The write way forward
Maung could mean dream, unconscious or corpse, in Tangsa, depending on how the word is pronounced. Pho could mean something left over, or to start something new, to invent, or to judge.
This is the native tongue of the Tangsa tribe based primarily in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh (with populations also in neighbouring Myanmar). It has 40 sub-tribes across both countries, each with its own dialect. And, until recently, the language had no script.
That changed three decades ago, when Lakhum Mossang devised a common script for Tangsa in 1990. Barely anyone noticed.
For 30 years, Lakhum, a Class 5 dropout and self-taught scholar, struggled to spread awareness about his script. Now, it is all set to be taught in Changlang schools. Sadly, Lakhum isn’t around for the celebration. He died following a stroke, in July 2020, at 86.
What he did live to see, was someone take the torch. Wanglung Mossang, 50, a farmer, part-time tourist guide and fellow Tangsa linguistic scholar, began studying Lakhum’s script in 2012.
Initially, Wanglung was trying to translate Christian religious articles from English into Tangsa. He found he couldn’t do it using Roman script. There were no consonants or vowels to match many of the Tangsa sounds.
He heard about Lakhum, got in touch and was amazed by his creations. “His symbols don’t resemble any existing script,” says Wanglung. The alphabet contained 81 letters, divided into 48 vowels and 33 consonants.
“The script conveys exactly all the sounds of the language. Lakhum Mossang clearly created it using his deep native-speaker intuition,” says Stephen Morey, an Australian linguist who has been studying endangered languages in the region.
In October 2019, in a campaign driven by Lakhum and Wanglung, senior members of the Tangsa community formed a script development committee and began petitioning the government to recognise and help promote it. They knew it would help preserve not just the language, but also folklore, songs, poems.
In a few months, the union ministry of education, under the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL), approved the script for use in school curriculums. By end-2021, a textbook was ready. It will be used to teach Tangsa as a third language, from the academic year 2022-23, in Classes 6 through 8.
Meanwhile, in safekeeping with the script development committee, are a number of handwritten documents that now constitute the first pieces of writing in this ancient language. These include traditional songs and prayers, written decades ago by Lakhum Mossang, as part of his bid to preserve his tribe’s culture.