Kodrah Kristang is an initiative to revitalize the critically endangered Kristang language in Singapore. Learn Kristang with us in the Lion City for free, and help us bring Kristang back to life!
In January 2015, while doing research for a magazine article, Kevin Martens Wong, a 23-year-old Kristang linguistics undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, discovered that Kristang was still likely spoken in Singapore. Bringing together a group of friends interested in the language, Kevin resolved to find the remaining speakers of the language, learn the language from them, and begin the long, multi-generational process of language revitalization: working with the community to reawaken the language and bring it back to a healthy level of use. Our initiative came to be known as Kodrah Kristang: Awaken, Kristang, and along the way, Kevin, a survivor of intense sexual and psychoemotional abuse throughout his life, also came to discover just how Kristang he actually had been all along, uncovering a wealth of his own occluded history and trauma, including the fact that he was a native speaker of the language himself, and new paths forward for the language, culture, community and identity as the 13th Kabesa or Leader of the Kristang people, descended directly from previous Kabesa Adriaan Koek, Edwin Tessensohn and Mabel Martens. Since August 2022 when Kevin began to excavate this, Kodrah Kristang has therefore extended far beyond just the original aims of language revitalisation to also bringing back Kristang culture, identity, epistemology and ways of being both in Singapore and worldwide.
Interested in learning the Kristang language? You’ve come to the right place! Kevin and Kodrah Kristang are one of only two places in the world you can learn Kristang, the other being with our dear kambradu Sara Frederica Santa Maria in the Portuguese Settlement of Malacca. Beng prendeh Kristang ā beng prendeh klai bibeh kung alegria, speransa kung fortidang juntah kung nus š