Pakistan in different ways, but certainly wouldn't happen too often in the States, is that people are having conversations that go back and forth. And I think that's great. And the linguists would study this, but I would imagine that there's certain conversations that lend themselves to Urdu better, and there's certain conversations that lend themselves to English better. So we get this wonderful mix of going back and forth. And I think that's a strength.

MA: In psycholinguistics, we do study this. You do feel more connected, and you can't have those conversations in another language you need to feel at home with the language yeah when we're talking about this I just wanted to like you've mentioned weekly meetings I'm sure you meet the faculty as well yeah and you must have seen them interacting with each other, and there must be a difference in the way the speakers of the language interact between themselves and then with you. Do you feel that difference and how do you really‒how do you go about it?

JA: And well, it's - I mean, I haven't analyzed it so much, but I appreciate it. I, you know, one of the things that, you know, this is a good, you know, candid conversation. And it's not so much internally to Forman, but I'll be at an audience outside Forman. And, you know, I guess I'm aware of some of the differences or whatever. And so it's clear that they want to have a conversation or do or that they're talking to do because they gravitate toward their naturally. And says, Oh, we got to talk in English because, you know, there's somebody here that doesn't understand it. And I get pretty self conscious about that. And I mean, I would say, I would say, would you do it? Yeah, what if I'd like, I'd like people to know that I don't want them to speak in English because of me. I mean, even if I didn't understand that they should speak in Urdu, but I, I like to convey to them somehow that I, yeah, I speak Urdu. You don't have to revert to English out of courtesy to the seeming, you know, pardesi log that's in your class.

MA: But it's just through your language learning journey. If I had spoken Urdu with you, you would then become a better Urdu speaker and just feel more immersed in it.

JA: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's part – my wife in particular, when she came out, and again I said she's better at languages than me, is that, I mean, this – you know, this highlights the relationships and the unequal relationships or whatever, but she was studying Urdu, and her Urdu teacher would say, go back home and practice the language. And so she would try to practice the language, and the Urdu teacher would say, you know, you make a, you know, like you'd look at the ceiling and you'd say, or you look at the floor and you'd say, yeh, yeh, chet ta, or, you know, this is the roof or whatever, and your household help was supposed to correct you. But in this social structure, they don't correct it. And sometimes they even adopt what you're saying just to fit in better. Exactly. And so, I mean, this is a cultural... She's observed this from time to time and thinks it was a handicap for her. Then she was teaching Islam about it at the British school, so she'd go to the cupboard market and, you know, she'd say, you know, Mujhe chhe seb chaye. And the guy would say, oh, you want six apples? And so, you know, there was no way that she was going to do it because the shop guy would come back in English. And so it just wasn't an environment that lent itself to trying to acquire a language.

MA: So just coming back to Urdu, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about maybe any memorable event, cultural event, maybe a wedding or a birth ceremony as we have in Pakistan often. During your stay here, have you attended any event? And during those events, what do you think, how big of a role do you think language plays? And how does that impact you as a multilingual speaker?

JA: So, you know, my setup was three months of vacation in Sindh, which was basically December, January, February, and then nine months in school in Murray in boarding school. And so the SIndh part was interesting because our parents had traveled to the Mojadaro and Koteji. This was upperSindh. And I mean, you know, even they used to have an eye hospital from Quetta, and this was the Fusseldean family that we got to know quite well. And I appreciate this aspect about my parents is that they, you know, we just went up to Quetta. We were probably 12 years old with the Fusildin family. And we were just kids. And so that provided more of a kind of environment. And so that part was good. I think another interesting cultural observation is that probably weddings, more than anything, were the cultural event that we're invited to in [inaudible] or neighboring towns or villages. The one thing about, and again, this is just at that time, maybe it wouldn't be the case right now, but I think as foreigners, if you will, or visibly foreigners, you have pluses and minuses, but perhaps one of the pluses is that we were able to gravitate toward different groups. Well, wealthy family, landlord, poor family, tenant labor, Christian family, and the busty. I mean, because we weren't situated, we weren't readily situated in the society, we could sometimes have these kinds of things. When I say weddings, and basically, it was different types of weddings. Up until about, and this is conservative, about percent, up until about 12 years old, we would be with my mother on the mother's side of the wedding. And then as we got older, we'd be on the father side of the wedding. So I think, again, I think it was probably more cultural insights than linguistic insights. My father, I think was, again, if it was Sindhi or even in Urdu, because he learned that as another language, it was pretty able to talk. I used Urdu, I heard Urdu, I did not use Sindhi, I heard Sindhi, but I think it was more, if you can say this, and maybe this is a cop out, but it was more cultural fluency than linguistic fluency. So I understood festivals and Ramadan and Qurbani and Eid and all that kind of thing. So I think there was a high degree of cultural fluency that didn't translate for me because of the setting so much into linguistic fluency.

MA: And sometimes, for example, I don't know if this is a common observation with other people, but in staying in Lahore, I've noticed that, for example, in weddings, you know, the Nikah part where they're taking their vows, it's in Urdu. And then the songs I'll play in the background is their local language. So in terms of that, you end up picking up these little things, especially maybe because I'm studying linguistics. But these differences, I was wondering if you were ever able to pick up these differences as a person who didn't speak those languages, or wasn't as accustomed to those languages. Do you ever notice this?

JA: Well, I'm not so sure a foreigner coming here can distinguish among Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, but I know immediately. I mean, and that's, you know, maybe there is a kind of, you know, cultural acquaintance. I mean, immediately, or Pashto for that matter. I mean, it's, you know, they're distinctly different, although a foreigner coming from Pakistan the first time. They might think it's the same language. So that's an interesting thought. We haven't talked so much about music. I mean, the Punjabi I know is, again, the origins of the Christian community here, and the Zabur, the Punjabi songs, I mean, they're beautiful. I don't know if you've ever heard them, but that's sort of the quintessential Punjabi to music kind of thing. And so I wasn't exposed so much to Punjabi, but the Punjabis from the Christian community, I met that language resonated with them. So I heard Punjabi in that context. But I guess I did hear the different languages. The only one I used myself was Urdu. I mean, a little smattering of Sindhi, but not really. For me, the Urdu was the second language, and it did allow me to, on trains and this kind of thing, to get around Pakistan, and it was good. I mean, it was a plus that I was appreciative of.

MA: Apart from music that you've just mentioned, are there any other oral traditions something a tradition that is maybe meaningful to you like Ghazals, for example, poems that you might have heard or quotes, Shayri is very popular in Pakistan or even just anything from songs as well old songs any meaningful or ancient oral tradition that you even national anthems like I'm just trying to give as many examples as I can something that is particularly meaningful to you an oral tradition of that sort. Could you tell us?

JA: I gravitate towards Pakistan's Amin Shah. It stirs my heart in some ways. There's some wonderful, of course, patriotic Pakistani songs, Dil Dil Pakistan and actually, Tamara Vatan Ha, that's probably my favorite. Or Nasir Fateh Ali Khan, Vohi Qadaha. That to me is just like getting into Qawwali, I guess. But, and of course, I love it. I don't go as often as I would like to because of other demands. But you know, we have Qawwali concerts here. And they're some of my favorite events. I mean, I just think Qawwali is just fantastic. You know, I think growing up, I'm trying to think what, you know, what I heard, there were some efforts to introduce us to the broader culture and my, you know, sort of more enclosed, you know, community that I was part of. But some of that interest was spurred more after I left Pakistan and again, I mean, probably if we got to talking, you'd have some similarities and you know Pakistanis growing up in Dubai with, you know, me growing up in Pakistan. So when I left it, I, you know, I mentioned I was sort of, I thought I should be speaking in order to do better, so I looked up stuff. But I did pick up some books that were bilingual in the sense that they would have the poem, for example, in English translation, and then they would have the Romanized, and then they would have the script. There's one in particular, Karen, in this translation of Fez Ahmed Fez, which is beautiful. So I'm a student in Boston, and I see that Fez Ahmed Fez is coming to Boston University, and I go and hear Fez Ahmed Fez's mashayda. And I mean, I didn't have to. I had left Pakistan a few years ago. I could have said, well, Pakistan was the early part of my life and it's finished. was the early part of my life and it's finished. But I was, you know, growing up in Pakistan. So when I left it, I mentioned I was sort of like, I should be speaking a little bit better. So I looked up stuff, but I did pick up some books that were bilingual in the sense that they would have the poem, for example, in English translation, and then they would have the Romanized, and then they would have the script. And there's one in particular, Karen's translation of Fez al-Abfez, which is beautiful. So I'm a student in Boston and you know I see that Fez Ahmed Fez is coming to Boston University and I go and hear a Fez Ahmed Fez Mosheida. I mean I didn't have to. I had left Pakistan a few years ago. I could have said well Pakistan was the early part of my life and it's finished. But I was you know there was a connection. There was a spiritual connection I suppose you might say. And so that connection, you know, if there was an event taking place, you know, probably my a couple of my, you know, khabi khabi, everybody around here knows, messes with me knows that khabhi khabhi is a is one of my favorite songs and movie as well as is, you know, I Kabi Kabi, Meri Dilma, how does it go? It's just a refrain, it's Kabi Kabi. I'm just blanking right now in this context, but it's Kabi Kabi, Dilma Kealakta Ha, you know, that comes to me. And I mean, it's actually, I mean, I wish I could recite the thing. I've actually, speaking about this, and each of our kids, well, two or three kids that are married, and the night before, you have a sort of a sort of rehearsal dinner with the other family and stuff like that. I've recited that. It's, you know, the English translation here is something like, you know, khabi khabi from time to time, the thought enters my heart that we were made for each other, that you were made just for me, that you were a star in heaven and you came down to earth just for me. I don't know if this is familiar with you or not, but it's a...

