เรียนจาก ⭕️ ถึง หลากลายสือ

(Learning from ⭕️ to Multi-lingo)

We all know the world is getting smaller. We and our neighbors mingle more often in persons, over the phone, on the Internet. on radio and newspapers. In this 21st century, we cannot hide in our cocoons (and say something like 'We are born a Thai, it is enough to know Thai language'). We are proud of our heritage, the language, the culture, the way of Thais - the intrinsic Thai characters and the natural resources of our land. There is no doubt that we have so many reasons to be proud and to be Thai.
 

“ปู่ม่านย่าม่าน” ภาพผนังโบสถ์ วัดถูมินทร์ น่าน

We have investments, businesses, manufacturing facilities and 'ventures' that contribute to our country's economy, supply chains and our welfare. We have people from around the world and many from across our border. Many of them do not speak Thai, nor read Thai, How may people from our neighboring countries are living and working in Thailand? How many will stay for many more years? How many children will come to school with knowledge of several spoken and written languages? How many will have to learn Thai language and Thai script (alphabet), because they attend a school in Thailand? Will there be foreign language schools for children from families speaking other language at home? All these questions apply to many Thais who will be living abroad - in other countries.

Thailand is a multi-culture country, has been and will be. We should not let the language and culture barriers prevent us from working and living together. We should look for ways and means to understand and harmonize in our multi-cultural environment.

Having multi-lingual skills gives advantages and more opportunities for employment and social activities. Even a little knowledge of other languages and scripts can be a great starting point.

[Please see also ชีวิตที่พอเพียง  4459. ทำงานเพื่อความเสมอภาคทางการศึกษา  ๑๙๕. โจทย์วิจัยด้านการศึกษา by Prof. Vicharn Panich https://www.gotoknow.org/posts/712712  which calls for research on ..แนวทางการเรียนรู้พหุวัฒนธรรม จะเกิดผลดีหรือผลเสียต่อนักเรียนอย่างไร.]

Here is a simple game 'หาเพื่อน' to help with learning other scripts. The game is a memory building tool by asking players to match/pair symbols/patterns (on face down) cards. In this game, the letters in language scripts (of a type called 'abugida' family) are randomly selected for matching. At present Jawi (ไทยใต้), Khmer, Lao, Myanmar (Burmese, Kachin, Mon,...), Tai Lanna (ตั็ว, ไทล้านนา, ไทธัม,...), Thai and Roman/Latin scripts are offered. These 'abugida' (อะ-บู-จิ-ดา comes about in similar fashion as 'ABCD' or 'กข' - see the notes below) scripts share some common 'consonants' and 'vowels' (as in Thai script) with minor additions or omissions. The sounds (and tones) are not much different. They are recognizable across the languages. (But for example: Thai ก ข ... reads กอ ขอ ..., Tai Lanna ᨠ  ᨡ ... reads กะ ขะ ....). The vowel symbols are not included because vowel symbols can go before, after, below or over consonant symbols. This makes computer display (for this game) very difficult (and beyond my resources now).

Please play 'หาเพื่อน' (online by going to https://sr12zar.github.io/KoKho/  and follow 'เล่น' menu; offline by downloading the .zip file from https:/github.com/sr12zar/KoKho ). You can make comments or report errors by adding to 'issues' in the https:/github.com/sr12zar/KoKho  page.

It's election campaigning time and a lot of important things get drowned by the voices of political parties (not many have your interests or benefits in mind). No party expresses any vision for Thailand's 21st Education. No-one cares about 'multi-cultural' society and children's learning in 5-10 years time. Politicians are like that. They have to have the issues put in their faces before they move and tell us what they are going to do about 'that'. Together we can change this habit. Let us do something we all can do well - vote for education!.

Notes.

##Language is a pattern binding sounds and tones, hand, body and facial gestures, and certain arrangements of symbols to communicate meanings. The skills in conveying meanings and in receiving meanings are keys to living and working in society. Language skills are necessary for learning, though not sufficient to gain knowledge which needs other skills such as analysis, synthesis, and reflections. We generally learn  language from our mother and other members of the family. Babies learn to associate noises with meanings and learn to make noises to tell others about their needs and wants. Babies learn shapes and symbols or 'models' of things in their environment. They draw and color drawings to build skills in representing things with drawings --models. Learning alphabet and number is usually next - the skill to link 'silent' symbols (strings of glyphs) to (vocal) words and the skill to grasp the meaning from reading are necessary for 'thinking', 'reasoning', decision making, and innovating and so on.

It is estimated that Chinese scholars of the olden days would have memorized more than 10 thousand Chinese characters (symbols for syllabic words). Many hundreds Chinese characters are now learned in the first 2 years of schools in China today. This gives support to learning second language in primary schools or even early --children have far greater capacity to learn (but limited by educators' imagination). Learning scripts other than Thai and Latin (Roman or English) scripts (all up a few hundred symbols) is not beyond our children, if we let them.
   
##The word "glyph" (จารึก  n : glyptic art in the form of a symbolic figure carved or incised in relief) is often used instead of "letter" or "character" and the word "script" is used for the collection of glyphs including 'alphabet', punctuation and other symbols. A language may be written in none or several scripts. For examples: The Japanese script is really three writing systems (hiragana, katakana and kanji) that work together. The modern Thai script is widely accepted, but Tai Tham (Thai Lanna, ตั็ว,..) script is still found in Thai-Pali documents and monasteries in the Northern part of Thailand. Latin script is used in Americas, England, France, Indonesia and Malaysia. A family of scripts, so called 'Abugida' in linguistic fields, has clear distinction between 'consonants' and 'vowels', and vowel glyphs can be before, after, below, or over and over consonants.

