Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences 39 (2018) 244e253 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/kjss Language endangerment and community empowerment: Experience form community training in the Moken language documentation and preservation project Sarawut Kraisame Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand article info ABSTRACT Article history: Language endangerment and extinction is currently a critical issue among linguists around Received 16 December 2016 the world. It is known that language attrition and loss dramatically progress, work on Received in revised form 24 March 2017 documentation and preservation should be done prior to the last speaker of such language Accepted 24 May 2017 passing away. It is found that there are at least fifteen languages in Thailand which suffer Available online 21 June 2017 from language decline and will be extinct very soon. Moken language (ISO 693-3 code mwt) is one of language which is regarded as the dying languages. Like other endangered Keywords: languages, Moken language and local heritage knowledge gradually decline without any community empowerment, transmission to younger generations. Thus, the Moken language documentation and community training, preservation project (MLDPP) was initiated with an attempt to document and preserve language documentation and preservation, Moken language and its oral literature before its extinction. As a part of MLDPP, this paper language endangerment, describes about how the community-training program is maneuvered. This contributes to Moken language collaborative language documentation and preservation project. As participatory action research, a grounded-theoretical approach together with on-the-job-training was adopted for contributing to the most benefit of community members. Based on almost-three- month training, the native researchers were able to initiate documenting their local knowledge and to manage the fieldwork without the researcher. They were able to document over 100 video records of Moken place names in Surin Islands with 27 min long and over 50 video records of traditional ecological knowledge with 20 min long without the linguist's supervision. © 2017 Kasetsart University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/). Introduction was not as good as my expectation. It seemed that on one in this community was aware of language and local Moken Language Documentation and Preservation knowledge declination situation. It was observed that Project, henceforth MLDPP, was initiated in 2013. Its pri- several signs were shown up that Moken language in this mary goal was to document and preserve Moken lan- community was declining such as monosyllabization, guage and oral literature, including local knowledge, on semantic loss, semantic overgeneralization, Thai words Surin Islands in Phang-nga Province. Engaging intensively borrowing and replacement, local knowledge trans- in Surin Islands Moken community, the researcher mission gap between Moken adults and kids etc. (see explored that the language situation of this community more in Kraisame, 2012). Even these linguistic phenom- ena could be generally found in every language but these could be significantly important signs with ethic minority E-mail address: [email protected]. languages which no writing system nor official language Peer review under responsibility of Kasetsart University. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.kjss.2017.05.002 2452-3151/© 2017 Kasetsart University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). S. Kraisame / Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences 39 (2018) 244e253 245 standardization. The disappearance of the actual Moken indirect partner who would provide supports and facilitate words, lexical meaning, and local knowledge trans- the team during the project. mission have weakened younger generations to their In this paper, the researcher will highlight and discuss ancestors and less opportunities to acquire formal styles on “technology preparation and native speakers' capacity of syntactic structure and lexical knowledge (Nettle & building” which is the part of a documentation process of Romaine, 2000). Together with the less number of its Moken language. The technology preparation and native speakers, Moken language becomes one of 15 endangered speakers' capacity building was done through “training languages in Thailand (Premsrirat, 2007). As a docu- process” which focused on both management skills and mentary linguist, language documentation and sustain- language documentation skills. The researcher believes able language preservation must be conducted before that this training process empowers the community disappearing of the last speaker. members carry out their own language work without or Grenoble and Whaley (2006) addressed that the key less dependent on linguists or academic expertise. Thus, success of sustainable language preservation is community the aim of this paper is to share the field experience in engagement from the very first step through the whole training indigenous people to document and preserve their process of documentation and preservation. This corre- own language and local knowledge. sponds to Czaykowska-Higgins (2009, pp. 15e50). She stated that researchers need to constitute “the community” Moken: Geographic, Demographic and Linguistic regarding how it looks like for the purpose of the project Information from grass-roots speakers, language learners to various bodies in that specific “community”. Thus, our attempt to Moken language (ISO 693-3 code mwt) is a member of working for community, with community and by community Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian languages lead to empowerment and language work sustainability in family. It is spoken by 6,000 speakers approximately in the target community. Myanmar and Thailand's territories (Moken, n.d.). Moken is In terms of grounded-theoretical research, “an one of the three sea nomadic ethnic groups (or semi- empowering research approach” and “a community-based nomadic people) who have been settled in Thailand, language research” were conflated and adopted to be a namely Moken, Moklen and Urak Lawoi’. Generally, they framework (Cameron, Frazer, Harvey, Rampton, & are called by Thais as/cʰaːwleːy/(sea people) or/cʰaːwtʰay Richardson, 1992; Czaykowska-Higgins, 2009; Rice, 2006). may/(new Thai). Moken people have lived in Mergui ar- Based on these grounds, the researcher developed five chipelago (Myeik archipelago) where is from Tavoy island components of “a collaborative language documentation in Myanmar’ territory to three southern west coast prov- and preservation” in Surin Islands Moken community as inces of Thailand (Ivanoff, 1997). The research site is situ- following: 1) partnership building; 2) orthography devel- ated in Surin Islands. It is located approximately 60 km opment; 3) technical preparation and native speakers' ca- away from the mainland of Phang-Nga province. Surin pacity building; 4) data gathering and eliciting and 5) Islands consists of five islands and one rock which is 141.25 mobilization and implementation (Kraisame, 2016). Both square kilometres entire the archipelago: North Surin is- local and non-local stakeholders were invited to participate land, South Surin island, Ri island, Klang island, Khai island and discuss about the project's objectives and each stake- and Richelieu rock. In 2016, there are about 260 Moken holder's expectation at the beginning of the project. speakers living in this community. There were five interested stakeholders, excluding the From linguistic evidences, three of them belong to the researcher, accepted the invitation for round-table discus- same language family but in different sub-branches. As sion: Moken community members, a teacher in Moken shown in the following figure, Moken and Moklen belong community learning center, a community-primary health- to Proto Moken-Moklen sub-branch but Urak Lawoi’ be- care officer, Mahidol University language revitalization longs to Malay sub-branch with Malay language. Even program facilitators (LR facilitators), and a documentary Moken shares many lexicons with Urak Lawoi’, these film maker. The primary objective of the stakeholders' sharing words are cognate to Austronesaian Language invitation was not only to clarify the research's objective family (Chantanakomes, 1980; Larish, 1999; Swastham, and to discuss the expectation of stakeholders but to seek a 1982). As so many studies have been done on dialects of possibility to work sustainability and to build up partner- Moken language (Naw Say Bay, 1995, p. 194; White, 1992), ship in the project. six dialects of Moken are tentatively listed: Dung, Jait, Lebi, As a result from the discussion, every stakeholder whom Niawi, Jadiak and Moklen. Moken speakers have lived from were invited agreed to participate and join as a team Mergui Archipelago (Myeik Archipelago), Tavoy Island, in fi member. However, four stakeholders were identi ed as Myanmar̀ to Pi Pi Island in Thailand. In Thailand, only Jadiak direct partners and the rest one was an indirect partner of dialect and Moklen dialect have been found; Moken lan- MLDPP. The direct partners, as shown in Figure 2, were the guage in Surin Islands is categorized