MA: I will go and look this up.

JA: It's an Amitabh Bachchan movie. So, Kabhi Kabhi.

MA: It's Bollywood, right?

JA: It's Bollywood, yeah.

MA: I'm not that familiar with Bollywood.

JA: So, what this is, though... I mean, what's interesting... I'm trying to piece it together here, but it's sort of a hopeless poet in love. And actually, this is a poet from the Muslim community in India that wrote this. He's wrote a lot of wonderful poems. I forget the name, but if you look up Kabi Kabi and Amitabh Bachchan and you listen to the song, I think you'll agree with me, that's a great song. Of course, part of this is generational because this is an earlier generation. But I heard actually one of our, at the college, I saw it on YouTube, one of our college teachers, I think he's studying for his PhD in University of Punjab. He was teaching a student a Kiahiwaa Teravada. And have you heard of Kiahiwaa Teravada? So these are my two favorite songs. So, look, look, look, Kiahiwaa, what happened to your promises? And they're beautiful songs. And I've really gravitated. So when people ask me, you know, what's your favorite song? I'm apt to say, and again, this is from a previous generation. So you guys are a whole different generation. But I think if, it depends on the version. Some of the versions of Kali Vaithya Ravindra Vadai kind of disappoint to me. But this guy, you know, he was playing on the harmonium and he was singing the song and it was just like, wow, that's really fantastic. So, you know, those ones. Fez Ahmed Fez is great. I mean, I've read a lot of his work over the years and, you know, I mean, it's just beautiful. I just think he's certainly a world cultural figure and impact on, I don't know, do young people read Fez Amit Fez nowadays?

MA: Oh! It's so popular. I think he's an icon for us, though.

JA: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think, beautiful. I mean, that's Urdu poetry at its best, I think. And I think I know enough to appreciate it. I think I can read the Urdu enough to appreciate that aspect. And then I look at the translation and sometimes I think that's translation is not as good as it should be or whatever, but it's beautiful.

MA: But you can pick that up, that the translation isn't.

JA: Yeah, that they might've missed something or whatever. I mean, the irony is that, if you, Kiernan again, is a very interesting British translator of Fez, Amid Fez. And one of the poems, they have a literal translation and they have his literary translation. And in a couple of the cases, the literal translation is better than the literary translation because the literary translation is trying to get to, I don't know, he's trying to read too much into the text. Whereas what's beautiful is the…//

MA: I think you need to have some sort of connection where you've actually spent time in the cultural context to better understand things. It needs to come from an insider's perspective and that might be missing in some cases. What about shows? Pakistani dramas?

JA: You know, I mean, the heyday of PTV, which you grew up listening to some of those TV shows and I mean, when you grew up, was it was internet there? I mean, do all your memories associated with internet or maybe not so much?

MA: Yes.

JA: So you, I mean, again, that shows the generational thing because I was sort of pre-internet and PTV, that was the heyday of PTV. Now, my recollection, and this really dates me, is that it was in 1960s that television came into Pakistan. And we did not have a television, I mean, then it was sort of unusual. So I mean, talk about technology, I mean, I grew up without a telephone or television. And that was Pakistan in the 60s. I mean, more urban, upper class families probably had them. But I didn't grow up with television, for those pre-cell phones. We didn't have a phone in our house. I mean, it was a part of my childhood, and television wasn't a part of it. I remember going to, from Murray, where I went to school, was gonna spend the day in Pindy or whatever, and the silver grill, they had a television, so we saw those. This will be a copywriter's dream for the advertising industry. There are a couple, I don't remember the shows, I remember the commercials. So the commercial was Lipton's Tee, Chai Chai Day, Kwan See Janab, Lipton's DGA, Lipton's DGA, whatever. I mean, to think that after all these years, it was such a catchy tune. Are you familiar with that tune also?

MA: I think they're still using it.

JA: I think what I was gonna say, I think it's, I mean, I think it, I'm guessing it started in the early 70s, but you know, whoever, whichever copywriter wrote that, that is brilliant. People are still singing his, you know, Chai Chai Yee Kwan See Janab all those years later. There was also a very dramatic commercial of Ever Ready Batteries, of course, his own order to do is, you know, the guys are sleeping outside in the grass like we did in Chicago, we slept on the roof in the hot weather or on the front lawn or something. And there's a dramatic scene where there's a cobra underneath the bed. I don't know if they even play this one, but it was a brilliant advertisement. And he pulls off the flashlight and sees the cobra. And of course he's got Ever-Ready batteries. The poor guy next door that doesn't have Ever-Ready batteries the light doesn't come on. So it's a commercial. And I guess the question was about TV shows. And I know there were some good TV shows, but it's funny that for all these years, it's more the advertisements I remember than the shows.

MA :I think it's even true. Currently, a lot of people tend to remember advertisements. They're developed in a way so that they're more catchy and they stay in your memory. One of my majors is psychology, so we study in consumer psychology how advertisements are made to be so. I would understand that aspect. Do you, like maybe, you know, when maybe faculty members are discussing in their free time or something, some form of media, like some shows or movies, do you end up catching those? Are you recommended something?

JA: Well, I think, I mean, this is actually a very good question. And of course, it's, you know, across cultures as well. I mean, I think I catch on to, because of growing up in Pakistan, I think I do catch on to some of the childhood markers that are rooted in Pakistan. Of course, the faculty, I mean, our faculty is, I guess, our vice-rector counted once that there's 21, our faculty have advanced degrees from 21 countries. So we have a handful of foreign faculty from Portugal and Netherlands and Australia and the US or whatever. But what also enriches this international perspective at this institution is that our faculty from Pakistan, if you will, have advanced degrees from 21 countries. So someone like Dr. Altaf brings that German perspective or whatever. And I think, I mean, maybe it's because some of these are global markers, but I think some of our faculty do connect with US Hollywood or kinds of references as well. I felt when I went, because I grew up in a family that didn't really go to the movies and stuff like that, that I felt when I went to the States at age 18 for university that there were things in the culture that I missed that were cultural markers because they had grown up watching television or they had seen, you know, The Graduate was one famous film that came out in the 60s and you know that was a cultural, you know, kind of film that had cultural impact and I wasn't aware of those cultural references myself. And so, but I think over the coming years, I began to learn them. So I feel that he's there to some extent in the UK. I don't know the cultural references and things like Germany and France or whatever, but I do know the UK. And of course, my wife being from Scotland, I've been introduced to this Scottish humor and the Scottish cultural markers as well.

MA: Coming towards the language documentation project, what are your thoughts on the project? And what do you what do you think we can accomplish through this project that would be meaningful to the FCCU community? And then I would move on to FC as a whole in terms of its diversity.

JA: So I may have I may be missing out on there, maybe a couple of projects that I'm not aware of, and so you'll have to excuse my ignorance, but you know, my first understanding is that there were some oral histories going on related to partition in 47. And of course, this is the last moment to capture those, because that generation is disappearing from the stage, as it were, disappearing from the scene. So I thought of it more in the context of the 47th generation or freedom at midnight or born at midnight or something like that. So the language part is something that was introduced to me more recently, but I think it's a brilliant idea. And I think Pakistan as a setting to discuss these issues is also amazing. especially for linguists that grow up in a more mono-linguistic kind of environment. I mean, they must be amazed when they come at Pakistan and see all these ones. There is the issue that you've talked about, about the smaller cultures, if you will. I'm a little bit aware of that from, again, my wife's experience with Gaelic. I mean, most people outside Pakistan or outside Scotland wouldn't know the contours of that linguistic landscape, but there's the difference. Of course, the accents in the UK are pretty remarkable when you think about it. I think that's disappearing. I guess we're talking more about linguistics than accents, but the fact that the UK used to have so many accents, and I think those are being trotted out. Yeah, yeah. So Pakistan is interesting.

MA:That's the same with Pakistan as well. We had a lot of local languages to start with, a lot of them are so endangered, like one of the languages, Badeshi, there's only three speakers in Pakistan now. And especially with accents as well, varieties and dialects, we're experiencing the same thing.

JA: Yeah, I mean, some people would say, you know, someone's like, you're losing a universe or you're losing a civilization when you lose language because of the importance of language. I think there's the writer Saul Bela that said that, you know, looking at an old man, he said, nobody has any ideas, has any idea what lies buried within the dome of his skull, because when he passes, you know, when this old person that he's observing passes away, there are some things that are lost forever.

MA: That is actually a very beautiful saying.

JA: Yeah, I wish I could capture it. I don't know if it's in a book of quotations or whatever, but I just remember when I came across this, I thought, wow, what a way to describe the older person that you look at and you think, you know, their life is finished. What's the big deal about that? Or, you know, you don't appreciate or have empathy for them, but you think about the things their eyes have seen and the thoughts that are buried in that domed head.

