Indonesia Conference Directory

Designing orthographies is a challenge because each orthography needs to be adapted to the language and to the society that will use it. Two examples from very different parts of the world illustrate how the process of orthography design must be localized: Barayin (Chad, Africa) and Kodi (Sumba, Indonesia). Phonologically, on challenge in the Barayin orthography is that it must find a way to represent contrastive tone. In Kodi, most words can drop a syllable in many contexts. The Kodi orthography rules must decide if the language should be written the way it is pronounced, or if syllables that are not pronounced should still be written. Government involvement in Chad is primarily through a set of guidelines. For example, they recommend the letter for the palatal nasal sound /ɲ/. The Kodi literacy program has received support from the Indonesian government through a grant from the INOVASI project, and by allowing government teachers to use Kodi books to teach mother tongue literacy in local schools. The Barayin literacy project is organized by a community-based organization, ADPLB. ADPLB raises grassroots support, recruits volunteers, trains teachers, and makes decisions about how to write the language and what books to publish. In Sumba, there are no local organizations dedicated to literacy. Orthography design benefits from several kinds of partners. Governments, researchers, non-profit organizations (yayasan), and community-based organizations. Each type of organization has its own role to play in order to successfully develop orthographies for mother tongue literacy in previously unwritten languages.