8 M. THE-THITSAR controlled areas or mixed-administrative areas only teach in their languages up to a certain point before switching to Burmese or English.50 On the surface, Facebook’s selection of Burmese as its official language seems to benefit Burmese speakers because Burmese language posts can be automatically trans­ lated to other Facebook languages and posts written in other languages can be translated into Burmese. However, Facebook’s machine translation has not worked effectively with ‘low-resource’ languages like Myanmar in comparison to ‘rich resource’ languages like English, French or German, producing inaccurate or incomplete translations.51 Facebook’s team has also mentioned that the platform has now introduced automatic detection of inappropriate content for other non-Burmese languages. I highlight below how communities of non-Facebook language speakers have used various functions offered by Facebook to preserve and promote their own languages. Minority groups, particularly those that use the Roman alphabet or Burmese script, and those that have already developed digitized keyboards for their scripts, are able to use the platform to communicate in their languages, and take advantage of other multiple functions provided by Facebook to share, communicate, and access information through ethnic media and establish contact with their respective community leaders. The use of languages on Facebook According to Smalley (1994), languages are organized into a hierarchy of multilingualism based on patterns of learning and use.52 In Myanmar, Burmese and English are at the top of the hierarchy due to their high economic and cultural value, followed by several minority languages such as Mon, Rakhine and Karen that have a more established and institutionalized written system. At the bottom of the language hierarchy are Ta'ang's subgroups such as Samlong, Rumai and Ruchin xxx that have struggled to assert their own orthographies. Anglicization poses a threat to both Burmese and non-Burmese speakers. I focus mainly on the relationship between Burmese and non-Burmese lan­ guages, given that most people in Myanmar still do not speak fluent English, and given a context in Myanmar where language and ethnicity are highly politicized and charged with minority grievance against cultural domination by the Bamar majority. While speakers of non-Facebook languages seem to be placed at a disadvantage vis-àvis native Burmese speakers, minority respondents reported that they do not always write in Burmese on Facebook because of the availability of non-Burmese ethnic languages on Facebook newsfeeds. While Burmese is the most-widely used Facebook language in Myanmar, there are three groups of non-Burmese speakers who are able to communicate in their respective mother tongues in Facebook: (a) minority languages that mainly use Latin alphabets; (b) minority languages that mainly use Burmese script; and (c) minority languages that use their own scripts but which have some similarity to Burmese. The first group of Latin script users include the Chin, Kachin, Lisu and Naga commu­ nities. Among them, this study has found that Chin and Kachin (Jingphaw)53 are easily adaptable to digital communication. The Chin community has more than 50 subdialects, and relies on Burmese for inter-tribal communication, but Chin respondents say that all major Chin languages that use Latin script are able to use existing digital devices and easily engage in written communication on Facebook. Kachin alphabets are