Dzongkha to get simpler?

19 September, 2009 - The 9th Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) Conference, that ended yesterday, has made a series of recommendations to promote and simplify the national language so that people not only speak it but also find it easier to read and write it.

In total, the 75 experts and members attending the conference made 62 recommendations ranging for simplifying the language, making the curriculum uniform and interesting to future policies and plans.

The conference recommended simplifying Dzongkha by making the words easier to understand and use. How this will be done is to be decided at the Dzongkha Development Committee meeting some time later this year. The pronunciations should also be based on spellings.

The Dzongkha textbooks and dictionaries should be also standardized according to the level of the students so that it builds interest in reading and writing.

“The problem with most of the Dzongkha curriculum today is that it is of a very high level and most students do not understand and therefore do not like studying it,” said a Dzongkha expert. “For example a commonly used Dzongkha word ngeo thong (live) would be difficult for a pre-primary student to understand but if the word is changed to migthong (seen with the eyes) it’ll become easier for them to grasp.”

To make the curriculum more interesting it was also recommended that school textbooks should contain more words of daily use and also have a lot of pictures with interesting short stories.

To understand and use Dzongkha more effectively the experts recommended continuing the memorizing methodology in teaching Dzongkha subjects.

It was also recommended that except for commonly used English words it was not necessary to translate and develop new Dzongkha words for every English terminology.
However, one recommendation is that each and every goods and service imported by Bhutan should have an equivalent Dzongkha word to promote the language.

To promote the national language as many Dzongkha, English and Buddhist language dictionaries will be produced as possible. All official forms and official correspondence should be in both languages and emails should also be made possible in Dzongkha.

To bring about standardization all ministries, departments, private and corporate offices should seek the permission from the DDC to create a new word. It was also recommended that newspapers and broadcast stations meet from time to time to bring about standardization in Dzongkha spellings and pronunciations.

“The recommendations will be reviewed and decided by the DDC committee,” said the prime minister, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley who is the chairman of the DDC and attended the closing of the conference. “Although many of the recommendations were repeated it will be a reminder to the experts to discuss the issues again.”

The prime minister said that although Dzongkha is being promoted yet with changing times much more effort was needed to promote the national language.

Dzongkha experts said that every year the same points are recommended but implementation is hard to come by.