THE MON COUNTING BOOK

This is a book translation project for endangered languages around the world. According to The United Nations, "Once, there were between 7,000 and 8,000 distinct languages. Now, very few people speak most of the 6,000 known languages around the world. Of the 6,000 languages still on Earth, 90 percent could be gone by 2100." Because of this I decided to make children books for endangered languages. I began with Mon language because my ethnicity is Mon-Thai. The Mon are the earliest known inhabitants of lower Burma. Mon were massacred and our land were taken. My grandparents illegally immigrated to Thailand during WWII. Today people of Mon descent have no homeland and continue to experience brutal repression in Myanmar. As a result the Mon language now faces the danger of extinction. I asked my father, Pipat Bumrungton to collaborate with me on the project. My father had wanted to do something with Mon language preservation for a long time so he agreed to join me in this project. I hope that in some way, this book can help generate public awareness of endangered languages.