Writing our languages

Our languages were spoken for thousands of years before any of them was written. Between 1861 and the 1970s, missionaries, a French administrator, American linguists and our own teachers put them into the Latin alphabet. Each language got its own spelling, at a different time, for a different reason. Governments have since banned, changed and replaced those spellings more than once.

Before writing

The Rhade tell how they came to have no writing. The US Army’s handbook of 1966 records the story: when writing was given out, the Rhade wrote theirs on a buffalo skin, and a dog ran off with it. What our peoples had instead were the long recited epics, the rhythmic sayings of customary law, and the memory of elders. See Gongs and epics and Customary law.

Bahnar: the Kon Tum missionaries

Bahnar was the first of our languages to be written. “In 1861, Christian missionaries in Kontum devised a written language for the Bahnar,” the 1966 handbook says, a script “resembling the romanized script of the Vietnamese.” Teaching was interrupted, resumed in 1883, and the script was officially adopted in 1935. In 1889 the press of the Missions Étrangères in Hong Kong printed Father Pierre Dourisboure’s Dictionnaire bahnar-français, which sets out a Bahnar alphabet with French-style spellings such as tx. See The Kon Tum mission.

Rhade: Sabatier and the school

Rhade was written for the Franco-Rhade school at Buôn Ma Thuột, which opened in 1915. The 1966 handbook credits the French Resident Léopold Sabatier with “developing the written form of the Rhade language,” and Gerald Hickey records that Sabatier encouraged two educated Rhade “to begin devising an alphabet.” Sabatier’s word book for the school’s pupils was printed in 1921, and in 1930 a class to train Rhade teachers was opened at Huế. See The Franco-Rhade school and the Collège Sabatier.

The Protestant missionaries

The Christian and Missionary Alliance began work among the highland peoples at Đà Lạt in 1929 and opened a station at Buôn Ma Thuột in 1934 under Gordon Smith. “The French had already made a vocabulary of the Raday language,” Laura Smith wrote, and within eight months her husband had printed a Gospel summary in Rhade, followed by Mark. By April 1956 “the entire New Testament is available in the Raday language,” finished by Robert Ziemer with Rhade students. In 1964 Kenneth Swain’s team completed a Rhade New Testament and Psalms, which the British and Foreign Bible Society printed. The Jarai New Testament and Psalms, translated by Charles Long, “reached the Jarai people” on February 16, 1975, weeks before the highlands fell. The Summer Institute of Linguistics began its field studies in 1957 and entered its first highland language in 1959. See Missions and doctors and The Evangelical Church and registration.

Koho: many spellings

Koho shows how unsettled writing could be. According to the linguist Neil Olsen, a Sre alphabet based on the Vietnamese letters was made in 1935 by French administrators and missionaries; a commission met at Đà Lạt in 1949 to replace it; and the Protestants split over how to write one vowel. The Catholic priest Jacques Dournes published a Sre–French dictionary in 1950. The spelling of the Alliance and the Summer Institute was used for the Koho New Testament of 1967 and for the South Vietnamese government’s school books.

Banned, then taught

“Instruction in highland languages was banned under the Diem regime,” Hickey wrote in 1967. After the rising of 1964 and the Pleiku conference that followed it, the government agreed to allow highland languages to be taught again. In 1967, with American aid and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, it began the Highlander Education Project: primers were prepared at Kon Tum in Bahnar, Jarai, Koho and Rhade. Children learned to read and write their own language in a preparatory year, began reading Vietnamese in the first grade, used books in both languages in the second, and moved to an all-Vietnamese curriculum in the third. Sarah Gudschinsky, who led the work, reported higher enrollment, “especially of girls.”

After 1975

“After 1976, all previous (i.e., south Vietnamese) pedagogical materials were discarded,” Olsen writes of Koho. In 1983 the Vietnamese government introduced a new Koho spelling, which, he says, “has essentially been rejected by Koho living in North Carolina.” Human Rights Watch reported in 2002 that despite the constitution’s provision for teaching in minority languages, most primary schools in the highlands teach in Vietnamese, and an Ede church leader described the police fining pastors and confiscating “all documents and Bibles.” Complete Bibles have since been published in Rhade, Jarai and Koho. See Schools, language and the university gap.

