Category Archives: Language

Pike

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Yesterday in 1912, Kenneth Lee Pike was born. He first studied theology and wanted to be a missionary in China, but he was not accepted. He went on to meet William Cameron Townsend with whom he went to Mexico where we learned and studied the Mixtec language. He had a very distinguished academic career at the University of Michigan; becoming a member of the American Academy of Sciences, and was nominated 15 times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

PhoneticsHis book on Phonetics is a classic in that field of study. The science he elucidated in that book serves those developing alphabets for unwritten languages. But it also serves speech therapists and others.

On one of the few times I met him, he told the story of how Phonetics came to be written. He was living among the Mixtecs in Mexico, learning their language and starting to translate the Bible. The group he was with, SIL International, also taught linguistics courses in the USA for others wanting to get involved in Bible translation for minority peoples. For that, they needed textbooks. The leader of SIL, William Cameron Townsend, wanted Pike to write a textbook on phonetics. But Pike kept putting it off, working instead on the Mixtec language.

At one point, Pike was traveling in Mexico by train. The train he was to travel on arrived at the station, but a rail-car-load of wheat needed to be unloaded before the train could continue. To pass the time and to speed things up, Pike lent a hand. But he slipped and fell, breaking his leg. He was hospitalized. With nothing to do, he started working on the textbook on phonetics which later become the book on Phonetics which is still a classic.

I can identify. When we worked on the Cerma language in Burkina Faso, it was easy to keep our focus on learning that language and culture. Requests to help other missionaries, teach courses, and so on, seemed to be distractions. Fortunately, God did not let me break my leg to turn my attention to serving others.

Kenneth_Lee_Pike

Ghanaisms

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English is a world language. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that English is a whole bunch of national and regional languages which all have the same name and have a lot of similarity to each other. I have lived in two countries in Africa whose official language is English – Kenya and Ghana. In both cases I was confronted with English words used in ways I found strange. Sometimes I found that the “strange” way was right — at least according to the British. (Both countries were once British colonies.) But my favorites are the strange (to me) English words and phrases which are part of the everyday vocabulary of Kenyans and Ghanaians. These kenyaisms and ghanaisms are adaptations of standard English to local conditions and thinking.

My favorite kenyaism is “carpet the road”  or ” re-carpet the road” meaning to pave or re-pave it.

Here are a few ghanaisms I have collected.

  • Shop - God's Favor Spot spot n. = grocery shop, especially a small or roadside shop selling packaged and canned goods as well as beverages.
  • land v.  = to say something directly without beating around the bush
  • book long a. = educated
  • rubber n. = plastic bag
  • slate and cutter n.= long skirt with matching blouse
  • meat n. = beef – example: “Do you want chicken, fish or meat”
  • off v. = turn on – example “off the lights”
  • on v. = turn on – example “on the lights’
  • one time adv. = all at once – example: “Bring the tools one time”
  • Ghana n. = cedis, the local currency. In response to asking for the price of something, I get the reply “50 Ghana”.
  • glass n. = window  – example while sitting in a car with the ac running: ” Your glass is not up”
  • lights n. = electricity/power – example: “The lights are off” means “The electricity is out”. A sign in a village without electricity announced “No Light, No Vote”. In other words, the people of the village will not vote for the incumbent until the village has electricity.
  • top v. = fill up, – example, I would say “top it up”, but the “up” is omitted.
  • small adv. = a little – example, “Top it small”, meaning “add a little (air to a tire)”

Shop - Don't mind your wife chop barOne of my favorite ghanaisms is “chop”. It can be used as a verb meaning “eat” or a noun meaning “food”. One sees “chop bars” – informal restaurants serving local food, along the road. In many African languages the verb “to eat” is used with various figurative meanings. And so “chop” is also used figuratively. It often corresponds to “eat up” in standard English, as in, “car repairs are eating up all my money”. So, if someone “chops money” he or she is wasting it. A few months ago there was a popular song by a young man saying that his girl friend was chopping his money, but he did not mind because she was so beautiful. By the end of the song, however, he was changing his mind. The song was entitled “Chop My Money” and that phrase was repeated often in the chorus.

