พาซา ปุย อี แกฮ เคียน เตะ
(That's Bui, not Thai!)
/pʰa.sa puj ʔi kɛh kʰiᵃn teʔ/
Translation: The Bui language can be written
Elizabeth writes: Hello everyone! This month we celebrated another Eastern Bui festival — this time, to celebrate an ancient Bui king. This king probably really existed, but he lived more than a thousand years ago, and most of what we know about him is legendary. He’s become a symbol of the Bui people, and every year the whole Eastern Bui community comes together to honor him and celebrate Bui traditions!
There’s a lot to see and do around the festival. There are stalls selling clothes and gifts (some traditional Bui weaving, others cheap clothing imported from China), and all kinds of food — corn on the cob, pad Thai, papaya salad, boiled peanuts, ice cream, and even roasted crickets and silkworms! There are displays of traditional music and dance — some Bui, some Thai. In the evening, there’s a Thai boxing match to watch (although we skipped that part).
Since this is a celebration of Bui culture, our team wanted to use this opportunity to reach out. We wanted to share what we’ve been working on with the Eastern Bui alphabet, and get people excited about writing their own language. So, we rented a big booth and displayed the alphabet for all to see! We all wore t-shirts we’d had printed that said, in Eastern Bui, “The Bui language CAN be written!” We had big, colorful posters as well — a consonant chart and a vowel chart for the new Eastern Bui alphabet; one with pictures of different fruits and vegetables, all labeled in Eastern Bui; one showing the names of different body parts in Eastern Bui, and so on. At the table in front, we had an assortment of little books on display — simple stories and word books, all 100% in Eastern Bui, that anyone could read! And for the kids, we had an art contest — we provided paper and colored pencils, and we told the kids to draw us a picture and then write a sentence about their picture in Eastern Bui. At the end of the day, we judged all the pictures and handed out prizes to the best ones.
It was wonderful! All day, we had curious people coming up to our booth, and they got so excited when they saw their language written down. We had people bringing their friends over to show them, and even reading the stories aloud to one another. Since the Eastern Bui alphabet is based on the Thai alphabet, and just about everyone can read Thai, they could figure out the stories without too much difficulty. Goy, one of the members of our team, started playing a game with a group of kids — she would show them a word written in Eastern Bui, and they had to read it and figure out what word it was. She quizzed them for at least an hour, and they never wanted to leave — they were fascinated by how all these words in their own language could be written!
The younger kids loved the art contest — at first they were shy, but soon we had a crowd of them busily drawing, and our booth was decorated with drawings of houses, mountains, and butterflies. We also had many local leaders stop by — village elders, teachers, and members of the local government. They were all very positive and encouraging, and pleased with what we had done! In order to promote literacy for the Eastern Bui people, we will need their support, so we were really glad that they responded so well.
We told everyone who came to our booth, “This is just a trial alphabet. There may be many spelling mistakes in the stories, and later we may change which letters we use for different sounds. We need your help to make it right! We want your feedback on how these words should be written.” If people seemed interested, or if they had a lot of feedback to give, we took down their phone number and we handed out copies of the storybooks to take home. We want to be a catalyst for literacy in the Eastern Bui community, we want to get the ball rolling — but in the end, the community has to decide what they want, and make it their own.
We’re so excited with how things are moving! We’ll keep working on the alphabet to make it better, and we’ll keep going with the process of Bible translation as well. Our team will start translating the book of Jonah next!
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