MA: And just lastly, what do you think we can do in SC to preserve languages? I mean, we have language courses, something that pops up in my head is that we have language courses, but we have language courses of foreign languages. What if we were to introduce language courses for local languages? What comes to your mind when you think about preserving languages on the campus?

JA: Yeah, no, that's a good one. I mean, we've mentioned this before, but the, you know, well, Punjabi, I think people take for granted because we live in Punjab or whatever. And I don't know, maybe Punjabi is in a separate category. And, but I also think it and, you know, I think that, I'm not sure, but I mean, I guess is that, you know, people in Punjab think that sometimes Punjabi doesn't get the recognition that it deserves. Or maybe, and again, I'm just speculating here, but you know, sometimes, I don't know, this is probably putting it too strongly, but you know, some people in Punjab may think we've sacrificed our language for Pakistan because we learned Urdu, and whereas in Sindhi and Pashto, they maybe resisted that more or something like that. So like is an interesting case in point because it's within Punjab, but it's a distinctive.

MA: And they're fighting for it to be recognized as a separate language.

JA: Exactly, exactly. Probably that's one of the more interesting issues. And I, you know, in my role, I have to be a bit, you know, just dispassionate, which means I, you know, if you're a Sadaqi speaker, you'll be very passionate for the cause. I have to sort of look at it in the context. And I mean, that's just, I mean, this is what it should be. I shouldn't, you know, it's just a cultural phenomenon that's unfolding. Although you can really appreciate one's affinity and desire to say one's language. So that's part of the mix. We don't have much of a Sindhi presence here. We have a handful of professors that would have that Sindhi aspect. I don't know if you knew Parkhash Singh, who's one of our Sikh students here. Parkhash, yeah. Parkhash, I think he's on his way to the States. I always thought he was one of the first people I met. And I was surprised when I found out he was from Sukkur. So, what's interesting now that I'm thinking about it is the Sikh community in Sindh knows Sindhi. The Sikh community in PKK knows Pashto. The Sikh community in Punjab knows Punjabi. So, you gotta admire that community that they've adjusted to the different geographical places where they've been. But he, when I grew up in Upper Sindh, he was born in Chicago of all places. I was not aware of a small as it was, I was not aware of a Sindh community there. And I'm less aware of the Sindhi presence. Sadaiki, we have a flow of students from southern Punjab. So I've become aware of that and certainly KPP in the northern areas. Those three ones are what's reflective of the most active student communities that have their cultural nights. I appreciate the fact and I don't, I mean, my sense is, we all have our own place in the community here, but my sense is that they welcome people from all the communities to come to the nights that the Gilgit-Kirchholm and Baltistan night is also a chance for outreach to show the rest of the world this wonderful traditions that they have. So we provide that kind of space. Somebody sent me an email, a student sent me an email saying, why don't we have kabbadi on campus? Fair enough, that's a good question. I think that our sports people may be working on, you know, developing kabbadi tournament. And it's really interesting to see how the students are coming up with their own ways. It's like they've been given an opportunity to express their cultural identities and then now they're trying to give back to the community. Even for this project, the students, we didn't have a hard time looking for local speakers on campus, even though there's like one or two speakers from each language community, they're that eager to contribute to the preservation of their language and just the expression of that language and culture on campus.

JA: Well, I think this project is helpful there as well. I guess I would just say that, from my perspective, I'm very open to those kinds of suggestions. You hate to bring up the cost factor, but the reality is that if you had a class and people, it would be harder to maintain it. But, you know, in principle, I think it's a good idea. And I think we'd want to be welcome into that kind of thing.

MA: And those are all the questions that I have. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?

JA: No, I mentioned before, I think I mentioned to Adil Khaled that I thought the questions were great. I thought he came up with them, but he gave you credit. He said that he came up with them. And I've been a little bit of time scheduling it because in this, I'm leaving in, you know, our son's getting married, so I'm leaving in the 11th. But, you know, so it's a very crowded schedule, but I'm very appreciative. It's a great project. It lets me know a little bit more about it. At first, I thought that I'm the wrong person because, you know, you're looking for people that are truly bilingual, and I don't fall in that category. But I guess in the project you're looking, you know, even on the fringes or the edges of different kind of encounters with multiple languages, maybe that's the point of the whole exercise.

MA: So the whole aspect of multilingualism and just people speaking different languages and how well they can accustom to the local languages here, that's also something. If you have a unique history with the local languages, you would be meaningful to the project because you can contribute to something, maybe not through the language documentation aspect of it, not the language itself, but the ideas behind language. You know, the experiences that would lead researchers to develop better policies, because once you document a language, there's research conducted on that documented language. And the ideas, because we ask the local speakers, how do you think we can preserve your language? And they have brilliant ideas. So to get a very diverse set of responses, it's always good to interview as many people as you can, those who have some sort of exposure with the languages as well. And I'm so thankful and I'm sure Sir Adeel would agree that we were constantly emailing you in your busy schedule. But thank you so much for taking our time for this and for providing such. I had a really lovely time taking this, conducting this interview. I learned a lot, not just about you, but also about the languages. And it has been really insightful. And your insights are just invaluable. Thank you so much.

JA: I appreciate a lot. 00:01:00MA: Thank you so much for being a part of this project. And we will start the interview with just a little information about your background. So could you let me know where were you born and when were you born and just you know your setup in your early years.

JA: Okay so I was born‒my name is Jonathan Adelton. I was born in Rurik, Pakistan June 27, 1957 at Kashmir Point. There's a house there, called Rock Edge, and that's where I was born.

MA: And when was this?

JA: 1957, June 1957.

MA: If I can know a little bit about your parents, what is their background, where were they born and their names maybe even?

JA: Yeah, so my father was Hubert Addelton, born in November 1929. He passed away, I guess about 18 months ago. He would have been, he would have been, 94 actually. He passed away at the age of 92. My mother is still living, Betty Addelton. She was born in 1931. Both of them were‒they didn't know each other until they were in high school or even young adults, but they lived in rural middle Georgia. You're talking about the 1930s. You're talking about the Depression. My father was one of 14 children. My mother was one of eight, both at the younger end of the family, but especially for my father, Depression era family, rural kind of childhood. My mother used to say they were as poor as church mice. My father remembers basically agriculture, just working with a mule. They didn't have tractors and stuff like that. It was basically plowing behind a mule is his memory. My father was the first in his family to finish high school, go on to college. He had this‒I guess it's a spiritual calling, that he really wanted to serve somewhere in the world. Asia was a huge attraction for him. So he was a pastor, he was a translator. I guess a missionary is what he was for most of his life and very at home in Pakistan. We can maybe talk a bit more about it, but they‒basically in 1956‒I guess doing the math, my mother would have been 25, my father was 27, they came out on a freighter to Pakistan, they were assigned to Upper Sindh. My father worked in Sindhi actually, not in Urdu, learned Sindhi quite well, but much of their working life here he was in Karachi. So I guess it was gradually moving from a smaller, almost a village like Latodero, to at the end of the time, it was in Karachi is where they finished their time in Pakistan.

MA: So your father does knew Sindhi?

JA: Yeah, so I mean this is interesting for your program. They were, and this is obviously we're all, you know, creatures of our time. This is 1950s, Second World War, America's engaging with the world in a way it hadn't before. For some people that might mean diplomatic service or military or whatever, but in this case it was missionary service. That was the reason that he came here. But there were eight couples from the U.S. that came at the same time. Four of them were in Odudu first and four of them were in Sindhi first. And my father was in the group that learned Sindhi. And the reality is every one of those four families, or the father and the mother, that learned Sindhi went on to learn Urdu. Nobody that learned Urdu first went on to learn Sindhi. And it was because, you know, Urdu is the national language. I mean, actually, it's the first language Sindhi is probably spoken more often than Urdu, but it's the national language. And so once you had mastered Urdu, you could communicate anywhere in the country. Whereas if you learned Sindhi, your communication was just confined to Sindh. And so the incentive was to learn Urdu so you could communicate across the country. There's also the simple reality that honestly, Sindhi is a harder language than Urdu. And so it's easier to move from a hard language to an easier language in the opposite direction.

MA: Did you ever pick up Sindhi from your parents?

JA: You know, my life‒they lived in Sindh, my father lived there pretty much year-round. My life was more in Murree, in the mountains, going to school. So I had my summer vacations. I can understand perhaps more Sindhi than one might realize. I think it's a beautiful language. When you hear it, it's very distinctively Sindhi, and it's, you know, almost musical in some ways. And I picked up a few phrases [inaudible phrases in Sindhi] you know, this kind of thing. And for my father, my father was serious about I mean, his much of his life was devoted to translation work. He was a missionary colleague, he developed a Sindhi language textbook. And his son who actually is an academic, you know, as a professor, turn those turn that into a really nice, attractive printed book. And it's, it's available on Amazon. And what Dan Brown, not the Dan Brown, but Dan Brown, the academic has told me is that what happens is you get these expat Sindhis who‒some of them from the‒you know, went to Australia or India or anywhere else at partition in 47. But others that went later than the second generation, in order to try to reconnect with Sindhi, are ordering this off Amazon. And it's a good book. It's basically basic Sindhi for English speakers.