Shop - Jesus is the Answer SpotIn Ghanaian English, “chop” is extremely versatile. The phrase “chop money” refers to money set aside for food and household expenses. Also, “chopping money” refers to corruption. So someone might say that money for this or that project was “chopped”.

And with that, I think that I have chopped enough of your time for today.

If you liked this, you might also like Outdooring, Kente, or New Meanings.

Words

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You might think that every word has a meaning. But open a dictionary and you will see that most words have several meanings and some have such a wide range of meanings that one might wonder how they can be useful at all.

I was reminded about this by an exchange among friends on Facebook. (edited a bit to remove personal details)

Status update by friend 1: Home after a wonderful weekend. Attended a wedding on Saturday and visited with old friends.
Comment #1: didn’t know we were considered old
Comment #2: ancient

I am sure that these comments were made in good fun. But the exchange does show two of the meanings of “old”. The “old” friends are not ancient, but rather people who have been friends for a long time, or perhaps friends which one had not seen for a long time.

This past football season, I  noticed that football announcers say of a good receiver that he has “soft hands”. This means that the receiver catches the ball very well. I suppose that the ball would bounce off something “hard” but “stick” to something soft. This is quite a different meaning than when an advertisement says that a certain cream or soap will give a woman soft hands.

We use context to sort out which meaning of a word or phrase is intended. There is no confusion, it is clear when the “soft hands” means one thing and when it means the other. After all, football announcers would not be commenting on the luxurious qualities of the skin on the hands of a macho receiver!

The fact that every word has a range of meaning must be taken into account in a good translation. In one sense, Bible translation is not the same as interpretation. When Revelation says “Then I saw a black horse, and its rider had a balance scale in one hand”, the translator should just translate. It is then up to the preachers and theologians to interpret the meaning of the black horse and the scale. But in another sense, one cannot translate even one word or phrase without interpreting it. Here is an example from Psalm 24 where “soft hands” are not mentioned, but “clean hands” are:

“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart… He will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior.”

In some cultures, dirty hands indicate a hard worker. To say that some one has clean hands is to say that they are lazy. (Source: From the Wycliffe UK magazine, Words for Life, November 2012)

In such a case, it would be foolish to translate the words “clean hands” literally. It would mean that God approves lazy people. So the words “clean hands” (or rather the Hebrew words so translated into English) have to be interpreted, and then the translators finds words in the other language that match that interpretation. Something like “He whose hands are not soiled with evil deeds” might work, but the exact solution will vary from language to language.

Languages are amongst the richest and most complex systems humankind has ever produced.

Antoine Lefeuvre

If you liked this, you might also like New meanings, Outdooring, or Eternal life.

Taamba

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Translation of the proper nouns in the Bible is an issue that is rarely controversial and not very exciting. But, it is important. Studies show that proper nouns are the biggest hindrance to reading the Bible fluently. You don’t need a fancy study to reach that conclusion. Just hand a Bible, any translation, to someone and ask them to read out loud a passage full of names of people or places, especially the Old Testament. Almost everyone will stumble while reading the names.

So, one of the easiest ways to increase the readability of a translation of the Bible is to put a little work into the translation or transliteration of proper nouns. It is too late for English. The English spelling of names in the Bible has been set for a long time We are just going to have to keep stumbling over those strange names. But, we can make a bit of a difference when translating the Bible into a language for the first time.

So, one of the mundane but important tasks in translating the Bible for the first time into a language is to develop an approach toward proper names that will cause readers the fewest problems. A good Bible translator uses the science of linguistics to develop a solid approach which is both accurate and respects the structure of the language.

Consider proper nouns used to describe people from a specific place. English has a complicated system. Depending on the place, English adds “ers” or “ians”, as in New Yorkers and Oregonians. But how to choose? A person from the town of Kumasi in Ghana would be what? A Kumasian? A Kumasier? Then there are the irregular forms. People from Greece are Greeks, those from Japan are Japanese, and those from Bangladesh are Bangladeshis.

