There are 2 Facebook groups Hmong Connection and Hmong News
On these groups there have been some discussions about language and writing ability in Hmong. It has been suggested that a book can be made that is an online book which is also spoken out loud with writing to help people learn to read and write the language of their culture.
An initial ideas are:
1. A traditional story book - that parents can tell the story in their own words for their own children / grandchildren. 2. A vocabulary book that has dioramas of typical scenes - forest, mountain, ocean and then Hmong writing for what is in the picture that can then be described. This can be in future expanded to for example other themes like school days. The aim is to help older people learn to read their own tongue and younger people and non native speakers to learn basic vocabulary. As it develops then proverbs, sayings and jokes can be included with the book.
Format
Open source and peer produced with a creative commons license so anyone can copy it but not copyright it thereby stopping others using it.
Notes and references[edit | edit source]
CHAT: Ying Hang Markus Petz, we should spend some time discussing about learning Hmong. There r some similarities between Hmong and English. The problem is if u don't know how to speak or it's hard to write. But u can learn the way around! That is learn how to read first, it'll be lots easier.
Markus Petz Ying I want to talk about this learning Hmong ideas that we can discuss. Maybe we should make another space to do this? (we can use Appropedia) I thought more about the book idea and I would love to make a kind of book that has spoken and written word in Hmong - perhaps one that can be downloaded and even played on a laptop or phone??? http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/ipad-ebook-features/ IS ONE way, But my daughter has been learning English and German with spoken word books with pictures since she was one. It is harder for her to learn her other language (she only speaks 3 languages really as of now) Finnish as the material is not so available. There are not so many Finnish speakers in the world and similar issues occur to Hmong I would guess, except having a country helps So maybe we could do a book that would allow parents to record their voices for what we see and what dialect of Hmong they choose to teach their children?? This would really connect the generations. My research is about natural resources so we could do traditional stories like with turtles or just general nature type dioramas (so a forest, a village, a river, a mountain and an ocean and a desert) for example and then those that know the Hmong words for these places can write them and they can be spoken differently. - OK its an idea if a few people like this I can try and support this happening. So please let me know if this the tallest tree in the thick jungle of ideas!
See also[edit | edit source]
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