feasible instrument and procedures, a number of test components need to be chosen for the Eastern Tamang adult learners. First of all, to identify test components for reading,
writing, and numeracy proficiency of Eastern Tamang adult learners, the following sources were explored and specified:
1 the attributes of the Eastern Tamang orthography
2 the content and cognitive components of the primers used in their MT
literacy program, and 3
topics selected for the
Naya Goreto 2065
, the Nepali literacy primer updated in 2008 and used in the national language literacy program.
3.3.4.1 Eastern Tamang Orthography
There have been various attempts to establish a phonemic inventory of both Western and Eastern Tamang languages by local and expatriate scholars. Analyzing the
inventories developed by expatriate scholars, it is interesting to discover that there are no voiced stops though some have proposed a distinction between voicele
ss and ‗devoiced‘ stops. According to Mazaudon
‘s analysis
41
, there are 19-20 consonants, 5 vowels, and several diphthongs and triphthongs. He also noted that there were four tones related to
breathiness of consonants. Hale
42
collected some data of Sahugaon northwest from Kathmandu and suggested that there were 20 consonants and 5 vowels. He noted that
41
Mazaudon collected data for his MM-thesis1994 from three Tamang resident areas: Risiankhu, Sahugaon, and Taglung. His inventory of Tamang phonemes is presented in Phonological inventories of
Tibeto-Burman languages 1996 published by the Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary and thesaurus
project of Center for Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
42
Austin Hale is a linguist of SIL, and his wordlist is from Karna B. Tamang, Doreen Taylor, and Fay Everitt. His phonological inventory is also presented in Phonological inventories of Tibeto-Burman
languages 1996 published by the Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary and thesaurus project of Center
for Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
vowel length was contrastive for all Tamang vowels which he marked by : following the vowel. Varenkamp 2005: Phonology suggested 19 consonants and 10 vowels as the
working Eastern Tamang phonemic orthography. He also noted the tone system of Tamang as below:
―Along with all the other languages in the Tamangic or Gurung Branch, Tamang is tonal, albeit ―semi-tonal or marginally tonal‖ Mazaudon 1978:157. The tonal
system of a number of languages in Nepal, particularly those of the Tamangic Branch is based on a contrast between clear or tense and breathy or lax
phonation types, resulting in higher and lower p
itch ‗registers,‘ respectively‖ ibid.: ETCh3.
Interestingly, the translators of the Eastern Tamang Language Team ETLT
suggested 29 consonants and 10 vowels including all the contrastive long vowels in their working orthography chart see Appendix E. In the alphabet chart of their primer, there
are 29 consonants and 8 vowels without long [u:] and long [o:]. Generally, they follow the rule of consistency, but some inconsistency is found particularly in verbal suffixes of
both present and past tense, and the use of the length mark [:]. They do not employ any tone marks which they consider cumbersome and not distinctive enough to mark. They
wrote the loan words from Nepali just as they are in Nepali.
3.3.4.2 The content and cognitive components of the primers
