Testing Chong orthography in Thailand1

Working together with mother tongue speakers from the Chong language community, a team of Thai linguists developed an orthography for the Chong language using Thai script. After the tentative orthography was agreed upon, the next step was to develop an appropriate method for testing the orthography. The test that was developed had two main purposes: to determine whether the orthography was acceptable to the mother tongue speakers or needed to be refined; and to determine the usability and readability of the orthography among literate mother tongue speakers of Chong. Testing covered three levels: 1) reading at the word level, 2) reading and writing at the sentence level, and 3) reading at the story level. Informants ’ opinions as well as possible difficulties in reading and writing Chong were also investigated. The findings demonstrated that all the informants could read Chong and most could also write Chong using the tentative orthography. The main conclusion is that those who speak fluent Chong and have good Thai reading skills found the orthography easy to read, even when reading Chong for the first time. The people having difficulties fell into two groups: 1) people with limited Thai reading skills, and 2) people with limited knowledge of the Chong language. The Chong orthography thus meets general criteria of a well-devised writing system that will facilitate transfer of literacy skills between languages. This paper describes the different phases of testing the Chong orthography. The paper focuses on the role of community in the preparation and implementation of the test