Storybooks
ELA has collaborated with communities when possible on publishing storybooks for children, the speakers of the future. Few projects are more impactful for language maintenance and revitalization, with entertaining, relevant, and professional reading materials and other resources for children often scarce in Indigenous, minority, and primarily oral languages. ELA’s earliest effort, in collaboration with speaker Baitz Niahosa, was Fuzu the Boar, a series of short storybooks about animals in Tsou.
Our latest publication is Pamiri Stories, a series of six storybooks, with two stories each in six different Pamiri languages spoken today in Tajikistan: Bartangi, Ishkashimi, Rushani, Shughni, Wakhi, and Yazgulami. All stories have been carefully selected by native speakers for their linguistic and cultural importance and appropriateness for children. Husniya Khujamyorova is the lead editor, with illustrations by Sangmamad Oshurov and design by Emily Gref. Both the Cyrillic and Latin orthographies are used, and there are line-by-line English translations.
Pamiri Stories was launched in 2021, with support from the Worldwide Education and Research Institute, the Endangered Language Alliance, and members of the Pamiri community. The best way to get the books is from ELA directly, through our Shopify store: the special price for the whole series is $65, but you can also find the individual books here for $15 each. If it’s more convenient, you can also purchase the books from Amazon, where the price is usually also set at $15 each. Thank you for supporting mother-tongue literacy.
We are also releasing free flipbook-style videos of each story, produced by Husniya Khujamyorova and edited by Nicole Galpern, so you can follow along and hear them in the voices of native speakers.
Yakjoya vidow / Being United (Bartangi), read by Shabangez Oshurova
Kampīrakat wam Ajwon / An Old Woman and Her Animals (Bartangi), read by Shabangez Oshurova
Kuru-Kuru (Ishkashimi), read by Mohammed Bodurbekov
Wafodor Kəd / A Faithful Dog (Ishkashimi), read by Mohammed Bodurbekov
Wiðičak / The Little Bird (Rushani), read by Gulsiyat Beknazarova
Deqon at way ziryoten / A Farmer and His Children (Rushani), read by Gulsiyat Beknazarova
Naxudak / The Girl Named Little Pea (Shughni), read by Shervonsho Alamshoev
Yi ɣ̌inik at wam wūvd puc / A Woman and Her Seven Sons (Shughni), read by Shervonsho Alamshoev
Tru vrʉt / Three Brothers (Wakhi), read by Jumagul Khujamyorova
Filət Mirpriç / The Elephant and the Ant (Wakhi), read by Jumagul Khujamyorova
Kyawux̌a Purg The Snow Leopard and the Mouse (Yazgulami), read by Shahriyor Aliev
Warg ata Xur / The Wolf and the Donkey (Yazgulami), read by Shahriyor Aliev
Pamiri languages, like most languages around the world, were traditionally oral languages. Though dating back almost a century, efforts to create writing systems in Pamiri languages have increased in recent decades, usually using modified Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. Writing can be a useful tool for teaching, transmitting, and developing any language, and we hope that these books add to the growing literature for children and adults in Pamiri languages.
Given the similarities between all Pamiri languages, there are similarities between the orthographies used to write them, but also small, important differences. Aiming for an international audience including scholars and members of the Pamiri diaspora, including in the United States, ELA in its work has used a Latin-based orthography, based partly on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In Tajikistan and elsewhere, a Cyrillic orthography, based partly on the orthography of Tajik, may be more common. As much as possible, we have consulted experts in the relevant languages, making only small modifications for overall consistency.