Thursday 8 September 2011

International Literacy Day

Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan are the nine most highly-populated countries. They represent more than 60 per cent of the world’s population, over two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults and over half of the world’s out-of-school children. 

Find out more by following the UNESCO International Literacy Day link and the Twitter Feed for Room to Read.

3 comments:

  1. Salam, Tor Khan. Thank you for the reply to the question about the difference between Pashtun and Pakhtun -- merely a matter of pronunciation.

    May I ask you if you can explain clearly why the name of well-known tribe living in the center of South Waziristan, around Ladha and Kaniguram, should be spelled Mahsud rather than Mehsud? I think it has something to do with the fact that the second vowel is not actually written down in the Arabic script, so that the correct sound must be supplied by the reader on the basis of context, in this case, the knowledge of what the word actually sounds like. With many thanks and good wishes,
    Carlo Cristofori
    Italy
    cristcaster at gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carlo, the Mahsuds/Mehsuds refer to themselves as "Maseed".

    See: http://waziristanhills.com/SouthWaziristanAgency/MainTribes/MahsudMaseed/tabid/106/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, I know; sometimes in English it's spelled "Mahsit" (I think this is the spelling used by Sir Olaf Caroe). I wonder where the Mahsud from comes from. Certainly Mehsud is a mistake.

    Many thanks for the very interesting link. I will try to contact M. Maqbool Wazir.

    P.S. What part of Afghanistan are you from?

    ReplyDelete

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