MA: It might help with the cultural language preservation. It is becoming a tool.

JA: I think it does. He worked with a professor called Dr. Norman Zaidi, who was a linguistic professor at University of Chicago. In some ways, it's part of his legacy, the Sindhi language textbook. He also did translation work. The translation, especially when it comes to the scripture, is a very long process. It's not one person sitting in an office translating. It's a committee process, a review. Sarvajna was the Sindhi scholar he associated with. They worked together, became a colleague and a friend. But basically, when they were around in the 50s, the Sindhi translations were of the Saboer and the Angeal, and you know, basically the scripture, the Christian scriptures were quite archaic because they were the late 1800s. So the intent working with what's called the United Bible Society, which is based in New York, was to do a translation that they call common language. So, you know, Sindhi changes in 60 or 70 years. Also, the Sindhi at that time, I think, drew quite heavily on Hindu tradition and this kind of thing. And of course, Cindy changed in the inner and inner years. Anyway, what be that as it may, he basically worked with the Cindy scholar, and together they did the translation. And when they do this, it's line by line. It's very, very methodical. And then the question of beating the committee and, and, you know, even some of the basic words, which word to use. So yeah, I think I, the question was, of course, did I ever pick up Sindhi? I didn't pick up Cindy to freely speak. I did understand it to some extent, but I do view my father as, you know, he‒my mother to some extent‒but it was really my father who worked in the language and did translation work, which is the ultimate test of that. I mean, the other, some of these great classics, Pilgrim's Progress, which actually appealed to people, he worked on the Sindhi translation of that as well. So he did do some other kinds of translation too.

MA: What is your earliest memory of living in Pakistan?

JA: So, you know, I really, I was born in 1957, and in 1960, my parents went back to the States for one year. And if I'm honest with myself, I think the earliest, and you think about when children have memories, I don't know your earliest memory, but 1960, Christmas 1960, I'm three and a half years old, and this time we're in the States. You know, we live in a sort of somewhat rural setting, and you know, it's the classic childhood memory that you go out with your dad and your siblings to get a Christmas tree. And so that's what I remember. So that was December, would have been December 1961. In July 1961, this is December 1960, in July 61, we returned to Pakistan. So I would have been four years old. And I just have vague memories of the house in Murree. And by this time, actually now that you said it, early in this memory, wow‒it must have been in Chikarpur before I went to boarding school. So I was living in Chikarpur. It was called the Scott Bungalow, which my parents were renting outside town, a sort of old style house. And my father had picked up our Land Rover and driven it up from Karachi. And I woke up before the rest of the family and I looked out the window and there was our Land Rover, which I might say took us many, many hundreds of miles in the next few years around Sindh. But, you know, maybe it's a boy's memory that you look at it. Wow, that's our car. So that was my first memory.

MA: In Pakistan, you studied here, right? So maybe any early memories from school life, from your early years at the Christian school in Murree?

JA: Yeah, so Murree, of course, it’s that tradition. There's St. Denny's, and there's the Convent of Jesus at Murree, and there's Lawrence College. And then the Murree Christian School, small college, but part of that tradition, I guess, and it was a boarding school. People nowadays, at least in the US, are shocked that my parents sent me to boarding school when I was six years old. They say, how could they have done it? So the early memories are actually my father, you know, you actually had to be six and a half. So I couldn't start in the fall. So it was halfway through first grade that my father took me up to boarding school and dropped me off. And I have a, I mean, one of the things for young kids is I often say that if you're privileged enough to be able to give your kids a sense of beauty from a young age, then you're lucky, you're fortunate. And for me, I feel privileged because I did have that sense of beauty. Murree has changed, arguably, people might say, oh God, I had all the, you know, the too many hotels, all the buildings, and boy, next earthquake, that Murree gonna slide down the hill, and you wonder what's gonna happen then. But the reality is when you look beyond the, you know, the buildings and the hotels and all that, you know, it's beautiful. You're looking toward Kashmir, you're looking toward the Pir Panjal Range, you know, the Himalayas are the Himalayas. And so those are the early memories. And I think if you think about it, you know, some memories for some people are about family relationships, some are about, you know, a trip to the countryside or the farm or something. For me, it's probably really looking at those magnificent mountains, which is an image that stays with you the rest of your life.

MA: So like when you were going to the boarding school, it must have provided you with an environment to immerse in the language and culture of the people there. I'm not sure how diverse boarding school was in terms of the ethnicities of people there. But how did that experience affect your language use and cultural identity?

JA: Yeah, well, early on, it was probably more of an American presence, although with the passage of time, we did get students from Norway and Germany and even from, well this is more after my time, that the Koreans began to enroll. There were some Pakistani students, honestly, mostly the children of medical doctors at some of the Christian hospitals, that, you know, Taxila and, well, UCH here as well, and other kinds of schools. So that was, you know, part of the setup. In that sense, I mean, English was absolutely predominant. And I did take lessons. I did take French lessons. I will say there's a handful of my classmates that were really, really good. One of them is, I'll mention his name, Joel Dehart, who he was just very good with languages. His Urdu was wonderful. He learned Pashto. And he traveled, I mean, he was sort of drawn to the KPP and even Afghanistan, and he was just good with languages. And then a guy called Paul Stock, who works in Sindh, he works in the Sindhi language, he works in the tribal languages, and Thar Park, and those places. Those are two, there are a handful of others of my generation that were exceptional, and I admired them, and maybe I could say I envied them. I wasn't in that league, but I did take Urdu. We did do Urdu for shopping in Jekagali and going into Murree. Different times, we hitchhiked. People are sometimes surprised as a 16-year-old hitchhiked from, essentially, Murree to Peshawar, you know, which I don't think almost nobody would do it now, but certainly a foreigner would be a little bit intimidated by that. And so, you know, I used the language in that context, but I didn't use it in a literary kind of way. At first I was a little surprised when the invite came, oh, you can participate in this, because I mean, probably you're in that category as well, that you grew up with some English, but of course you also had Urdu, and maybe there was some Punjabi in the mix as well. I was exposed to those languages. Maybe it's a factor of history, maybe it's a good fortune or privilege or what, but English gets you around, so you kind of do it. So again, I think that generation, we look back and we think, well, maybe our elders should have done more to, maybe not just the 45 minutes of Urdu language, but maybe they should have done some more introductions to the language.

MA: The other local languages as well.

JA: The other local languages as well, yeah. But anyway, we're all creatures of our times. And I do feel, I mean, I use it now, and a lot of it came back. I tell people, ma pakistan mai paday wa, bachpan main nai mari main para, kaafi sal doi leh, leh kenab tak mujhe kuchh doati ha. So I still, even after all these years, I still do it. And coming back, I've been back three years now, I don't have time to study it, but my comprehension is really quite good, and I'm in many environments where I hear the language spoken, and I understand it pretty much, you know, 90% of it, you know, government stuff or education or even students talking or whatever. So that part's good. I do speak sometimes, and I don't know, I try to speak when I can, but I'm also acutely aware of the mistakes, so there's sort of a self-conscious kind of, you know, I'm making mistakes and I don't know, maybe some people...

MA: Especially with native speakers when you're communicating with them.

JA: I mean, that's the irony is that, and you got it right. I mean, you know what it's like is that when you're, I mean, and also in Pakistan, you're sitting here and you're talking to somebody you haven't met before, and you quickly establish, okay, I know the language this well. This person knows, I know their language to some extent. They know my language better than I know their language. So even if I somewhat know the language or even medium-sized know the language, the communication becomes the language of the two people who speaks both languages the best. And maybe it's a credit to Pakistan or whatever that, or you know, I mean, our campus here. I mean, there's just wonderful, lots of English speakers. But so you kind of revert to those languages. I remember, this is a funny story I suppose, but you know some American was talking to, was just talking about, oh Benazir Bhutto's English is so American was talking to, was just talking about, oh Benazir Bhutto's English is so wonderful and you know I felt like saying, well // that, or you know, I'm in our campus here. I mean, there's just wonderful, lots of English speakers. And so you kind of revert to those languages. I remember, this is a funny story, I suppose, but some American was talking to, was just talking about, oh, Benazir Bhutto's English is so wonderful. And I felt like saying, well, look, she grew up with English. But people outside Pakistan don't necessarily realize the bilingual aspect of certain Pakistani households that grow up speaking Urdu and English and correct me if I'm wrong, but sometimes there's a third language. They don't necessarily do the literary aspect of that language, but they pick it up in terms of the home village or talking to people. So it's not unusual for someone in Pakistan to grow up with... I mean, I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong. It varies, but you know generally speaking you'll have a lot of people in Pakistan, especially in urban areas who grow up speaking order to English equally well and then have some facility in a third language. And rural areas, I think they pick up their language the local language first I feel like yeah, it's the national policies as well.

MA: Yeah, I feel like Urdu is sort of forced upon people when really the connection that they feel with their local language cannot be replaced. And with English, we have a long history of colonization, so that's just a different aspect. But I think our local languages do play a huge role in our day-to-day life, and we do pick them up. As a student of linguistics and language acquisition, we do see how local languages are often prioritized, especially in rural settings.

