A thought on the "Communication for Development: Targeting the Untargeted" article we read on how the use of the Vietnamese language for development projects among ethnic minorities in Vietnam is actually contributing to the country's poverty gaps:
I agree with the author's contention that a more bottom-up participatory development model should be employed to target struggling minorities in rural areas, and that the establishment of community media is key to development process. But I would like to add to this and stress the importance of not only creating spaces and opportunities for local languages to play a greater development role, but also more fundamental efforts to preserve local languages in the first place. Community radio is great so long as there are listeners that understand what is being said - ! Many of the ethnic languages spoken in Vietnam are kept alive only among a very small population, and are constantly under threat by the dominant language.
A friend of mine, Binh, is an ethnolinguist at the Institute for Linguistics in Hanoi. He is currently working toward linguistic preservation of Bhnong, a language spoken in the Central Highlands of Vietnam that has only 15,000 native speakers. Binh lived in Quang Nam for years to learn Bhnong, and has since worked with community members to compile a dictionary, grammar books, and other elementary teaching aids that previously did not exist. He is working now on opening a Bhnong language center in Quang Nam (including teacher training of local community leaders) in order to preserve the language for future generations. I believe his work is very valuable, and hope that other similar preservation projects are being undertaken in Vietnam.
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