Assignment 3
ASSIGNMENT SHEET
From:
Dr. Jamba Gyeltshen
To:
BSc. Degree students
Dated:
13/4/2010
Topic:
Writing Summaries
Instructions: The following article is taken from Kuenselonline. Read and summarize the article. While
you write your summaries, refer to the general rules of writing summaries (given in writing resource
links in this website or any other open source that you prefer). Email your summaries to me at the end
of the class (Email: jamba_g@hotmail.com).
Getting Dzongkha going
Source: http://www.kuenselonline.com
9 April, 2010 - Bhutan could be among the few countries where its literate citizens are
finding it difficult to write or read anything written in the national language. Worse, where
many abhor putting in an effort to learn it.
This was evident from one of the recommendations from the Paro workshop on promoting
the national language. The recommendation to award cash and other incentives to officials
whenever they communicate for work in the national language may sound ridiculous to
some, but it signals a desperate cause that needs desperate measures.
The effort is on to promote the national language, right from the prime minister, who even
asked Dzongkha experts to simplify and make the language interesting. But it seems that we
are not finding the right solutions. In such a scenario, and in such desperate situations, it
might seem right to even punish those, who do not attempt to read, speak and write
Dzongkha.
As far as we know, efforts have been on to make Dzongkha the first choice of
communication, yet we are still trying to make official correspondence either in both English
and Dzongkha or solely in the national language, a resolution of a meeting some years ago.
Still today, most, if not all, correspondence is in English.
The challenges are plenty and we know them. Dzongkha is a complicated and difficult
language and students think it is boring and unfashionable. Therefore, it is time to look for
solutions that would naturally let people develop interest in the national language.
A hindsight could be how Dzongkha is taught or learnt in schools. Students study Dzongkha
just to get through the examinations. That’s why we have memorising heading of letters, a
compulsory part of Dzongkha exams. A favourite joke among Sherubtse college students, at
one time, was that, to top the Dzongkha paper, all one has to do is copy the questions several
times to make the answer sheets heavy, because the lopen would drop the sheets on the floor
and the sheet which drops first would be marked first.
Dzongkha, perhaps, received the biggest boost in the run up to the elections. With all
parliamentary debates in the national language, Bhutan’s new set of parliamentarians have
been forced to brush up their Dzongkha. But the national language still needs much more
support to shed its image as a compulsion.
It is not that authorities have left no stone unturned to promote Dzongkha. There could still
be ways to make it beautiful and simple. Maybe, it is time to look into the school curricula,
to make Dzongkha relevant and interesting.