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The Roman letters started with the Italian priests for different languages
in Burma probably before the turn of the century when they first came here.
<p>Thus they picked these letters for the Akha, maybe the Akha were in
the process maybe not.
<p>Because three of the five countries the Akha are in can be verified
to now use Akha letters, the Akha on the project thought it obviuos to
"for now" stay with the roman letters. But the obvious choice was
to at some point begin with a Tibetan based script, since that is the ancestry
and since the Akha came from that region when that region apparently did
have a script according to some.
<p>Currently the logic for continuing use of the Roman script is that it
is close to english, which the Thai don't care to learn so much, and it
allows the Akha to leap frog the Thai and gain more contact with the English
speaking people who are most interested in them, thus coming to Thailand.
<p>The Roman Script writing style orthography that we use makes learning
reading and writing english about a one month operation.
<p>An Akha can read and write in the Akha in about two months including
computer use.
<p>A month on top of that and they can read english.
<p>This is an Akha who has never been out of the village and has never
been to school or done any reading or writing of any kind.
<p>We keep in mind to do the Tibetan style script as well, including making
new links to Tibet.
<p>Matthew
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<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#FF0000"><font size=-1>May I ask you,
why you use Roman letters? I think a language like Akha could be better
maintained with a regional alphabet like the Thai. Or a more related to
the Akha language. I don´t think that the Roman letters can help
the Akha people developing a good written language.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#FF0000"><font size=-1>The reason why
the Akha have chosen the Roman leters could be, that they want to set a
political sign against the political suppression they suffer from. The
same thing happened with Kurdish ( Kurmanji ) in Iraq. They have changed
their Arabic letters into Roman, because they wanted to set a sign against
the Iraqi government.</font></font></font>
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<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#FF0000"><font size=-1>Cem</font></font></font></blockquote>
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