Bhutan Oral Literature and Language Documentation Projects has formally launched its program of documenting the dialects and languages spoken by local community in different part of the country, earlier neglected. The project came into existence in 2010, but launching of the program took place only in 2011 that require government approval.
Gwendolyn Hyslop , a researcher at the Linguistic School of Culture, History and Language of ANU college in Australia is conducting the documentation in collaboration with Dr.George N Appell and Charity Appell McNabb.
‘In a remote village in Black Mountatins, there are only one or two people speaking their mother tongues. Likewise, other minority languages are abandoned quickly and are in danger of being permanently lost,’ said Hyslop.
Colloquial Dzongkha has burrowed in words from Hindi, Nepali, English and classical Tibetan which means that the official language is largely influenced by these dialects and languages spoken by minority population. So, systematic marginalization and outlawing of these languages came in effect.
According to Gwendolyn, even some indigenous practices of the local farming community have become rare and likely to be erased soon. So along with the loss of cultural practices, the dialects that signify and symbolize that cultural knowledge are also lost.
‘There is no way such terms used for indigenous knowledge can be translated into Dzongkha or English’, she said.
The ongoing project includes the collection, archiving, translating and transcribing the oral literature like Olekha in the villages of Rukha, Riti, Jangbi, Wangling, Phumzhur while Dzongkha from Sha region and Dakpakha from Trashiyangtshe is also being documented by a team.
