Atong Literacy Ideas 1
Channel: Atongmorot
Date: 2020-05-29

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This video is about literacy in Atong, a language spoken in Meghalaya State of Northeast India, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh.

COMLETE TEXT OF THE VIDEO
Nemaidongama Atongmorotdarang? Angdo tai'nido choi'sa Atongkhu'chukmi gymynaw balna sykaidong. Aro, Atongliteracymi gymyn balna sykaidong. Ytykyimyng, literacymyng gymyn Atongkhu'chuksang balna angna bylongen raka. Ytykyimyng,  angdo choi'sa Ingliskhu'chuksang balkhunine. So, I will continue in English.

As I said, I want to talk a little bit about literacy: Atong literacy. And, in order to write your own language, you need to have an idea about the structure of your own language. You need to have an idea about how the language functions. And I have written a grammar about that, which is very difficult to read if you are not an academic linguist. So, people have asked me: "Why don't you write something easy like a primer?" That is not a simple thing to do. It takes an enormous amount of time to write stuff like that, and I am working on it.

But in the meantime, I think that I cannot do something that is very important for Atong literacy. I am not a native speaker of Atong, unfortunately. And I think that in order for a literacy project to be successful, it is necessary for the Atong people to be able to speak about their own language and the structure of their own language, in their own language. So, for example, when you want to want to write Atong, and you need knowledge of the structure of the language, it is important to know about things like enclitics, suffixes, phrases and clauses. Now, these are all difficult, technical linguistic terms, but just talking about your language in everyday language is not possible.

Now I remember that when I learned to write my own language, when I was in primary school, we were taught specific technical terms, linguistics terms to talk about my own language, which is Dutch, by the way. So, I think that this awareness of the structure of your own language, and this speaking about your own language has to start in primary school, in your own language, with the necessary technical terms.

Therefore, it is necessary that these things like phrase, enclitic, suffix and clause, just to point out a few, are translated into Atong. And not only those. Also when you want to talk about writing your own language, you need to have words for things like a full stop or period, a comma, a colon, quotation marks, a questions mark, exclamation marks, sentence, those kinds of words, they are all useful.

And you can of course take the English words, to talk about those things, but then they will always remain foreign concepts. And I think, in order for native speakers to take control over their own language development, over their own literacy development, these technical terms should be translated into Atong.

Now this is something I can unfortunately not do. I am not a native speaker of Atong, as I said before. And I think it is necessary in this case, that Atong people sit down and think about this, how they want to do that, which words to use. And then start thinking about how to use the material that is available to create lessons for children that are relevant for literacy.

Now of course I am very happy to help from a distance. I don't know when I will be able to travel to India again. I think that there is a lot of material to make primers. Of course, if you want the material, I can always send it to you by email. I have a lot of idea of what needs to happen, and I will talk about those ideas in future videos.

For now, this is all I want to say, that talking about your own language in your own language is important to take control of developing literacy. Ytykyimyng, iawmangmangsa balna sykwa. Nemnukama nemnukcha chaian chyini. Ytykyimyng, well, mythelane, aro bye bye! Iawmangmangsa balna sykwa. Nang'tymdo iaw, angmi videoaw nemnukni ang kha'donga. Ytykyimyng, nang'tymmi aididarangaw, nang'tymmi commentdarangaw angna saibone! De, walnam Atongbajudarang!