What's our project about?
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'
Who are we?
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 SOAS Sylheti Language Society, which aims to promote the language through face-to-face classes with native speaker teachers and the provision of online teaching materials.- The Sylheti Dictionary App (with support from SOAS alumni and friends)
- The Sylheti Language Lesson Booklet
Where will the money go?
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:
- accompanying teaching materials development
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.
Rewards!
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.
Help us to succeed!
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!
Find out more
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Read more at https://sylhetiproject.wordpress.com
