Run classes in minority tongues

‘Run to the mountain!” shouted the shaman. Nat tensed up as he recalled the most horrifying day of his life. Despite his initial shock, Nat, along with his father and others, clawed their way up a nearby mountain as a tsunami hit the Andaman coast in 2004.

Looking back, Nat realises how he and his father instinctively acted on knowledge that had been passed from generation to generation through the Urak Lawoi’ language. For generations, sea gipsies have warned their people to run for their lives when the sea suddenly disappeared.

Nat’s story illustrates the importance of traditional wisdom preserved in lesser-known ethnic minority tongues. The Asia-Pacific region alone is home to about half of 7,000 languages used in…