TEZU, 19 Mar: Bamboosa Library here and Forum of Library Activists, Medo conducted a three-day workshop on writing skills for Kaman Mishmi speakers here from 15 to 17 March.
The workshop was facilitated by linguists Akhilesh KR, PhD researcher in Linguistics at Henrich Heine University, Germany, Dr. Pamir Gogoi, PhD Linguistics, University of Florida and Sakelu Chikro of Forum of Library Activists.
The workshop saw participation of 20 Kaman speakers, who actively interacted with the linguists to develop better and systematic writing skills of complex sounds, using the standard orthographic symbols as accepted by the apex bodies of Kaman Mishmi language speakers.
The interactive sessions and language Bingo games introduced by the resource persons provided an immersive, engaging and enjoyable experience for the participants, aged 10 to 30 years.
The participants learned about the importance of using hyphens, glottal stops, and umlauts in the Kaman Mishmi script and practised identifying sounds and writing, focusing on consonants and vowels.
Activities involved identifying animal names, objects and actions through pictures and writing them with the correct spellings in Kaman Mishmi language.
At the end of the workshop, the participants jointly created a pictorial dictionary in Kaman Mishmi language, which would be a valuable resource for the community, to take up similar activities.
Earlier, addressing the participants, coordinator of Lohit Youth Library Network Padma Shri S. Mundayoor reminded them that languages will survive and grow only when the speakers of minor and script-less languages spiritedly start using them in different literary forms.
Dr. Gogoi encouraged the participants to be confident in their language accent, emphasizing that it is an integral part of their linguistic identity.
Dr. Awan, head of RCML, RIWATCH, explained the use of hyphens for clear comprehension of sounds.
Researcher Akhilesh K.R urged the participants to share the skills of writing they had learned in the workshop with others.