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International Education Guide - Enterprise and Advanced Education ...

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.2<br />

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION GUIDE for the assessment of education from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan<br />

Canada <strong>and</strong> Pakistan enjoy strong economic, social<br />

<strong>and</strong> cultural ties. The Pakistani community in Canada<br />

is estimated at more than 300,000.<br />

Figure 2. Urdu Alphabet<br />

Throughout history the area occupied by present-day<br />

Pakistan has experienced repeated invasions <strong>and</strong> large-scale<br />

migrations. Therefore the people of Pakistan are diverse in<br />

terms of ethnicity, cultural tradition <strong>and</strong> religious affiliation,<br />

<strong>and</strong> they speak many different languages <strong>and</strong> dialects.<br />

Pakistan is among Canada’s top five sources of<br />

immigrants, with more than 22,000 visas issued in 2006.<br />

The great majority of Pakistanis—over 96 per cent—are<br />

Muslim, of whom about 95 per cent are Sunni <strong>and</strong> 5 per<br />

cent are Shia. Qadiani (0.2 per cent of the population),<br />

also known as Ahmadi, is a small but influential sect that<br />

maintains some Islamic beliefs but is considered non-Muslim<br />

by law. There are also small minorities of Hindus (1.6 per<br />

cent of the population) <strong>and</strong> Christians (1.6 per cent).<br />

The national language of Pakistan is Urdu, an Indo-Aryan<br />

language belonging to the Indo-European language family.<br />

It uses a version of the Perso-Arabic script with 39 basic<br />

letters <strong>and</strong>, like Arabic <strong>and</strong> Persian, is written from right to<br />

left. Much Urdu vocabulary comes from Persian <strong>and</strong> Arabic.<br />

Urdu is closely related to Hindi, the national language of<br />

India. The two languages have virtually identical grammar<br />

<strong>and</strong> vocabularies, although Hindi has its roots in Sanskrit<br />

<strong>and</strong> is written in the Devanagari script. Figure 2 <strong>and</strong> Table<br />

1 show the Urdu alphabet <strong>and</strong> numbers along with the<br />

Devanagari script <strong>and</strong> English transliteration.<br />

Table 1. Urdu Numbers, 1 through 10<br />

Number Urdu English transliteration<br />

1<br />

۱<br />

ek<br />

2 ۲<br />

do<br />

3 ۳<br />

teen<br />

4 ۴<br />

char<br />

5 ۵<br />

panch<br />

6 ۶<br />

chae<br />

7 ۷<br />

sath<br />

8 ۸<br />

aath<br />

9 ۹<br />

nao<br />

10 ۱۰<br />

das<br />

While only a small minority of the population speak it<br />

as their first language, Urdu serves as the lingua franca<br />

of the country <strong>and</strong> is spoken as a second language by<br />

most of the populace. English also has official status<br />

<strong>and</strong>, along with Urdu, is widely used in government,<br />

commerce <strong>and</strong> higher education.<br />

Pakistan’s literacy rate (defined, for any language, as the<br />

ability to read a newspaper <strong>and</strong> write a simple letter) is<br />

around 53 per cent.

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