Dayle and I started our career in Bible translation learning the Cerma languages in southwest Burkina Faso. In comparison to English, Cerma is a model of predictability. If the name of the place ends in a consonant, add a vowel and then “taamba”, otherwise, just add “taamba”. Presto, the name for the people who live in that place. In Cerma, Oregonians are Oregonitaamba.

Cerma NT TOCA number of books of the New Testament are named after the people to whom they were first written. For example, the book written to the people in the city of Colossae is called Colossians, the one to the residents of the city of Philippi, is called Philippians. These names follow the English practice of adding “ians”. So how did the translators name these books in Cerma? Simple, they just added “taamba”.

Just take a look at the table of contents for the New Testament in the Cerma language. You can see that many of the books that would end in “ians” in English end in “taamba” in Cerma.

Not only does using taamba make it easy to read, but without being taught, even an uneducated Cerma reader will know that Galasitaamba means the people who live in a place called Galasi. A little effort put into studying the language and apply that to translation produces a translation where proper nouns are easier read and understand.

If you liked this, you might also like Translating unknown terms, Boring stuff or Not just anyone can translate.

Grassroots

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Man from northern Ghana

Man from northern Ghana

In the vast majority of cases, languages without the Bible also do not have an alphabet. They have never been written. There are no dictionaries and no grammars. This situation is typically seen as an obstacle which requires some specialized linguistics work before getting to the real work of Bible translation. But often, for the people who speak the language, it is much more than a preliminary step.

They are very often very interested in having their language written. They are proud when their “second class” language is raised to the status of other languages by having an alphabet, a dictionary and written documents. For this reason, Bible translators often have very good relationships with traditional community leaders even when the community is apathetic toward or even opposed to the Gospel message. This leads to some odd juxtapositions. Some Bible translators have found that they were treated like royal guests at the court of the Paramount chief. Clerics of other religions many show up to support for Bible translation. One Bible translator noticed that young men would memorize their holy book and recite it publicly. So he proposed to the religious leaders that the same be done for the newly translated Gospel of Mark. They agreed! Young men memorized the book and recited it publicly with their religious leaders watching and approving.  In Mozambique, a cleric of another religion offered to promote Bible study because of a booklet describing the grammar in his language. You can read the full story here.

GILLBT Director (right) with a traditional chief in Ghana

GILLBT Director (right) with a traditional chief in Ghana

People may be opposed to the Gospel message when, in fact, they are opposed to a caricature of it based on lack of knowledge or communication in a language they did not fully understand. In some places in northern Ghana, people first believed that Christianity was for people from the southern parts of Ghana, but not for them. Then they sometimes believed that Christianity was for the educated only, not for them. But they were enthusiastic to see their language developed. Along the way, they got a new, more complete, understanding of Christianity.

In the end, developing an alphabet for an unwritten language is very often much more than a technical task. It is a way into the heart of the community. It gives the translator credibility with a community, even a resistant community, in ways that very few actions can. When missionaries and their supporters see linguistics research as nothing more than a hurdle to get over before starting the “real” task” of translation, they may be missing a prime opportunity for the Gospel, and a way to show God’s love and care.

Mother Tongue Day

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Tower of BabelToday is International Mother Tongue Day which gives focus to minority languages. But we all have a mother tongue even if it is not a minority language.

Of course, the Bible has something to say about the fact that we all speak different languages. Everyone knows the story of the tower of Babel. As a reminder, here is the passage:

God said, “These people are working together because they all speak the same language. This is just the beginning. Soon they will be able to do anything they want. Come on! Let’s go down and confuse them by making them speak different languages—then they won’t be able to understand each other.” So the people had to stop building the city, because the Lord confused their language and scattered them all over the earth. That’s how the city of Babel got its name. (Gen 11: 6-9 CEV)

I have heard quite varied interpretations of this story. According to a common interpretation, this is the story of a curse. Those who hold this interpretation also hold the view that the multiplicity of languages is a curse, or at least a hindrance. This interpretation, however, does not square with other parts of Scripture. I’ll come to that in a minute. But even if it is true that the multiplicity of languages is a negative thing, that does not make it a curse. God’s actions to correct us are not curses! They are loving attempts to get us back on the right track. So if speaking many languages helps us to follow God, that would be a good thing.

