Keeping Khasi Alive: From Rev. Thomas Jones's Script to a Child's Alphabet Blocks
- Samanda Pyngrope
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Rev. Thomas Jones Day · June 22, 2026
Rev. Thomas Jones Day used to pass me by. A remembrance day for the Father of the Khasi Alphabet — significant, yes, but easy to let slip by in the rhythm of an ordinary week. What I could not have anticipated was how completely his work would find its way into mine, all these many years later.
Source: RAIOT
In 1841, a Welsh missionary sat down and did something that changed everything for a small tribal community in Meghalaya: he recorded the Khasi language in Roman script for the very first time. Before that act, our mother tongue existed only in memory and in the air between people — spoken, sung, carried from mouth to ear across generations.
Source: English to Khasi Translation facebook post.
By making Khasi visible, Jones gave it a shape that could be taught, printed, passed on.
On a day like today, I find myself asking: what does it mean to keep a language like Khasi alive?
I've experienced it begins early but I've always believed it begins with play.
I have a memory of a family trip to Kolkata — my brother and I, wandering through a cemetery full of old relics, more at play than ever amidst the fascinating ruins. One of those graves belonged to Rev. Thomas Jones. Back then, it was just another stone in a long row of them. Now, many years later, I return to that memory with a different feeling entirely — gratefulness, solemn and unhurried, for a seed that was planted in me that day without my knowing it was growing at all.
Source: Family Photograph, Rev. Thomas Jones grave at the two-century-old Scottish Church Cemetery, Kolkata.
I did not know then what I would one day make. I did not know that the language those letters carried would become the subject of some of the most meaningful work here at Candour.
The Khasi Alphabet Blocks have been part of what we do at Candour on Canvas for a while now. But on a day like today, I feel the weight of them differently.
Each block that leaves our studio carries a letter that Jones first wrote down nearly 185 years ago. A child picks it up, traces the curve of it, and hears a word they already know in their bones, now rendered in a shape they can learn to name. Keeping our Khasi language alive today through creativity has been an ongoing endeavour, keeping it close to the young, but by always remembering to look back at the elders and forefathers of history.
Jones began this work of making the language holdable. The blocks are our small continuation of that.
......And now, we bring it across borders.
The Khasi Alphabet Illustrated Chart - Now Digital
The same spirit, now in a format you can download and put on your wall instantly. A printable illustrated chart of the Khasi alphabet — designed for homes, classrooms and every space where a language can be loved, shared and learnt, anywhere in the world.
Launching on our website in the coming weeks.
Till then,
With Love & Candour,
Samanda
Samanda Nora Pyngrope is an industrial designer, visual artist, illustrator and founder of Candour on Canvas—a creative studio in Meghalaya, India.
When she’s not painting, she engages with students at NIFT Shillong and consults under her venture, Karaki Design Lab on creative avenues like cultural sustainability, design innovation and building meaningful narrative-driven products.
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