JA: Right, right, right. And it's interesting, I mean, Pakistan is a country with so many languages, and it complicates things, but one might also say it enriches things as well.

MA: So you had a lot of colleagues who, I believe, if I've got this right, they worked in language preservation and just really were involved in works related to language and culture. Like, for example, you had that colleague who took up Pashto and then your father himself was doing work for Sindhi. How would you say that your early experiences of the cultural immersion that you perhaps got in your, through your experiences in Pakistan, living in Pakistan in different areas, how has that led you to implement the strategies in FC? I'm sure there was a vision, I'm sure there's still a vision, so how do you think these things are related?

JA: Yeah, I mean, I feel, I mean, to be completely honest, I think what the, you know, the gift of my child, if you will, was more at ease in different cultures more than different languages because I haven't mastered... I mean, Urdu and Hindi, I get around very well. My wife is from Scotland and by the way, the project is about preserving languages. Her father grew up speaking Gaelic and Gaelic in the West Coast of Scotland, and even in the whole country, was really discouraged, actually, it was in the North of Scotland where he lived. And so that was part of it. Fiona grew up with, I mean, she grew up French and German, and I mean, her languages are still a part of the mind. We always used to say that, you know, Jonathan will get us by in India and Pakistan and Dubai, you know, the Gulf, because you can, you know, you can use those languages there as well. So that's, as a family, we have three kids. That was my responsibility were those three parts of the world. And of course, as a diplomat, we traveled to many places. We lived in Mongolia, we lived in Jordan, we lived in Yemen, we lived in Kazakhstan. So she would say not fluent in any language, but she was the one that would go out to the shops and bazaars. So she had to learn the numbers quickly. And especially in a place like Kazakhstan, where English was not spoken much, Yemen as well. So, I mean, you can see I admire my wife because I think that she picked up again, not fluency in terms of intellectual fluency, but at ease in a country where you're able to do the greetings and the shopping and stuff like that. So, I mean, her list includes Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, a bit of Afrikaans, because we were in Africa for three, we were in South Africa for three years. And even when we traveled in Europe, her high school, French and German has got us good mileage. So I think what I'm at ease at is the crossing boundaries of culture, language. Again, those guys I mentioned, it was a small school in any case, I only had 30 or 40 kids in high school, but the examples I've given were more the exceptions that I admire than the general thing. Some people went out of that school, hardly speaking a word of or do. Some people, you know, they're, well, my parents brought me to Pakistan, why did that, you know, and they, you know, haven't been back in decades, or they've never been back. And so it was like a childhood episode, which must really be a childhood memory. For me, I've come back on different occasions. I came back to do a certain amount of study at a university. I did my dissertation on economic impact of migration from Pakistan to the Middle East, which, you know, that was part of your family history perhaps. And then I came in when I joined the Foreign Service. I had two assignments. One was my first assignment back in Pakistan and then I had my, after the earthquake, I was the USA mission director and involved in traveling in northern areas and stuff like that. When I came back as a university student, I was sort of a bit sheepish and embarrassed that I didn't speak Urdu as well as I should, so I did some self-study. And I also studied Arabic, now that I think about it. And that, I mean, I already knew how to read the script, but that consolidated the script. I don't read or do freely, but at the same time, I don't have any problem, you know, reading, you know, feeling at home with the signs. And I can struggle through a poem or something like that. But still being able to read the script, I think, I mean, that's one thing, again, the projects about languages, there's the spoken part. On the written front, I guess the scripts I know are the English script, the Russian Cyrillic script, and the Arabic script. And that gets you to different places because there's other languages that are written in Cyrillic and there's other languages that use the Arabic script and you know just as you explore the world and as you free as you feel free in the world you know I think it's it's useful to have that and some some languages people are good that you're trying and they forgive your mistakes some languages a mistake is sort of unforgivable and and I think this is obviously you prefer the ones where they're more forgiving. And I think Pakistan's in that category, by the way, I think that people appreciate it, they, you know, appreciate the effort. So that's part of it. Forman is really interesting, because think about it. Between last week, and I guess, is it tomorrow night, or the night after we have Saraki night here.

MA: Also we just had the Gilgit night.

JA: Exactly, exactly. So we have three different nights here. We have the Pashtun night, we have the Saraki night, and we have the Gilgit, the Baltistan Chitral night. Now, the interesting thing is that the Northern areas probably has more languages than any other place in Pakistan that it's such a mix of different languages. And again, I always say that those students from all those areas and from everywhere in this country enrich our community. And so it's really good. I think, I mean, you can discuss about English and legacy of colonialism, I suppose, is one aspect of it. Although, English wasn't always a colonial language, but I think it was resilient because it wasn't always a colonial language. It goes back many years and there's other been colonial... It has its unique history. It has its unique history separate from that. Again, the accidents of history, maybe French would be spoken more widely or even German. The Germans arrived late and they didn't forge an empire like the people before them or even Italian or whatever. But anyway, English, obviously the 1800s was the, I mean, ironically, when the British lost their North American empire, they turned their attention to the Asia and built their Asian empire. Africa was even, I suppose, a little bit later, but it is what it is. I mean, it is an international language. And I think that, I mean, it's an advantage that people from Pakistan actually have. If you've been, if you study in the States or Europe or anywhere else, your students from South Asia are very likely to speak English better than anybody else in the classroom or any of the other international students in the classroom. And of course, it's the language of instruction at Forman, but it's not just Forman, it's the university language of instruction quite broadly. And so, again, in terms, I mean, I guess, the markers for me are certainly partly the language, but they're also the cultural markers. And there's also the recognition that, obviously it varies to an extent, but I hate to use the cliche, oh, diversity or whatever, but it's diversity and it's not just, because again, because of its heritage, origins, and the Presbyterian Church and all that, it's partly a religious diversity that's here, but that's not the... and the diversity is... The Pakistan Christian Church has every stripe of Christianity. Christianity, the Muslim community in form and has the different diversity within the religion, but you have religious diversity. But beyond that, you have the linguistic diversity you're talking about, you have the geographic diversity from KPP or...

MA: And all of these are tied with one another.

JA: Yeah, yeah. And then you have the socioeconomic diversity, which I think looking back at my own, I mean, I grew up in Pakistan, the missionary families tend not to be from the elite of the country. And I've benefited from scholarships when I went back to the States for my higher education. And I think that we do provide also opportunities in terms of socioeconomic diversity. That's also, you know, this is four years that people have to meet people different than themselves. And I think that's what we work toward and that we honor in this institution.

MA: I think the students really appreciate that aspect of FC as well. That's one of my most favorite points, you ask anyone on campus and that's something that will come up in the conversation that you have with them. You shared a lot of your experiences as a diplomat and then you just work experience upbringing so you must know a lot of languages. You've mentioned a couple of scripts as well. So as a multilingual, how do you navigate those language dynamics, especially in a country like Pakistan? Just generally as a multilingual. How do you navigate those dynamics? How do you pick and choose between languages and especially in Pakistan and then in FC as well? We have both native speakers of English as well and then local speakers of languages who might struggle with Urdu as well and then people like me who've probably lived abroad and then shifted back here. There's diversity in that aspect as well. In these three levels, globally, in Pakistan, and then just in FC, how do you navigate these language dynamics?

JA: Well, like I said, there's different ways one does it. As a family, I mentioned that my wife, I mean, I studied those languages. I mean, you'll meet foreign service officers who say, oh, I speak six languages or whatever. I don't necessarily believe them, because taking a course in a language doesn't give you, certainly doesn't give you fluency. So, you know, I think my Urdu and Hindi, I feel a high degree of comfort level in India, Pakistan, and the Gulf. I mean, because I can speak it, and I can do what needs to be done. The other languages that I've studied, it's not at that level. Fiona does a better job of it, and although she would say, I'm not, and she's not fluent, but she even in terms of functioning in Pakistan, you know, I guess I will say that one of the delights of coming back was the realization that I can Retrieve my order to even if I haven't spoken it in years and that I can get around and it gives me sort of psychic satisfaction Especially when I understand conversations that people think that I'm not understanding, you know, because they you know They look and think all the skies doesn't speak English. I did that a few times in Chicago. I went to Northwestern for my undergraduate, and I'd be sitting in a subway, and someone, not necessarily from Pakistan, maybe from India, they would be thinking they're having their secret language or whatever, and they're talking to each other, and at the end I might talk to them and say, sort of imply to them that I knew more about your conversation than you might realize. So I mean, that's sort of a fun aspect, I suppose. I do think it's a plus. I'm self-conscious about my accent and I don't necessarily think it's great, but I mean you heard my little few words there. I mean I think, you know, some people say that it's not bad as an accent. I mean it doesn't sound as awful as some of the foreigners speaking it. It's interesting my own kids because they had a, I mean, my childhood was always in Pakistan. Their childhood was two years here and three years there and moving from place to place, so much so that they didn't really master any language, although now Cameron, our second son in particular, we were in Cambodia, he had to do Khmer. When we were in Kazakhstan, they went to a Russian Deskisa kindergarten. So that's another example of what your project's about, is both our boys went into, Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan, but a lot of education like in Pakistan is in a different language, Russian. And so we just put them in the Russian kindergarten. So it's kind of like sink or swim. So years later when, we have it on video that they once upon a time spoke Russian, but of course they lost it after the age of six and went to five other countries or whatever, but we have it on video. But when he traveled through, he did a Mongol rally from Paris to Ulaanbaatar, and they went through Kazakhstan, and in Mongolian they speak Russian as well, and his accent was pretty good, and he did a little bit of self-teaching, and he was the one that, this was four of his college friends were taking this little beat-up car across, and having been exposed to the language in kindergarten, all those years later, he was able to reach back and retrieve at least the pronunciation part. And he's, of the kids, he's probably the one that experiments and doesn't mind making mistakes.

