Laiholh, the Hakha Chin language, comes from the hills of western Myanmar. Its alphabet was written down by missionaries, most of its speakers are Christians, and many of them now worship far from home: in Malaysia, in the United States, in Australia and across Europe. For them, the service in their own language is often the one place in the week that still sounds like home.
One clear yes and two clear noes. All three are worth knowing before Sunday.
No. A speaker cannot preach in Hakha Chin and have the room follow. The talk comes from the stage in one of the spoken languages, and Hakha Chin is one of the languages it arrives in.
No. Hakha Chin is a text language here. Your guest follows the talk on their phone screen rather than in an earbud, while the room carries on in its own language.
Yes. Every sentence of the talk in Laiholh, on a phone or on the big screen, a moment after it is spoken.
Several pages in this section show real sentences from our own system. We publish sample lines only after a native speaker has read them, and for Hakha Chin that has not happened yet. If you read Hakha Chin, we would welcome your help.
From the late 1980s onwards, and in far larger numbers after the turn of the century, many Chin people left Myanmar because of persecution and conflict. Most went first to Malaysia or India, often for years, and from there were resettled in the United States, Australia, Canada and several European countries, among them Denmark and Norway.
Wherever they settled, the first thing to appear was usually not a shop or a club. It was a church. Chin congregations meet in rented halls and borrowed sanctuaries, often sharing a building with a local church on a Sunday afternoon, and they hold long services with choirs, testimonies and preaching in their own language.
That makes Chin communities unusually church centred, and also easy for a host church to overlook, because they are so self sufficient. When a Chin family visits your service, they have chosen to come, and they already know church well.
Hakha Chin was spoken for generations before anyone wrote it down, and the way it was written down still shapes how churches use it.
At the end of the nineteenth century, American Baptist missionaries arrived in Hakha and worked out a way to write Laiholh in the Latin alphabet. Schools, hymns and the Bible followed in that spelling.
For many Chin families, the first book in the house was a Bible or a hymn book. Learning to read Laiholh and going to church went side by side, which is why church words sit so close to the centre of the written language.
Like many languages of the region, Hakha Chin uses tone to tell words apart, and everyday spelling mostly leaves it out. A fluent reader fills it in from context without noticing. Someone still learning to read finds a caption harder.
Chin is the name of a people and of a state, not of a single language. Across Chin State and its neighbours there are many related Chin languages, among them Hakha, Falam, Tedim, Matu and Mizo, and their speakers do not always understand each other easily.
What we offer is Hakha Chin. It has long served as a shared language for church and school among many Chin communities, so plenty of people who grew up speaking another Chin language read it. Plenty is not everyone.
Many Chin adults went to school in Burmese and read it well. When Laiholh is not what someone expected, Burmese can look like the practical choice. Think twice before you make that choice for them.
For a lot of Chin people, Burmese is the language of the state they left and of the classroom where their own language was not taught, and in some families it carries very hard memories. Others use it without a second thought. Both reactions are real, and there is no way to tell from the outside which one you are talking to.
So offer Burmese as an option, never as the obvious answer, and let the person decide. A guest who chooses Burmese is fine. A guest who is quietly put on Burmese by a well meaning usher may say nothing, and may not come back.
Three small things that make the difference.
Chin Christians mostly come from long Baptist and Pentecostal traditions. They will recognise the shape of your service, many of the hymns by their tunes, and the Bible passages by chapter and verse.
They point a phone camera at your code and choose Hakha Chin. Nothing to install, no account. The captions start with the next sentence from the stage.
If you know the Bible reading, share the reference before the service. Many Chin Christians carry a Laiholh Bible, on paper or on their phone, and reading the passage in their own Bible alongside the captions comes naturally.
Not with MulingStream. Hakha Chin is a language guests read, so the talk itself needs to come from the stage in one of the spoken languages. If a Chin pastor preaches in English, Burmese or your host language, Hakha Chin captions follow every sentence.
Sometimes very well, sometimes not at all. Many read Hakha because it has long been used in church and school across Chin communities, but the languages are different. Ask them, and keep English or another language they read as a second option.
Not in Hakha Chin, which is a text language here. A guest who would rather listen can choose a language they understand that has a voice, such as Burmese or English.
Yes. Hakha Chin is written in the Latin alphabet, so it needs no special fonts and displays cleanly on a projector or a television.
The languages a Chin guest may also read, and the other pages in this section.
Or open the full list of 200+ and check the three columns for the languages your room actually needs.
Nothing to install, no card, and your guests need nothing but the phone already in their pocket.