Specialists say the languages of Cambodia's once-isolated highland minorities are being eroded by global forces
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 06:34:35 -0800 (PST)
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2008120923101/National-news/Minority-tongues-face-grim-future.html
Minority tongues face grim future
Written by Sebastian Strangio and Sam Rith
Tuesday, 09 December 2008
Specialists say the languages of Cambodia's once-isolated highland
minorities are being eroded by global forces beyond the control of
government initiatives designed to revive them
DEVELOPMENT and economic integration are pushing the languages of
Cambodia's highland minorities towards extinction, according to
language specialists, who are concerned some native tongues may be
beyond the reach of government programs aimed at reversing the slide.
"You could compare it with burning down a library. When it disappears,
centuries of experience are just wiped out," said Gerard Diffloth, a
retired professor of Austro-asiatic languages, a language family that
includes modern Khmer as well as languages in India, Myanmar and
Malaysia.
"This is not special to Cambodia. Everywhere in the world has the same
problem: National languages are eliminating all the small ones."
Jean-Michel Filippi, a linguistics professor at the Royal University
of Cambodia, said that where communities could once exist in
isolation, demographic pressures and economic integration mean that
notions of literacy are transforming, threatening the predominantly
oral traditions of the country's highland peoples.
"Now, someone who does not know how to write or read is going to be
more and more marginalised," he said.
Filippi cited Unesco statistics showing that if current economic and
social trends continue, the next century will see the extinction of
half the languages on earth.
"There will be a loss of human patrimony, and this loss shares a
common point with the [loss of] fauna and flora: It is irretrievable,"
he said, adding that a number of native minority languages were
unlikely to survive into the next generation.
Samre, a language from remote Koh Kong province, is already
functionally extinct, while several more - including Sa'och and Poa,
with populations that number in the hundreds - are beyond saving.
Mother tongues
The Department of Ethnic Minority Development at the Ministry of Rural
Development estimates that 1.5 percent of Cambodia's population -
around 220,000 people - are highland minorities, concentrated mostly
in Ratanakkiri, Mondulkiri, Preah Vihear and Kratie provinces.
But despite boasting rich oral traditions, the country's dozen
highland languages all lack written scripts. In the 1920s, French
missionaries devised Romanised scripts for some minority tongues in
Vietnam's Central Highlands - traces of which can still be found in
Mondulkiri and Ratanakkiri - but made no concurrent efforts inside
Cambodia.
"[These minorities] have only spoken languages, and they make
conversation with each other according to what they remember," said
Toun Sa Im, an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Education,
Youth and Sport.
"But if things remain like this for too long, their spoken language
will be destroyed."
Shun Vave, an ethnic Tumpuon from Patang village in Lumphat district,
Ratanakkiri, said his village's literacy in the local language was
next to zero, even though a number of local people had been educated
in written Khmer.
"I have never known that Tumpuon had a written language," he told the
Post. "Nowadays, people in my village only know how to speak in
Tumpuon, not how to write it."
Education officials said that in order to achieve the ministry's aim
of Education for All by 2015, it was making efforts to introduce
bilingual education in minority villages as a bridge to literacy and
further education in the public school system.
Bilingual education
Phann Phirun, director of the Ratanakkiri Provincial Education
Department, said the government was working with Unicef, CARE and
International Cooperation Cambodia (ICC) to provide education in
around 20 Tumpuon and Krung minority communities in the province.
Since 1995, he said, nearly 3,000 children have attended schools
supported by ICC, and another 1,000 children in schools supported by
Unicef and CARE.
"We are trying to teach the mixed languages for three years. After
they have participated for three years in their villages, they can
continue studying in grade four at public schools," he said, adding
that three or four children from each village were progressing on to
public school once they reached grade four.
Iv Chan, director of the Institute of National Language, said that in
addition to the programs in Ratanakkiri, similar programs had been
introduced amongst Phnong communities in Mondulkiri and in Preah
Vihear, home to more than 30,000 Kuay people.
"We teach them how to write their languages in Khmer in order for them
to increase their knowledge and to read other documents written in
Khmer," he said.
"The Khmer language will help them to preserve their language, customs
and traditions over a long period."
Svay Thoeurn, 44, a Kuoy community representative from Pal Hal village
in Preah Vihear province's Roveang district, said many ethnic Kuoy -
who make up around 45 percent of the province's population - had
achieved literacy in their language as a result of bilingual education
programs.
"Nowadays, most of the Kuoy minority people in Preah Vihear province
can write their language in Khmer script, [and] about 50 books have
been written about our folk stories, history, tradition and customs,"
he said.
"Now some of the young generation have attended public school up to
grades 11 and 12."
But Ven Sokim, an ethnic Kreung from Tangkropu village in
Ratanakkiri's O'Chum district, said that the community had become
reliant on the help of government and NGO programs, regressing when
support was removed for the education of around 50 local students.
"This year, the school in my village got no support to continue
teaching Kreung language," he said.
"In my village, there are only about three or four people who can
write in Kreung."
Filippi said that bilingual education was complicated by a series of
factors, the first being that the protracted process of devising new
scripts based on Khmer orthography was not justifiable for small
populations.
"To describe the language, make the script and test it [can take] a
minimum of three years. It's a lot of work," he said. "Most of the
languages for which there has been a script created are spoken by more
than 50,000 people."
Even once scripts are created and introduced into the education system
- as is the case with the Tumpuon, Jarai, Kuay Phnong and Kreung
languages - whether the language flourishes depends largely on factors
beyond the government's control.
"We don't know if the use of these scripts is going to be restricted
to school, or if it is going to have a wider community usage," Filippi
said, adding that it was often dictated by the viability of village
institutions.
"If you take, for instance, the Tumpuon, Jarai and Kacho - they are
all different languages - you will find a very strong community
structure.
It means that those people themselves play an active part in the
creation of the script," he said.
For instance, Teo Chew, a language from China's Guangdong province
spoken by around 181,000 people in Cambodia, had proven durable since
it enjoyed the benefit of being a language of economic exchange.
While Filippi said he was "very impressed" by the quality of Tumpuon
community institutions, experts working with the Phnong in Mondulkiri
reported that they "had never faced strongly structured institutions",
and that language training faced challenges.
Diffloth agreed that there were limits to what could be done to bring
endangered languages back from the brink.
"The crucial point is whether or not the children speak among
themselves," he said.
"When they play together, do they speak the language? If they do, then
the language will go on. If they don't, it's just a matter of time."
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