MA: And you know, that's how we learn.

JA: Yeah, yeah, I think he's probably, I mean I'm too self-conscious. That's probably why someone like Joel or or Paul Sack, you know, they just spoke it. And if you're more self-conscious like me, then you're not just speaking it, you're afraid of making mistakes and then you don't learn it as well.

MA: Do you think the environment at FCCU– I keep using the word diversity, but I don't have a better word to explain it.

JA: Yeah, no, I mean, the reason why I say this is because you have a sort of American lens to look at it. I think that we are part of a diverse community in a different kind of way, but I haven't come up with a better word either.

MA: So like the environment that we have here, a lot of like, when I shifted to Pakistan, I would struggle, I struggled with Urdu as well, because, and especially Punjabi, because I don't understand Punjabi at all. So when I come on campus and in classes, I hear like, they're like, oh, your ethnicity is Punjabi, you must understand Punjabi. I'm like, no, not really. But I found it easier to pick that language up in FC, because a lot of us are learning languages simultaneously. And then we all have our own journey of, you know, discovering our own mother tongues, even if we're shifted from abroad or parts of ourselves like local languages that weren't taught at home. And we're now rediscovering them through the environment at FC. So do you think the multilingual community at FC has contributed to language preservation in any way?

JA: You know, actually, that's a good point. And, you know, I've long I'm here, I've met not a lot, but I've been a handful of students in your category that grew up in the Middle East or the Gulf or whatever, and I love to see that. I don't know your own story about coming to Forman, but I love to think that maybe families are comfortable here. I met one other person who said that their teacher, I think this was in Tehran or in Saudi Arabia, was a Formanite and had said, oh, why don't you consider going to Forman? I think if I'm not mistaken, his mother might've been from Russia or Tajikistan or something. So I love the fact, I mean, in the 60s, if you look at Forman, they had, for example, they had African students here. And so we don't have that visible international presence, but I think that, I tell my friends when they come to Lahore that what they see is when they get off at the airport, a crowded airport and you know, you step out there, it's just, wow, you know, welcome to Lahore, welcome to Pakistan. I said, everybody you see there is far more connected than you realize with, you know, with the diaspora, if you will, with the UK, with Australia, with the Gulf, with the US, with Canada, whatever. So, I mean, that's part of it is that they're far more connected. But I think you're right. I mean, someone would maybe look at you and say, oh, you're doing what's fantastic, or of course she speaks Punjabi or whatever, and yet you're learning like other people are learning as well. And I think, I guess I would probably attribute that to what we try to cultivate, and I know none of us live up to our ideals, but what we try to cultivate is this sort of honoring people and respecting people where they are. And, you know, if you're in an environment where someone's apt to be ridiculed or made fun of or whatever, then you don't have room for that kind of experimentation. And, you know, again, I don't, I guess people sometimes think I'm an idealist, but I think we do have an atmosphere that, you know, we welcome multiple voices, and that multiple voices, just as it applies as language that you're talking about. And I realized we're mostly in English. I mean, again, thinking of kind of examples, Jim Tebbe, my predecessor, I think, was better at Urdu than I was. He could preach a sermon in Uddu, which I can't do, and he had formally studied it. But his thing, which we still keep to some extent, is we have a sort of end of the week staff meeting, and probably not as much as when he was there, but we go back and forth between English and Urdu, and I understand pretty much all the Urdu they're talking about, and sometimes I'll be in Urdu, more often I'll be in English. But I think, I mean, this is kind of another unique aspect, that it happens in Pakistan in different ways, but certainly wouldn't happen too often in the States, is that people are having conversations that go back and forth. And I think that's great. And the linguists would study this, but I would imagine that there's certain conversations that lend themselves to Urdu better, and there's certain conversations that lend themselves to English better. So we get this wonderful mix of going back and forth. And I think that's a strength.

MA: In psycholinguistics, we do study this. You do feel more connected, and you can't have those conversations in another language you need to feel at home with the language yeah when we're talking about this I just wanted to like you've mentioned weekly meetings I'm sure you meet the faculty as well yeah and you must have seen them interacting with each other, and there must be a difference in the way the speakers of the language interact between themselves and then with you. Do you feel that difference and how do you really‒how do you go about it?

JA: And well, it's - I mean, I haven't analyzed it so much, but I appreciate it. I, you know, one of the things that, you know, this is a good, you know, candid conversation. And it's not so much internally to Forman, but I'll be at an audience outside Forman. And, you know, I guess I'm aware of some of the differences or whatever. And so it's clear that they want to have a conversation or do or that they're talking to do because they gravitate toward their naturally. And says, Oh, we got to talk in English because, you know, there's somebody here that doesn't understand it. And I get pretty self conscious about that. And I mean, I would say, I would say, would you do it? Yeah, what if I'd like, I'd like people to know that I don't want them to speak in English because of me. I mean, even if I didn't understand that they should speak in Urdu, but I, I like to convey to them somehow that I, yeah, I speak Urdu. You don't have to revert to English out of courtesy to the seeming, you know, pardesi log that's in your class.

MA: But it's just through your language learning journey. If I had spoken Urdu with you, you would then become a better Urdu speaker and just feel more immersed in it.

JA: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's part – my wife in particular, when she came out, and again I said she's better at languages than me, is that, I mean, this – you know, this highlights the relationships and the unequal relationships or whatever, but she was studying Urdu, and her Urdu teacher would say, go back home and practice the language. And so she would try to practice the language, and the Urdu teacher would say, you know, you make a, you know, like you'd look at the ceiling and you'd say, or you look at the floor and you'd say, yeh, yeh, chet ta, or, you know, this is the roof or whatever, and your household help was supposed to correct you. But in this social structure, they don't correct it. And sometimes they even adopt what you're saying just to fit in better. Exactly. And so, I mean, this is a cultural... She's observed this from time to time and thinks it was a handicap for her. Then she was teaching Islam about it at the British school, so she'd go to the cupboard market and, you know, she'd say, you know, Mujhe chhe seb chaye. And the guy would say, oh, you want six apples? And so, you know, there was no way that she was going to do it because the shop guy would come back in English. And so it just wasn't an environment that lent itself to trying to acquire a language.

MA: So just coming back to Urdu, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about maybe any memorable event, cultural event, maybe a wedding or a birth ceremony as we have in Pakistan often. During your stay here, have you attended any event? And during those events, what do you think, how big of a role do you think language plays? And how does that impact you as a multilingual speaker?

JA: So, you know, my setup was three months of vacation in Sindh, which was basically December, January, February, and then nine months in school in Murray in boarding school. And so the SIndh part was interesting because our parents had traveled to the Mojadaro and Koteji. This was upperSindh. And I mean, you know, even they used to have an eye hospital from Quetta, and this was the Fusseldean family that we got to know quite well. And I appreciate this aspect about my parents is that they, you know, we just went up to Quetta. We were probably 12 years old with the Fusildin family. And we were just kids. And so that provided more of a kind of environment. And so that part was good. I think another interesting cultural observation is that probably weddings, more than anything, were the cultural event that we're invited to in [inaudible] or neighboring towns or villages. The one thing about, and again, this is just at that time, maybe it wouldn't be the case right now, but I think as foreigners, if you will, or visibly foreigners, you have pluses and minuses, but perhaps one of the pluses is that we were able to gravitate toward different groups. Well, wealthy family, landlord, poor family, tenant labor, Christian family, and the busty. I mean, because we weren't situated, we weren't readily situated in the society, we could sometimes have these kinds of things. When I say weddings, and basically, it was different types of weddings. Up until about, and this is conservative, about percent, up until about 12 years old, we would be with my mother on the mother's side of the wedding. And then as we got older, we'd be on the father side of the wedding. So I think, again, I think it was probably more cultural insights than linguistic insights. My father, I think was, again, if it was Sindhi or even in Urdu, because he learned that as another language, it was pretty able to talk. I used Urdu, I heard Urdu, I did not use Sindhi, I heard Sindhi, but I think it was more, if you can say this, and maybe this is a cop out, but it was more cultural fluency than linguistic fluency. So I understood festivals and Ramadan and Qurbani and Eid and all that kind of thing. So I think there was a high degree of cultural fluency that didn't translate for me because of the setting so much into linguistic fluency.

MA: And sometimes, for example, I don't know if this is a common observation with other people, but in staying in Lahore, I've noticed that, for example, in weddings, you know, the Nikah part where they're taking their vows, it's in Urdu. And then the songs I'll play in the background is their local language. So in terms of that, you end up picking up these little things, especially maybe because I'm studying linguistics. But these differences, I was wondering if you were ever able to pick up these differences as a person who didn't speak those languages, or wasn't as accustomed to those languages. Do you ever notice this?