Wait! The Apostle Paul pretty much said that:

From one person God made all peoples who live on earth, and he decided when and where each people would be. God did all this, so that we will look for him and reach out and find him. (Acts 17:26-27)

So the Apostle is saying that

  • God made all peoples, and
  • He decided where they would live and when, and
  • He did this so that they would search for Him and find Him.

These verses do not mention language, but language is an integral part of the identity of a people. The verses are clear. God divided the human race into ethnic groups (most with their own language), so that they would seek and find him. Making it easier to find God is not a punishment! If God says (through Paul) that the multiplicity of ethnic identities leads to more seeking of God, then we should listen to that carefully and allow that to influence our view of language. Too often, we let our views on language diversity be determined by our politics or our patriotic sentiments, and not by the Scriptures. Because our linguistic and ethnic identities are designed by God to help us seek and find him, we dare not disdain, neglect or ignore them in any sphere but especially not in the ministry of the church or in missions.

Number of languages spoken in the world today

Number of languages spoken in the world today

That there are multiple languages on the earth is not a disorder. It is not an aberration, a problem to be solved, nor a hindrance to human development. It is part of God’s purpose to bring people to know him. Interestingly, people from major languages do not get this. But those from minority languages often do. When their language is written and translated, they feel recognized and elevated. See my blog Counted for one example.

We who speak international languages often do not know what it is like to speak a language others consider unworthy or useless. The thing is, that is never God’s opinion. He created our languages and cultures for a purpose. As my colleague in translation, Eddie Arthur, wrote:

The God who was not ashamed to be born to a peasant woman and laid in a manger is not ashamed to speak Kouya, Jamaican patois or even modern-day English.

Whatever the reasons others celebrate Mother Tongue day, let’s celebrate the good gift of our mother tongues and our ethnic identities. And let’s use that good gift the way He intended – to seek Him and find Him and to help other seek and find him.

PS: I often use the phrase “heart language” instead of “mother tongue” because some take “mother tongue” to refer to a historic or ancestral language which they sometimes no longer speak.

Ulfilas

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This post is about a man you probably never heard of who did something unheard of.

Ulfilas evangelizing the Goths

Ulfilas evangelizing the Goths

Ulfilas lived some 1600 plus years ago; from about AD 330 to 380. He left the comfort of his life as a Roman citizen to evangelize the Goths – an east Germanic tribe.

The Goths spoke their own language, of course. So like many missionaries Ulfilas learned it to communicate with them. There is nothing unusual about that. Ulfilas also wanted to translate the Bible into the language of the Goths, but there was a problem. The Goth language had never been written. It did not have an alphabet. So he took on the extraordinarily difficult intellectual challenge of writing down a language which had never been written. The thing is, he succeeded, thus becoming the first person to accomplish that for a language not his own. His alphabet captured accurately the sounds of spoken Goth. It has 27 letters borrowed from the Greek and Roman alphabets. Ulfilas did this in about 360 AD without the benefit of studying linguistics which was not invented until almost 1300 years later! People who attempt this task today study linguistics first and are supported by a whole body of literature that explains all the ins and outs as well as experts they can consult not to mention talking to other people who have done it. Dayle and I had all that support when we proposed an alphabet for the Cerma language in Burkina Faso.

Wulfila_bibel-edited

A page from Ulfilas’ translation into Goth

Ulfilas was way before his time. It was not until the 1700s that writing down unwritten languages became a somewhat common missionary endeavor. In the 19th and 20ths centuries it boomed. Today, more languages have been written for the first time through the work of missionary Bible translators than any other way! This fact shows the fallacy in the claim that missionaries destroy culture. Much more has been done to preserve and develop the world’s minority languages by missionaries than by anthropologists.

