Mother Tongue

It has been encouraging to finally get some empirical data from the 2008 Census to support the  figures Tom had calculated on the number of Kuy people in the country of Cambodia. The information on mother tongue had never before been released to the public. According to the census 28,630 people in Cambodia indicated that Kuy was their mother tongue. There are areas where Kuy people are losing their language, so there are more Kuy people than this (about 40,000 most likely).

So, who cares? This is actually helpful information. While Kuy people can generally speak Khmer as well, it is usually best to communicate important information in a person's mother tongue. So, we can conclude that it is important to continue to work to produce oral resources, especially Bible stories, in the Kuy language.

And now, not only oral materials, but written ones will be coming available! Other workers have completed an orthography based on the Khmer script and are beginning to produce literacy materials in one of the Kuy dialects. Tom took one of them to visit a couple of Kuy pastors and they were delighted to find that they could read much of what they saw written, though it was another dialect.

Pray with us for

• continued progress in getting Bible stories into Kuy language.
• Pastor Kon Kuoen and others to have growing vision to use Bible stories in Kuy language to bring the good news to other Kuy villages.
• literacy training materials to be produced in both major dialects and progress in teaching Kuy people to read their own language.