[The positions of vowels may be clue to how to pronounce them. For example in Thai script: the voices -ิ  -ี are forced up, the voices for -ุ -ู are kept below the throat and for เเ- แ- out the front, -ะ -า back in the throat. Try to voice the Thai vowels and observe for yourself.]

--This game is an attempt to highlight the many scripts used in Thailand today and to allow appreciation of writing systems through a simple memory card game. Most of the scripts are derived from a common ancestor -- the ancient Indian 'Brahmi' script. Because of this they share the vocalization but not always the glyphs. The aim of the game is to match glyphs to their equivalent glyphs in another [Thai] script. Playing the game repeatedly will hopefully impress the glyphs on memory and make the glyphs readable. Voicing the glyphs (ก กอ, ᨠ กะ; ข ขอ, ᨡ ขะ; ..) would add another (sense) channel to help memorizing the glyphs, but it is best done with 'experts' in the script and language. I do not have such expertise. You can help adding voices to glyphs. Please let me know via 'issues' menu on https://github.com/sr12za/KoKho/issues page. We can make 'friends'.

--The Chinese traditional script, though quite common in Thailand, is beyond my capability and the game'model' (mapping 1 glyph to 1 other glyph; not 1 glyph to 1 word). So it is put on the 'for later' tray. Perhaps, you can help and make that happen sooner.

--The mappings between Thai script and other scripts are based on wikipedia/abugida articles. An exception is for Jawi script and Thai script where a number ad hoc sources are also used and some new mappings are  introduced to allow for the game to work in its limited way:

--http://legacy.orst.go.th/?knowledges=อักษรมลายูบรูไน  :
อักษรทางการที่ใช้เขียนภาษามลายูบรูไนมี ๒ ชุดคือ อักษรยาวี (Jawi) และอักษรรูมี (Rumi) อักษรยาวีเป็นอักษรดั้งเดิมที่ใช้เขียนภาษามลายูตั้งแต่ช่วงคริสต์ศตวรรษที่ ๑๓ โดยได้ดัดแปลงจากอักษรอาหรับหรืออาระบิก 
ยาวีมี ๓๗ ตัว ดังนี้: ﺍ อลิฟ ﺏ บาอ์ ﺕ ตาอ์ ة ตา ﺙ ษาอ์ ﺝ ญีม ﭺ จาอ์ ﺡ หาอ์ ﺥ คออ์ د ดาล ﺫ ษาล ﺭ รออ์ ﺯ ซัย ﺱ ซีน ﺵ ชีน ﺹ ศ้อด ﺽ ฎ๊อด ﻁ ฏออ์ ﻅ ซออ์ ﻉ อัยน์ ﻍ ฆอยน์ ڠ งาอ์ ﻑ ฟาอ์ ﭪ ปาอ์ ﻕ ก๊อฟ ک ก๊าฟ ݢـ กาอ์ ﻝ ลาม ﻡ มีม ﻥ นูน ﻭ วาว ۏ ฟาอ์ ﻩ ฮาอ์ ء ฮัมซะฮ์ ﻱ ยาอ์ ى เย ڽ ญา

##Jawi-Thai mapping##

 Jawi:="ا‎  ﺏ ﺕ ة‎ ث‎ ج‎ چ‎ ح‎ خ‎ د‎ ذ‎ ر‎ ز‎ س‎ ش‎ ص‎ ض‎ ط‎ ظ‎ ع‎ غ‎ ڠ‎ ف‎ ڤ‎ ق‎ ک‎ ݢ‎ ل‎ م‎ ن‎ و‎ ۏ‎ ه‎ ء‎ ي‎ ى‎ ڽ‎";
 ThJ:="อ บ ต  ท   ฐ   ช จ  ห ข ด ฑ ร ซ   ส   ศ   ษ   ธ    ฏ   ฒ  ไ ฆ  ง  ฟ   ป   ค  ฅ  ก  ล  ม  น ว ฝ  ฮ -๋  ย  เ  ญ";
   
but ** ค-คว:ق‎ ; ฅ-คน xว:ک ; ฆ-gh:غ‎ ; -๋:ء hamza; ซ:ث; ฑ:ذ ; า:ا‎ ; ะ:ى ; Thai ํ : Jawi hamza and so on.

Please suggest better mapping which for this game to work must also be 1-to-1 (each letter in either script matches to only one letter in the other script). Though, it is possible to map 1-to-m (a letter may match to many letters in other script, the complexity on coding would rise many-folds, And the game would be confusing rather helping to learn the scripts.
   
--The word 'abugida' is derived from the four letters, 'ä, bu, gi, and da, in much the same way that abecedary is derived from Latin letters a be ce de, abjad is derived from the Arabic a b j d, and alphabet is derived from the names of the two first letters in the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. Abugida as a term in linguistics was proposed by Peter T. Daniels in his 1990 typology of writing systems.[wikipedia]

##Would it be good, if we can select all political parties and have them working together? We would have all benefits of their promises and a united government. A by far stronger country with happier people! As it is, a pity that our politicians cannot see this. Perhaps they are blinded by their interests?