Also, only a relatively small number of people, a few thousand perhaps, will ever go down in history as giving an unwritten language an alphabet. Time is running out for anyone wanting to follow in the steps of Ulfilas.

If you liked this, you might also like Counted, Patois, or What Alphabet.

500 2000 3000 then 2000 again

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Townsend-2000-Composite

There are perhaps as many as 500 languages in the world. At least that’s what Wycliffe’s founder William Cameron Townsend thought when he started the organization in the 1930s. The number increased to 1,000. Then by the time I joined in the 1970s, it was over 2000. By then, Wycliffe had published a book entitled Two Thousand Tongues to Go.

Gradually, the number kept increasing. Why? Well, we kept discovering more languages. In the 1990s that stopped. Oh, we still might find a new language here or there, but nothing like the thousands being discovered in the middle of the 20th century. One of the little-heralded scientific achievements of that period was the cataloging of all the languages of the world, largely achieved by people interested in translating the Bible into more languages.

As the number of known languages increased – eventually to over 6,900 – so did the number without a translation of the Bible, reaching 3,000 in the 1990s – a far cry from the estimated 500 of only 60 years earlier.

But even as the number of languages stabilized around 6,900, the number still needing a translation was only decreasing by 25 per year – translation work was starting in about 25 languages every year. Imagine trying to save $3,000 by adding $25 to a cookie jar once a year. Even stalwart supporters of translating the Bible into all languages wondered if it was doable or worthwhile.

Enter John Watters. He had an idea called Vision 2025 which called for starting translation in all languages by 2025. A nice motivational goal, I thought, even if it can’t be done.

Well, Wycliffe just released the latest statistics. You can see them here. The number of languages without the Bible has dropped to less than 2,000 for the first time since we knew how many languages there are! Better, the rate of starting translation in more languages has increased way beyond 25 per year. The current pace has translation in the last language starting in the 2030s. Of course, that requires that giving, going and praying continue at the same pace. On the other hand, if God’s people were to pick up the pace a bit, 2025 is very possible.

This means that my children will see the last translation started and probably finished! Time is running out to be part of this historic moment. Don’t show up at the end of the world, see how proud our God is of those he asked to be involved and regret that you didn’t invest some prayer, money or time in this great thing God is doing.

Nida

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On November 11, 1914, Eugene Nida was born in Oklahoma City. He was to have more impact on Bible translation than any other person in the 20th century.

Eugene Nida

After graduating from the University of California, he was exposed to Bible translation at Camp Wycliffe, a training program for Bible translators run by the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He stayed in Bible translation, but worked with the American Bible Society. However, he became a founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators when it was formed a few years later.

If you read the Bible, or hear it read from the pulpit, you have probably encountered Eugene Nida. This is because Nida pioneered the theory of translation which is used, even if in modified form, in many modern translations. The principles of that theory have guided Bible translators across the world in making translations that are understandable to people in the most varied languages and cultures.

More than a theorist, he wrote practical books about communicating the Gospel across cultures. He also developed practical techniques. For example, he developed a method of breaking words down into components of meaning. The word bachelor can be broken down into the components male + unmarried. This method is widely used to find the best translation when doing the very first translation into a language. It is particularly useful for translating key terms such as faith, sin and salvation. Methods he pioneered lead to translations which better conveyed the true meaning of the text, avoiding problems such as that of I John 5:12 in the Luganda translation which many take to mean that a person who dies without a male child will not have eternal life. If you are on Facebook, see this described by Enoch Wandera.

My reading of I Cor 12:28 is that God gives specially gifted people to his church.

First, God chose some people to be apostles and prophets and teachers for the church. But he also chose some to work miracles or heal the sick or help others or be leaders or speak different kinds of languages.

