The Kodrah Kristang Curriculum Plan describes the Kodrah Kristang adult classes, profiles of those attending the classes, proficiency benchmarks, and assessment types and features.
The Curriculum Plan is also known as the Karnilisang, and it is the core guiding document of the Kodrah Kristang series of adult classes. The current version of the Curriculum Plan is Version 4, published on Wednesday, 14 January 2026. Three earlier versions of the Curriculum Plan also exist: Version 1 was published on Thursday, 16 July 2016, Version 2 as Orange Book Chapters 345-352 and 440 on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 and Friday, 29 September 2023, and Version 3 on Thursday, 2 October 2025 as Orange Book Chapters 1087 and 1088. The 16 Kodrah Kristang modules are aligned with the international standard Common European Framework of Reference for Languages developed and refined by the Council of Europe.
Karnilisang Kodrah Kristang Atimintu (4du)
Current as of Wednesday, 14 January 2026
| CEFR | Par Klas Paired Modules and Textbook | Gapura Via Hierosa and Tema Kultura Individuation Focus and Cultural Theme | Alkansa Kabah Klas ‘B’ End of ‘B’ Module Benchmarks (see full CEFR global scale and self-assessment grid here; CEFR global scale descriptors for B1, B1+, B2 and B2+ were aligned via dreamfishing where necessary) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEFR A1 | Kodrah Kristang 1A & 1B Animumbes 1 & 2 1A has been run 21 times as of January 2026; 1B has been run 10 times as of January 2026 | Ego & Self Length & Width (1D & 2D) Lembransa Reivindi Decolonial Thinking | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases in Kristang aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help. Competencies specific to Kristang cultural theme: Can recognise Kristang as a living Creole–Indigenous language rooted in Melaka, Singapore, and the wider Nusantara, and can demonstrate initial awareness that Kristang culture is distinct from colonial Portuguese, Malay, or English frames. Can show early cognitive sovereignty by treating Kristang ways of knowing as valid (including felt knowledge, dreamfishing and relational knowing). Can explain in simple terms (in English or one’s dominant language) the concepts of Indigeneity and Creole, and why Indigeneity and Creoleness are not only identity markers but healthy gateways to deeper schema and psychoemotional systems that are valid ways of being human. Can broadly understand how Kristang relational community leadership, values, irei and ireidi, the Unsaid and Uncertainty Thinking work, even if not yet able to articulate them formally. |
| CEFR A2 | Kodrah Kristang 2A & 2B Animumbes 3 & 4 2A and 2B have both been run 5 times as of January 2026 | Spirit & Source Space & Time (3D & 4D) Sunyeskah Dreamfishing | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. Competencies specific to Kristang cultural theme: Can begin to practise dreamfishing as a disciplined, relational way of knowing, rather than as imagination, belief, or free invention. Can describe, in simple terms, the existence of the Dreaming Ocean / Krismatra as a shared, collective field of knowledge connected to Gaia, and can recognise dreamfishing as a culturally specific Kristang method for engaging with the Unsaid. Can participate in basic dreamfishing activities by proposing, discussing, and gently testing new words or meanings, while showing awareness that not all proposals are accepted and that refusal, delay, or silence are valid outcomes. Can demonstrate early sensitivity to principles of dreamfishing, even if not yet able to articulate them formally. Can recognise dreamfishing as collective, ethical, and future-oriented, and can distinguish it from guessing, appropriation, or extractive creativity, understanding that language growth in Kristang is guided by care, coherence, and community uptake over time. |
| CEFR B1 | Kodrah Kristang 3A & 3B Animumbes 5 & 6 3A & 3B have both been run 5 times as of January 2026 | Sublime & Essence Probability & Reality (5D & 6D) Almanta Kwanggantu Quaternary Logic | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand the main points of clear, standard Kristang on familiar matters regularly encountered in daily life, community contexts, and culturally grounded discussion. Can deal with most basic situations likely to arise while interacting with Kristang speakers, including narrative, explanation, and negotiation of meaning. Can produce simple, connected text describing experiences, events, beliefs, and interpretations of reality. Can recount very short anecdotes/stories, dreams, and imagined scenarios, and can give brief reasons and explanations for