A timeline

• 1861 — Bahnar. Catholic missionaries at Kon Tum devise a written Bahnar, according to the 1966 US Army handbook; teaching resumes in 1883.
• 1889 — Bahnar. Father Pierre Dourisboure’s Dictionnaire bahnar-français is printed, with its Bahnar alphabet.
• 1915–21 — Rhade. The Franco-Rhade school opens at Buôn Ma Thuột; Léopold Sabatier’s Rhade word book for its pupils is printed in 1921.
• 1934 — Rhade. The Christian and Missionary Alliance opens its station at Buôn Ma Thuột; Gordon Smith soon prints a Gospel summary and Mark in Rhade.
• 1935 — Koho, Bahnar. A Sre (Koho) alphabet based on the Vietnamese letters is made by French administrators and missionaries; Bahnar writing is officially adopted.
• 1950 — Koho. Father Jacques Dournes publishes his Sre–French dictionary.
• 1955–63 — All. Under Ngô Đình Diệm, instruction in highland languages is banned; after the Pleiku conference of October 1964 it is allowed again.
• 1956 — Rhade. The complete New Testament is available in Rhade.
• 1957–59 — Many. The Summer Institute of Linguistics begins field studies, entering its first highland language in 1959.
• 1967 — Bahnar, Jarai, Koho, Rhade. The Highlander Education Project prepares primers in four highland languages; the Koho New Testament is published.
• 1975 — Jarai. The Jarai New Testament and Psalms reach Jarai readers on February 16, weeks before the highlands fall.
• 1983 — Koho. A new Vietnamese government spelling for Koho, which Koho families in North Carolina have largely not taken up.
• 2015 — Rhade. A complete Rhade Bible is published.

Typing our letters

Our spellings use letters that keyboards and fonts handle badly: ƀ in Jarai, č in Rhade, and short vowels marked with a breve, as in ŭ, ĕ and ŏ. Where the breve sits on a letter that already carries a mark, as in ơ̆, no single character exists, and the two marks have to be stacked. Omniglot notes that in Jarai Ơ̆ is also written Ờ, and Ê̆ is also written Ē. When you write our names and words, it is worth checking that the marks survived. See Names and words and Language resources.

Sources

• Department of the Army, Minority Groups in the Republic of Vietnam, Pamphlet 550-105 (1966) — the Bahnar, Jarai, Koho, Mnong and Rhade chapters
• P. X. Dourisboure, Dictionnaire bahnar-français (Hong Kong, 1889)
• Gerald C. Hickey, The Major Ethnic Groups of the South Vietnamese Highlands, RAND RM-4041 (1964) — text copy; Gerald C. Hickey, The Highland People of South Vietnam: Social and Economic Development, RAND RM-5281 (1967)
• Gerald C. Hickey, Kingdom in the Morning Mist (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988)
• La Documentation catholique, November 3, 1934 — the Rhade teachers’ class, 1930
• Laura Irene Smith, Gongs in the Night (Zondervan, 1943)
• Gordon H. Smith, Farther into the Night (Zondervan, 1954); Charles E. Long, To Vietnam with Love (1995) — Robert Ziemer’s translation
• Kenneth Swain, in To the Glory of God (1994) — the 1964 New Testament and Psalms
• The Alliance Weekly, April 18, 1956
• Jerry Ford, “Mission to the Montagnards,” World Vision Magazine, May 1971
• Dale Amend, A Duck Looking for Hunters (2009)
• Neil H. Olsen, A Descriptive Grammar of Kơho-Sre (PhD dissertation, 2014)
• Timothy M. Manley, Outline of Sre Structure (1972)
• “Montagnards begin language studies,” World Vision Magazine, June 1967
• Sarah C. Gudschinsky, Literacy in the Mother Tongue and Second Language Learning (1971), ERIC ED060753
• Human Rights Watch, Repression of Montagnards (2002), chapter VII and chapter VIII
• Raleigh Bailey, Montagnards: Their History and Culture (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2002)
• Omniglot, Jarai and Rade
• Bible.com — the Rhade, Jarai and Koho Bibles in print today

Compiled September 2026.