สำนักราชบัณฑิตยสภา

64 The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume III - 2011 64 Redefining çThainessé: Embracing Diversity, Preserving Unity The pilot project began with community motivation and commitment. They then got financial support from the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) to conduct community-based research to solve the problem of language shift and to work on a language revitalization program. Apart from that they received technical support (as well as moral or psychological support) from an academic institution, (Mahidol University and network-linguists and education experts). Education is used as a tool for language revitalization. Since most ethnic minorities, like the Chong would like to have their language taught to their children at school, language documentation and language development are needed so that ethnic minority languages can be used in education as a tool for language revitalization. As part of the school-based-language revitalization, a writing system for Chong was developed, and reading materials were produced. The Chong language is now taught as the subject çLocal Studiesé to students in three primary schools in the area. The CLRP includes orthography development, literature production, curriculum development, teaching Chong as a subject in school, and a Chong Community Learning Center for the community at large. Other ethnolinguistic groups with the same problem such as the Nyah Kur and the So (Thavung) use the Chong project as a model and adapt it for their own purposes. Figure 5: Developing Chong orthography and producing literature in Chong language 54-75_mac9 5/3/12, 10:42 PM 64