opinions, choices, and emerging worldviews. Competencies specific to Kristang cultural theme: Can begin to think, speak, and listen using quaternary rather than binary frames. Can correctly identify and use the four Kristang truth states (seng, ngka, irang/iguelu, norsu/ugora) in simple spoken and written contexts to express affirmation, negation, paradox, and epistemic suspension. Can apply quaternary logic to everyday cultural questions (identity, belonging, language vitality, community legitimacy) without forcing premature certainty or collapse into yes/no positions. Can articulate (in English) how quaternary logic functions as decolonial infrastructure and recognise it as supporting mental health, trauma-processing, and individuation. At this level, the learner no longer treats ambiguity as confusion to be resolved, but as a navigable, nameable, and speakable condition of reality, marking a clear shift into Kristang cognitive sovereignty. |
| CEFR B1+ | Kodrah Kristang 4A & 4B Animumbes 7 & 8 4A & 4B have both been run twice as of January 2026 | Salve & Spark Willpower & Symmetry (7D & 8D) Osura Pesuasang Individuation Theory | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc in Kristang. Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. Competencies specific to cultural theme: Can use Kristang as a metacognitive tool, not only to communicate content but to observe how meaning is formed, distorted, or avoided in speech. Can explain (in English) what individuation in Kristang means and apply it directly to language learning: recognising how fear, shame, perfectionism, or over-control affect pronunciation, fluency, turn-taking, and willingness to speak. Can describe the Quaternity of Personhood (korpu, mulera, korsang, alma) and recognise how imbalance or neglect in any one produces predictable distortion in behaviour, relationships, and language use. Can identify the existence and purpose of the 16 tempra and 16 postu without needing full technical mastery, and can accurately state that every human has all sixteen of each, arranged differently, with no hierarchy of worth. Can articulate why ego-patterns are structural starting configurations rather than identities, and can distinguish ego-pattern from character, morality, profession, or destiny. Can apply individuation principles to interaction: recognising projection, misinterpretation, and power dynamics in conversation, and using Kristang clarification strategies (rephrasing, pausing, checking meaning) to restore coherence. At this level, the learner understands that learning Kristang is itself an individuation process: grammar trains choice, vocabulary trains nuance, discourse trains ethics, and fluency emerges as a by-product of psychological integration rather than pressure or speed. |
| CEFR B2 | Kodrah Kristang 5A & 5B Animumbes 9 & 10 5A & 5B have both been run once as of January 2026 | Lake & Mycelial Replication & Entropy (9D & êD) Roda Mundansa Psychohistory & The Unsaid | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand the main ideas of complex Kristang texts on both concrete and abstract topics, including culturally specific, philosophical, and psychohistorical material. Can interact with fluency and spontaneity sufficient for sustained discussion with other Kristang speakers, including disagreement, reflection, and collaborative sense-making. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of topics, synthesising personal experience with collective memory, and can articulate a viewpoint on ethical, cultural, or historical issues, giving structured reasons and considering multiple perspectives. Competencies specific to cultural theme: Can engage critically with the Kristang language as inforrmed by history as a field of partial visibility, recognising that much of what shaped Kristang civilisation survives not in official records but in silence, implication, coded behaviour, and linguistic indirection. Can explain The Unsaid (santah kaladu) as a historical survival technology, not as cultural reticence or avoidance, and can situate it accurately within centuries of colonial, wartime, postwar, and postcolonial pressure. Can use Kristang to talk about what cannot be fully said, including trauma, illegitimacy, migration, queerness, surveillance, fear, and political risk, employing indirect phrasing, tonal restraint, humour, omission, and layered meaning rather than explicit declaration. Can recognise when silence, brevity, or circumlocution in Kristang discourse is communicative, and can respond appropriately without forcing articulation or demanding clarity that would violate relational ethics. Can link language structure to historical pressure, recognising how Kristang’s humour, softness, indirection, triple/quadruple entendres, code-switching, and high-context delivery are not aesthetic quirks but evolved responses to danger. Can reflect on the ethical responsibility of speech in Kristang: when to articulate buried truth, when to preserve ambiguity, and how reckless transparency can reproduce harm. |