JA: Well, I'm not so sure a foreigner coming here can distinguish among Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, but I know immediately. I mean, and that's, you know, maybe there is a kind of, you know, cultural acquaintance. I mean, immediately, or Pashto for that matter. I mean, it's, you know, they're distinctly different, although a foreigner coming from Pakistan the first time. They might think it's the same language. So that's an interesting thought. We haven't talked so much about music. I mean, the Punjabi I know is, again, the origins of the Christian community here, and the Zabur, the Punjabi songs, I mean, they're beautiful. I don't know if you've ever heard them, but that's sort of the quintessential Punjabi to music kind of thing. And so I wasn't exposed so much to Punjabi, but the Punjabis from the Christian community, I met that language resonated with them. So I heard Punjabi in that context. But I guess I did hear the different languages. The only one I used myself was Urdu. I mean, a little smattering of Sindhi, but not really. For me, the Urdu was the second language, and it did allow me to, on trains and this kind of thing, to get around Pakistan, and it was good. I mean, it was a plus that I was appreciative of.

MA: Apart from music that you've just mentioned, are there any other oral traditions something a tradition that is maybe meaningful to you like Ghazals, for example, poems that you might have heard or quotes, Shayri is very popular in Pakistan or even just anything from songs as well old songs any meaningful or ancient oral tradition that you even national anthems like I'm just trying to give as many examples as I can something that is particularly meaningful to you an oral tradition of that sort. Could you tell us?

JA: I gravitate towards Pakistan's Amin Shah. It stirs my heart in some ways. There's some wonderful, of course, patriotic Pakistani songs, Dil Dil Pakistan and actually, Tamara Vatan Ha, that's probably my favorite. Or Nasir Fateh Ali Khan, Vohi Qadaha. That to me is just like getting into Qawwali, I guess. But, and of course, I love it. I don't go as often as I would like to because of other demands. But you know, we have Qawwali concerts here. And they're some of my favorite events. I mean, I just think Qawwali is just fantastic. You know, I think growing up, I'm trying to think what, you know, what I heard, there were some efforts to introduce us to the broader culture and my, you know, sort of more enclosed, you know, community that I was part of. But some of that interest was spurred more after I left Pakistan and again, I mean, probably if we got to talking, you'd have some similarities and you know Pakistanis growing up in Dubai with, you know, me growing up in Pakistan. So when I left it, I, you know, I mentioned I was sort of, I thought I should be speaking in order to do better, so I looked up stuff. But I did pick up some books that were bilingual in the sense that they would have the poem, for example, in English translation, and then they would have the Romanized, and then they would have the script. There's one in particular, Karen, in this translation of Fez Ahmed Fez, which is beautiful. So I'm a student in Boston, and I see that Fez Ahmed Fez is coming to Boston University, and I go and hear Fez Ahmed Fez's mashayda. And I mean, I didn't have to. I had left Pakistan a few years ago. I could have said, well, Pakistan was the early part of my life and it's finished. was the early part of my life and it's finished. But I was, you know, growing up in Pakistan. So when I left it, I mentioned I was sort of like, I should be speaking a little bit better. So I looked up stuff, but I did pick up some books that were bilingual in the sense that they would have the poem, for example, in English translation, and then they would have the Romanized, and then they would have the script. And there's one in particular, Karen's translation of Fez al-Abfez, which is beautiful. So I'm a student in Boston and you know I see that Fez Ahmed Fez is coming to Boston University and I go and hear a Fez Ahmed Fez Mosheida. I mean I didn't have to. I had left Pakistan a few years ago. I could have said well Pakistan was the early part of my life and it's finished. But I was you know there was a connection. There was a spiritual connection I suppose you might say. And so that connection, you know, if there was an event taking place, you know, probably my a couple of my, you know, khabi khabi, everybody around here knows, messes with me knows that khabhi khabhi is a is one of my favorite songs and movie as well as is, you know, I Kabi Kabi, Meri Dilma, how does it go? It's just a refrain, it's Kabi Kabi. I'm just blanking right now in this context, but it's Kabi Kabi, Dilma Kealakta Ha, you know, that comes to me. And I mean, it's actually, I mean, I wish I could recite the thing. I've actually, speaking about this, and each of our kids, well, two or three kids that are married, and the night before, you have a sort of a sort of rehearsal dinner with the other family and stuff like that. I've recited that. It's, you know, the English translation here is something like, you know, khabi khabi from time to time, the thought enters my heart that we were made for each other, that you were made just for me, that you were a star in heaven and you came down to earth just for me. I don't know if this is familiar with you or not, but it's a...

MA: I will go and look this up.

JA: It's an Amitabh Bachchan movie. So, Kabhi Kabhi.

MA: It's Bollywood, right?

JA: It's Bollywood, yeah.

MA: I'm not that familiar with Bollywood.

JA: So, what this is, though... I mean, what's interesting... I'm trying to piece it together here, but it's sort of a hopeless poet in love. And actually, this is a poet from the Muslim community in India that wrote this. He's wrote a lot of wonderful poems. I forget the name, but if you look up Kabi Kabi and Amitabh Bachchan and you listen to the song, I think you'll agree with me, that's a great song. Of course, part of this is generational because this is an earlier generation. But I heard actually one of our, at the college, I saw it on YouTube, one of our college teachers, I think he's studying for his PhD in University of Punjab. He was teaching a student a Kiahiwaa Teravada. And have you heard of Kiahiwaa Teravada? So these are my two favorite songs. So, look, look, look, Kiahiwaa, what happened to your promises? And they're beautiful songs. And I've really gravitated. So when people ask me, you know, what's your favorite song? I'm apt to say, and again, this is from a previous generation. So you guys are a whole different generation. But I think if, it depends on the version. Some of the versions of Kali Vaithya Ravindra Vadai kind of disappoint to me. But this guy, you know, he was playing on the harmonium and he was singing the song and it was just like, wow, that's really fantastic. So, you know, those ones. Fez Ahmed Fez is great. I mean, I've read a lot of his work over the years and, you know, I mean, it's just beautiful. I just think he's certainly a world cultural figure and impact on, I don't know, do young people read Fez Amit Fez nowadays?

MA: Oh! It's so popular. I think he's an icon for us, though.

JA: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think, beautiful. I mean, that's Urdu poetry at its best, I think. And I think I know enough to appreciate it. I think I can read the Urdu enough to appreciate that aspect. And then I look at the translation and sometimes I think that's translation is not as good as it should be or whatever, but it's beautiful.

MA: But you can pick that up, that the translation isn't.

JA: Yeah, that they might've missed something or whatever. I mean, the irony is that, if you, Kiernan again, is a very interesting British translator of Fez, Amid Fez. And one of the poems, they have a literal translation and they have his literary translation. And in a couple of the cases, the literal translation is better than the literary translation because the literary translation is trying to get to, I don't know, he's trying to read too much into the text. Whereas what's beautiful is the…//

MA: I think you need to have some sort of connection where you've actually spent time in the cultural context to better understand things. It needs to come from an insider's perspective and that might be missing in some cases. What about shows? Pakistani dramas?

JA: You know, I mean, the heyday of PTV, which you grew up listening to some of those TV shows and I mean, when you grew up, was it was internet there? I mean, do all your memories associated with internet or maybe not so much?

MA: Yes.

JA: So you, I mean, again, that shows the generational thing because I was sort of pre-internet and PTV, that was the heyday of PTV. Now, my recollection, and this really dates me, is that it was in 1960s that television came into Pakistan. And we did not have a television, I mean, then it was sort of unusual. So I mean, talk about technology, I mean, I grew up without a telephone or television. And that was Pakistan in the 60s. I mean, more urban, upper class families probably had them. But I didn't grow up with television, for those pre-cell phones. We didn't have a phone in our house. I mean, it was a part of my childhood, and television wasn't a part of it. I remember going to, from Murray, where I went to school, was gonna spend the day in Pindy or whatever, and the silver grill, they had a television, so we saw those. This will be a copywriter's dream for the advertising industry. There are a couple, I don't remember the shows, I remember the commercials. So the commercial was Lipton's Tee, Chai Chai Day, Kwan See Janab, Lipton's DGA, Lipton's DGA, whatever. I mean, to think that after all these years, it was such a catchy tune. Are you familiar with that tune also?

MA: I think they're still using it.

JA: I think what I was gonna say, I think it's, I mean, I think it, I'm guessing it started in the early 70s, but you know, whoever, whichever copywriter wrote that, that is brilliant. People are still singing his, you know, Chai Chai Yee Kwan See Janab all those years later. There was also a very dramatic commercial of Ever Ready Batteries, of course, his own order to do is, you know, the guys are sleeping outside in the grass like we did in Chicago, we slept on the roof in the hot weather or on the front lawn or something. And there's a dramatic scene where there's a cobra underneath the bed. I don't know if they even play this one, but it was a brilliant advertisement. And he pulls off the flashlight and sees the cobra. And of course he's got Ever-Ready batteries. The poor guy next door that doesn't have Ever-Ready batteries the light doesn't come on. So it's a commercial. And I guess the question was about TV shows. And I know there were some good TV shows, but it's funny that for all these years, it's more the advertisements I remember than the shows.

