An Indonesian language adopts Hangul (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

An Indonesian language adopts Hangul
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

iguanamon
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Message 1 of 6

20 January 2015 at 4:26pm | IP Logged

Via twitter Reinventing the Alphabet. Excerpt:

Mark Hay (author) wrote:

...When the Cia-Cia people of Indonesia’s Buton Island, off the southeastern coast of Sulawesi, finally adopted an alphabet for their language, locals and international linguists alike rejoiced. An endangered language of some 79,000 speakers at the time, many feared that as global tongues and cultures became more locally popular, younger generations would be unable to engage with the knowledge and sense of identity stored within the Cia-Cia oral tradition. This new script would attempt to contain a 600-year-old cultural history, preserving their tongue and giving future generations all the benefits of literacy without the dislocation of language loss.

It’s a story common to many oral societies that, under the imposing tutelage of European missionaries, famously adopted Latin-based scripts from the age of exploration to the early twentieth century. But the Cia-Cia didn’t adopt a Latin-based script, and they didn’t do it back in the distant mists of history; they adopted the Korean Hangul script...

Before the early 20th century, Djudeo-espanyol was written in Rashi and Solitreo-cursive scripts before the adoption of the Latin alphabet.

Edited by iguanamon on 20 January 2015 at 11:02pm
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Xenops
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Message 2 of 6

20 January 2015 at 10:45pm | IP Logged

I wonder how the Koreans feel about this.
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Stolan
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Message 3 of 6

21 January 2015 at 1:12am | IP Logged

Shame this doesn't happen more often.
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Ari
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Message 4 of 6

21 January 2015 at 7:42am | IP Logged

Hasn't this been reported several times before? As I recall it was mostly a PR stunt and nothing came of it in the end. Have they reinitiated the process?

EDIT: Reading the article, it looks like it's been reinitiated and taking hold. Fun! Seeing how fanatic the Koreans are about their alphabet, I think this makes grand headlines in Korea and can probably get some tourism, too.

Edited by Ari on 21 January 2015 at 8:40am
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Iversen
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Message 5 of 6

21 January 2015 at 10:26am | IP Logged

Maybe the tourism aspect is the real motivation for this valiant and quite unexpected choice.
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vonPeterhof
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Message 6 of 6

21 January 2015 at 11:52am | IP Logged

Considering that the whole project was launched by Koreans, I'm guessing the reception will be pretty positive, as it seems to have been before the project's apparent abandonment in 2012.

Feels kinda weird for this story to resurface now though. The only links in the article that indicate that the project has been revived are this early 2013 Korea Times story, reporting that the financial problems that prevented the plans from being realized had been solved, and this mid-2014 blog post with pictures of dual Roman-Hangul signage in the city of Bau-Bau (the bottom sign isn't just in Hangul, but in straight-up Korean - "Karya Baru State Elementary School"). So apparently a city government (which may or may not even represent the majority of Cia-Cia native speakers - hard to find exact demographic data, since the Cia-Cia speakers tend to get lumped together with other Butonese ethnic groups) has allowed the operation of a Korean-run language school teaching Hangul and has put up street signs with place names re-written into Hangul. This hardly sounds like a resounding success story to me so far, especially given that Indonesian remains the sole language of all levels of government and education either way. Maybe those kids that have acquired Hangul will start a literary movement in their first language when they grow up, but for now it just seems like yet another South Korean PR stunt.

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