There was an explosion in Bible translation in the 20th century. The number of languages with some translation in print went from about 500 to over 2200 during that century – rate of a new language every three weeks! And that was when Nida graduated suma cum laude from university, went on to get a doctorate in linguistics and entered the field of Bible translation. Thousands of missionary translators were fanning out across the globe and the Bible . They needed training and some guiding principles. Nida’s writing, teaching and theories provided that. I believe that he clearly was God’s gift to his church to support the rapid expansion of Bible translation. His gifted life is yet another sign that God is creating an unprecedented, worldwide push to translate the Bible into all languages. While Nida’s story is not exciting, but without it many of the exciting stories of Bible translation would not have happened.

Dr. Nida passed away in 2011.

If you liked this, you might also like Who would have guessed?, Not just anyone can translate, or Another kind of KP.

Language, religion, politics and economic growth

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On December 31, 1384 Oxford scholar and theologian John Wycliffe died. He was the first to translate the Bible into English. With the proliferation of translations today, that does not sound like a big deal, but in his day it was a very big deal. A ridiculous question will serve to illustrate the point.

Should we use a special language to read the Bible, pray or preach?

You probably have never thought of asking that question, which is good. But 500 years ago it was a burning question. So much so that some were burned at the stake for giving the “wrong” answer. Wycliffe and others had the audacity to use their mother tongue to communicate truth of God. You see, Latin had become the language of the church, of education and of politics, even though only a small minority spoke it.

John Wycliffe

Wycliffe studied at Oxford, and later taught there, all in Latin. When he wrote scholarly articles, they were in Latin. All preaching was in Latin and people were obliged to pray in Latin, whether they understood it or not. Ordinary people understood very little of what was happening in church. This situation created all sorts of problems including corruption in the clergy and a lot of superstition among church goers.

Wycliffe wanted something different. He started by writing some of his academic articles in English. Some were aghast. Then he started translating the Bible into English. He formed a group of like-minded traveling preachers who took his translation to churches where they read it and preached in English.

One of the results was that the common people started questioning some of the things they were being told by the church. The educated elite did not like that. They struck back. They said that:

  • English was too common a language to adequately tell the glorious truth about God
  • The average person would inevitably misinterpret the Bible. Some opponents said “The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity.”
  • Believers should looks to the church to interpret the Bible for them, rather than interpreting it themselves.

But Wycliffe kept at it. After he died, he was judged by a church court and found guilty. His bones were exhumed, burned and scattered in a river. His translation and writings were banned, but the circulated in secret. His ideas did not go away, rather they continued to percolate and eventually became the norm – so much so that many do not know that church services and Bible readings in English were once illegal.

That’s right, illegal. Latin was not just the language of church. It was the language of education and of politics. If you had lived in that day, you would have gone to first grade and had your teacher speak to you in Latin. If you went to court, Latin would be spoken by the attorneys and the judge. Wycliffe’s translation and other reforms eventually led to English becoming the language of education and government in Britain. Some scholars believe that the industrial revolution would have been impossible if Latin had been retained. If the bosses spoke Latin but not the workers, it is hard to see how a factory could work well, for example. Schooling in Latin could not have produced enough skilled workers to sustain industrialization.

Yale professor of history, Dr. Lamin Sanneh, proposes that the translation of the Bible into the language of every man set the stage for democracy. If the most important truth of all – that of God — can be communicated in the common language and everyone can understand it, what rationale could there be to keep lesser information, such as that about government or law, from everyone? If everyone could interpret God’s holy book for themselves, then what rationale could there be for excluding people from making up their own minds about political matters? For Dr. Sanneh, democracy starts with the translation of the Bible into common language. Wycliffe did more than translate the Bible, his ideas ended up reshaping law, business and government.

Some of us believe that we are involved in something similar today. We are doing more than translating the Bible into obscure languages. We are also giving people who speak those languages a new way to engage with the world. One of the findings of an evaluation of a local language literacy program in Ghana was that it gave people greater confidence to undertake new ventures. In addition, it resulted in more children in school and more succeeding in school. A study of Bible translation in the languages of northern Ghana concluded that it gave people a new sense of value and identity and at the same time greater harmony with their neighbors. It turns out that Bible translation is not just a religious endeavor. It also can and does bring changes changes to other parts of life too.

A hand-copied page from Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible