As the COVID-19/Coronavirus outbreak continues to dominate the media, it is essential to have clear and accessible information on the disease. Many FAQs and fact sheets provided by organizations like the World Health Organization are available in a limited number of languages, however. On Monday, March 23, Governor Holcomb issued a Stay-At-Home order for Indiana, and his office posted a FAQ page only available in English, an example of how Hoosiers who cannot read English have difficulty accessing reliable information about the developing emergency.
One group who may be particularly affected by this lack of information is the more than 25,000 Burmese refugees who call Indiana home—19,000 of whom live in Indianapolis. Many people in the community come from Chin State in the western part of Burma/Myanmar. “People in Chin State tend to speak languages from the Kuki-Chin subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman language family,” Kelly Berkson, an assistant professor of Linguistics, said. “Our best guess is that there are between 30 and 50 Kuki-Chin languages spoken in Indianapolis. All of these languages are under-resourced. Many of them are completely undocumented, meaning that there is no work done on them whatsoever. Yet there are hundreds or thousands of speakers right here in Indiana, and materials related to critical topics like the COVID-19 pandemic are needed.”
The College of Arts