By
Sylheti Project
London
It's about boys who cry tiger, bundles of sticks and contests between the wind and the sun. We're developing a high-quality Sylheti-language children's picture storybook to help promote one of London's under-resourced community languages - Sylheti, spoken in Camden and around the Brick Lane area. We have a series of recordings of traditional stories as told by the city's Sylheti speakers, and are now planning to put their spoken words on the page. These books will go to community members, to those teaching the language, and to anyone curious to learn these wonderful tales. But to make it happen, we need your help.
Listen to 'the Boy Who Cried Tiger'
We're a group of SOAS students committed to the promotion of minoritiy community languages in general and to the Sylheti language in particular. We take inspiration and encouragement from the Sylheti-speaking community in London and work closely with community members on a number of projects.
Our society grew out of the SOAS Endangered Languages Week in 2012, during which we were approached regarding potential collaboration by the director of the Surma Centre, which is run by and for London's Sylheti community. Since then, we have gone from strength to strength. As well as the story recordings which - with your help! - we plan to convert into storybook form, we have developed:
The minimum for our project is £1500, based on a print run of 150 copies. These books will be donated to community members and others who are working to support the Sylheti language in London.
The money raised will go towards:
We hope this high-quality storybook will be the springboard for further professional Sylheti language materials - there are many more stories yet to tell! Any money raised above the minimum will go towards extending the project in this direction.
We'd love you to get involved and support us - even as little as £1 will help to make this happen. To show our appreciation, we've got some great rewards lined up - you'll find them listed on the right of this page.
Please share this project with anyone you think would support us - on Twitter, on Facebook, by email, by phone, on your blog, or even in a chat over the fence - in whatever languages you speak!
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Read more at https://sylhetiproject.wordpress.com
Select this reward if you just want to donate to the project without receiving a reward.
34 claimed
Pledge this amount and we’ll give you a shout-out on our Facebook page.
16 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 May 2016
Pledge this amount and, if the project is successful, we will send you a bookmark with a message of thanks in Sylheti.
9 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 July 2016
Pledge this amount and, if the project is successful, we will include your name in the acknowledgements in the book itself.
6 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 July 2016
Pledge this amount and, if the project is successful, we will include your name in the acknowledgements of the book and present you with your own signed copy.
8 claimed
Estimated delivery: 1 July 2016