The Child makes pre-linguistic noises before she utters linguistic sounds as she does scribbling before writing. Though singing is not speaking as drawing is not writing, it helps production of linguistic sounds including suprasegmental onés like rhythm. Nursery rhymes come in between prelinguistic babbles and acquisition of language. They may not emphasize on being meaningful, but they contain linguistic sounds. Practice with nursery rhymes is a pre-school experience and exercise, and it prepares the child to be ready for schooling. The nursery rhymes are similar to preliteracy skills of drawing to prepare the child for the school.
While there is growing children’s literature in Indian languages, much attention has not been paid to nursery rhymes. The gap is often filled by nursery rhymes in English particularly in urban middle class homes and this is encouraged in the English medium nursery schools. It is necessary for a child as part of her socialization process to experience and to learn sounds of her native language . This experience is the first Step towards love for her language.
To counter the influence of the hotly sought English medium in the nursery and primary schools, it is very necessary to provide good nursery schools in Indian language media. This will be more effective than legal measures. Nursery rhymes in Indian languages will be an important component of such nursery schools.
With these ideas in mind, the Institute prepares nursery rhymes in various Indian languages including tribal languages through workshops in which creative writers and teachers of language and linguists participate. They have found ita rewarding experience as we have. With great enthusiasm and devotion and concern for the child and for the language, they created literally hundreds of rhymes in these workshops. The entire collection will serve as a repertoire or resource book for theeachers and parents to draw from. We also expect that more and more books of rhymes with attractive visuals could be brought out to be placed in the hands of the children themselves. We also hope that audio cassettes will be prepared to accompany the printed book.
The present book of Mising Nursery Rhymes contains 133 rhymes covering all possible spheres of child’s life. We will be happy if these rhymes are sung in homes, in schools and in the streets. This will be a significant step for planting Indian languages in the young minds for them to grow.
‘Ngoluk Moman’ is a book of 133 Nursery Rhymes in Mising. This comes under the series of Nursery Rhymes in Indian languages being brought out by the Central Institute of Indian Languages. The basic idea, theme and design came from Mrs. B Syamalakumari, R.R.O. These rhymes were composed by a group of four authors in a workshop held in North Eastern Research Extension Centre, Guwahati-6 under the supervision of P.N. Dutta Baruah. These rhymes were sung with tune and tested in the workshop. Later these were again checked by Mr. Nahendra Padun.
It is hoped that ’Ngoluk Moman’ would be a solid contribution to the existing stock of literature in Mising. The Supervisor and Editor, the co-editor and the authors will be rewarded if this is well received by parents, teachers and educationists interested in the promotion and development of Mising.
Since it was composed and printed in a non-native area some inadvertent errors might have crept in. Efforts will be taken to rectify those errors in future.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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