| CEFR B2+ | Kodrah Kristang 6A & 6B Animumbes 11 & 12 6A & 6B have both been run once as of January 2026 | Mettle & Leap Resilience & Paradox (íD & çD) Irei & Ireidi Relational Ethics & Postheroism | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. Competencies specific to cultural theme: Can use Kristang to articulate, analyse, and practise irei (psychoemotionally healthy unconditional love) and ireidi (psychoemotionally healthy self-regard) as lived relational and ethical competencies. Can read and produce extended texts that trace how ireidi stabilises the Kristang self under shame, uncertainty, and collapse, and how irei governs boundary-holding, non-coercive care, departure, forgiveness, and Reconciliation / Novokoroza without self-erasure. Can narrate relational decisions, justify ethical limits, and describe leaving, refusing, or staying from irei rather than duty, fear, or dominance in Kristang. Can maintain register control while discussing trauma, dignity, love, and responsibility, link language use to real relational outcomes, and can demonstrate how irei and ireidi scale from self to community without producing dependency or heroics. |
| CEFR C1 | Kodrah Kristang 7A & 7B Animumbes 13 & 14 7A & 7B have not yet been run as of January 2026 | Shroud & Meld Suspension & Transference (úD & ãD) Osura Spektala Transfiguration Theory | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. Competencies specific to cultural theme: Can talk about trauma in Kristang as lived experience rather than diagnosis, using everyday language to describe shock, rupture, fear, numbness, confusion, grief, or loss of trust, and understand core metaphors (lusembra / darklight) related to trauma and creolisation. Can describe what trauma does to thinking, feeling, memory, and the body, without medicalising or moralising it. Can choose words that slow conversations down, reduce pressure, and make it easier for others to speak or stay silent safely. Can name pain without demanding detail, explanation, or resolution. Can recognise when language is overwhelming someone and shift tone, pace, or topic to restore safety. Can help create rooms where people feel permitted to pause, cry, stop, leave, or return. Can use Kristang to make care, gentleness, and dignity feel normal rather than exceptional. Can consciously understand why ambient trauma processing and creolisation is encoded into Kodrah Kristang lessons, and how this affects and makes load-sharing of personal, collective and intergenerational trauma more sustainable. Can understand the concept of spektala and/or safe spaces for trauma processing, and begin to understand how one unconsciously or subconsciously can create or influence these. |
| CEFR C2 | Kodrah Kristang 8A & 8B Animumbes 15 & 16 8A & 8B have not yet been run as of January 2026 | Morph & Ring Reciprocity & Nonlocality (õD & ôD) Lembransa Krismatra Uncertainty Thinking | CEFR Global Scale: Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation. Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in more complex situations. Competencies specific to cultural theme: Can use Kristang to reason philosophically about self, reality, time, death, meaning, and responsibility without collapsing into certainty, despair, or abstraction. Can articulate the basic premises of Uncertainty Thinking and its four subsystems (the Osura Pesuasang, Osura Spektala, Osura Elisia, Osura Samaserang) as lived frameworks for becoming, surviving, loving, and continuing, and relate them coherently to one’s own life trajectory and language use. Can think, speak, and write in Kristang, English or any other language one is fluent in using uncertainty as a legitimate epistemic state, holding not-knowing, paradox, and incompleteness without anxiety or coercion. Can analyse ethical, existential, and civilisational questions in Kristang using quaternary logic, distinguishing truth, falsehood, paradox, and indeterminacy with precision. Can synthesise personal experience, collective history, and metaphysical reflection into clear, grounded discourse that supports dignity and continuity rather than persuasion or authority. Can model Kristang philosophy as a way of living: language that stabilises meaning, preserves agency, and remains humane in the face of collapse, loss, and mortality. |