Communicate without conversing

In other words, read and write: be literate. (One could easily imagine other ways of communicating that don't involve the voice, such as miming, dancing, etc., but, this post is mostly about reading.)

While living in Mauritius for a couple of years, we came to know about the languages used there. Most Mauritians speak a creole language, Morisien, which is the native language for most of them. Traditionally it had been only an oral language. However, in 2011, an official spelling system* was approved by the government. So, it has now become interesting to ask how many people can read this language, which can now be written in a standard way.

Dev Virahsawmy, a noted Mauritian linguist, told me in personal conversation that he estimates about 20% literacy. That is, only a small portion of the population can read and write Morisien. Yet according to Google (as of this writing) the literacy rate in Mauritius is 88.8% and wikipedia reports a rate of 89.8%.

Education is compulsory through age 16, and is free, even beyond high school. And the transportation to/from school is free. Everyone must learn both English and French in school. So, the high literacy rate is for these languages. Since 2012, Mauritian Creole is being offered as an optional subject, starting in the first year of school, and available to second year students in 2013, to third year students in 2014, and so on.

So, the situation is that while almost everyone can read and write a language, and almost everyone speaks Morisien, most cannot read or write it. This will improve gradually, and in ten years or so many young adults--who will have studied the language for 12 years--will be literate in their native language.

The official spelling is interesting, as it is a highly phonemic orthography. That is, the spelling is regular, with few exceptions, so that if you read it out loud, following a few simple rules, you will hear the oral language and thus immediately understand it. This means that it should be very easy to learn to read Morisien.

Hence, a project idea: produce a series of YouTube videos to encourage learning the few simple rules. Now all I need are: an expert in producing video, a native Mauritian for voice-overs, and a script**. Almost everyone in Mauritius has a smart phone, so, if this could go viral, literacy could soar.

Encouraging Mauritians to read: to communicate without conversing.

*Lortograf Kreol Morisien
** I have written elsewhere about a list of common words that could star in such a script.