MA :I think it's even true. Currently, a lot of people tend to remember advertisements. They're developed in a way so that they're more catchy and they stay in your memory. One of my majors is psychology, so we study in consumer psychology how advertisements are made to be so. I would understand that aspect. Do you, like maybe, you know, when maybe faculty members are discussing in their free time or something, some form of media, like some shows or movies, do you end up catching those? Are you recommended something?

JA: Well, I think, I mean, this is actually a very good question. And of course, it's, you know, across cultures as well. I mean, I think I catch on to, because of growing up in Pakistan, I think I do catch on to some of the childhood markers that are rooted in Pakistan. Of course, the faculty, I mean, our faculty is, I guess, our vice-rector counted once that there's 21, our faculty have advanced degrees from 21 countries. So we have a handful of foreign faculty from Portugal and Netherlands and Australia and the US or whatever. But what also enriches this international perspective at this institution is that our faculty from Pakistan, if you will, have advanced degrees from 21 countries. So someone like Dr. Altaf brings that German perspective or whatever. And I think, I mean, maybe it's because some of these are global markers, but I think some of our faculty do connect with US Hollywood or kinds of references as well. I felt when I went, because I grew up in a family that didn't really go to the movies and stuff like that, that I felt when I went to the States at age 18 for university that there were things in the culture that I missed that were cultural markers because they had grown up watching television or they had seen, you know, The Graduate was one famous film that came out in the 60s and you know that was a cultural, you know, kind of film that had cultural impact and I wasn't aware of those cultural references myself. And so, but I think over the coming years, I began to learn them. So I feel that he's there to some extent in the UK. I don't know the cultural references and things like Germany and France or whatever, but I do know the UK. And of course, my wife being from Scotland, I've been introduced to this Scottish humor and the Scottish cultural markers as well.

MA: Coming towards the language documentation project, what are your thoughts on the project? And what do you what do you think we can accomplish through this project that would be meaningful to the FCCU community? And then I would move on to FC as a whole in terms of its diversity.

JA: So I may have I may be missing out on there, maybe a couple of projects that I'm not aware of, and so you'll have to excuse my ignorance, but you know, my first understanding is that there were some oral histories going on related to partition in 47. And of course, this is the last moment to capture those, because that generation is disappearing from the stage, as it were, disappearing from the scene. So I thought of it more in the context of the 47th generation or freedom at midnight or born at midnight or something like that. So the language part is something that was introduced to me more recently, but I think it's a brilliant idea. And I think Pakistan as a setting to discuss these issues is also amazing. especially for linguists that grow up in a more mono-linguistic kind of environment. I mean, they must be amazed when they come at Pakistan and see all these ones. There is the issue that you've talked about, about the smaller cultures, if you will. I'm a little bit aware of that from, again, my wife's experience with Gaelic. I mean, most people outside Pakistan or outside Scotland wouldn't know the contours of that linguistic landscape, but there's the difference. Of course, the accents in the UK are pretty remarkable when you think about it. I think that's disappearing. I guess we're talking more about linguistics than accents, but the fact that the UK used to have so many accents, and I think those are being trotted out. Yeah, yeah. So Pakistan is interesting.

MA:That's the same with Pakistan as well. We had a lot of local languages to start with, a lot of them are so endangered, like one of the languages, Badeshi, there's only three speakers in Pakistan now. And especially with accents as well, varieties and dialects, we're experiencing the same thing.

JA: Yeah, I mean, some people would say, you know, someone's like, you're losing a universe or you're losing a civilization when you lose language because of the importance of language. I think there's the writer Saul Bela that said that, you know, looking at an old man, he said, nobody has any ideas, has any idea what lies buried within the dome of his skull, because when he passes, you know, when this old person that he's observing passes away, there are some things that are lost forever.

MA: That is actually a very beautiful saying.

JA: Yeah, I wish I could capture it. I don't know if it's in a book of quotations or whatever, but I just remember when I came across this, I thought, wow, what a way to describe the older person that you look at and you think, you know, their life is finished. What's the big deal about that? Or, you know, you don't appreciate or have empathy for them, but you think about the things their eyes have seen and the thoughts that are buried in that domed head.

MA: And just lastly, what do you think we can do in SC to preserve languages? I mean, we have language courses, something that pops up in my head is that we have language courses, but we have language courses of foreign languages. What if we were to introduce language courses for local languages? What comes to your mind when you think about preserving languages on the campus?

JA: Yeah, no, that's a good one. I mean, we've mentioned this before, but the, you know, well, Punjabi, I think people take for granted because we live in Punjab or whatever. And I don't know, maybe Punjabi is in a separate category. And, but I also think it and, you know, I think that, I'm not sure, but I mean, I guess is that, you know, people in Punjab think that sometimes Punjabi doesn't get the recognition that it deserves. Or maybe, and again, I'm just speculating here, but you know, sometimes, I don't know, this is probably putting it too strongly, but you know, some people in Punjab may think we've sacrificed our language for Pakistan because we learned Urdu, and whereas in Sindhi and Pashto, they maybe resisted that more or something like that. So like is an interesting case in point because it's within Punjab, but it's a distinctive.

MA: And they're fighting for it to be recognized as a separate language.

JA: Exactly, exactly. Probably that's one of the more interesting issues. And I, you know, in my role, I have to be a bit, you know, just dispassionate, which means I, you know, if you're a Sadaqi speaker, you'll be very passionate for the cause. I have to sort of look at it in the context. And I mean, that's just, I mean, this is what it should be. I shouldn't, you know, it's just a cultural phenomenon that's unfolding. Although you can really appreciate one's affinity and desire to say one's language. So that's part of the mix. We don't have much of a Sindhi presence here. We have a handful of professors that would have that Sindhi aspect. I don't know if you knew Parkhash Singh, who's one of our Sikh students here. Parkhash, yeah. Parkhash, I think he's on his way to the States. I always thought he was one of the first people I met. And I was surprised when I found out he was from Sukkur. So, what's interesting now that I'm thinking about it is the Sikh community in Sindh knows Sindhi. The Sikh community in PKK knows Pashto. The Sikh community in Punjab knows Punjabi. So, you gotta admire that community that they've adjusted to the different geographical places where they've been. But he, when I grew up in Upper Sindh, he was born in Chicago of all places. I was not aware of a small as it was, I was not aware of a Sindh community there. And I'm less aware of the Sindhi presence. Sadaiki, we have a flow of students from southern Punjab. So I've become aware of that and certainly KPP in the northern areas. Those three ones are what's reflective of the most active student communities that have their cultural nights. I appreciate the fact and I don't, I mean, my sense is, we all have our own place in the community here, but my sense is that they welcome people from all the communities to come to the nights that the Gilgit-Kirchholm and Baltistan night is also a chance for outreach to show the rest of the world this wonderful traditions that they have. So we provide that kind of space. Somebody sent me an email, a student sent me an email saying, why don't we have kabbadi on campus? Fair enough, that's a good question. I think that our sports people may be working on, you know, developing kabbadi tournament. And it's really interesting to see how the students are coming up with their own ways. It's like they've been given an opportunity to express their cultural identities and then now they're trying to give back to the community. Even for this project, the students, we didn't have a hard time looking for local speakers on campus, even though there's like one or two speakers from each language community, they're that eager to contribute to the preservation of their language and just the expression of that language and culture on campus.

JA: Well, I think this project is helpful there as well. I guess I would just say that, from my perspective, I'm very open to those kinds of suggestions. You hate to bring up the cost factor, but the reality is that if you had a class and people, it would be harder to maintain it. But, you know, in principle, I think it's a good idea. And I think we'd want to be welcome into that kind of thing.

MA: And those are all the questions that I have. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?

JA: No, I mentioned before, I think I mentioned to Adil Khaled that I thought the questions were great. I thought he came up with them, but he gave you credit. He said that he came up with them. And I've been a little bit of time scheduling it because in this, I'm leaving in, you know, our son's getting married, so I'm leaving in the 11th. But, you know, so it's a very crowded schedule, but I'm very appreciative. It's a great project. It lets me know a little bit more about it. At first, I thought that I'm the wrong person because, you know, you're looking for people that are truly bilingual, and I don't fall in that category. But I guess in the project you're looking, you know, even on the fringes or the edges of different kind of encounters with multiple languages, maybe that's the point of the whole exercise.

MA: So the whole aspect of multilingualism and just people speaking different languages and how well they can accustom to the local languages here, that's also something. If you have a unique history with the local languages, you would be meaningful to the project because you can contribute to something, maybe not through the language documentation aspect of it, not the language itself, but the ideas behind language. You know, the experiences that would lead researchers to develop better policies, because once you document a language, there's research conducted on that documented language. And the ideas, because we ask the local speakers, how do you think we can preserve your language? And they have brilliant ideas. So to get a very diverse set of responses, it's always good to interview as many people as you can, those who have some sort of exposure with the languages as well. And I'm so thankful and I'm sure Sir Adeel would agree that we were constantly emailing you in your busy schedule. But thank you so much for taking our time for this and for providing such. I had a really lovely time taking this, conducting this interview. I learned a lot, not just about you, but also about the languages. And it has been really insightful. And your insights are just invaluable. Thank you so much.

JA: I appreciate a lot.