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6/30/2009

How language is structured, from top down

The lecture I am giving during the translation consultants' seminar is on "discourse genres" or "types/kinds of discourse" The kind of discourse genre you are engaged in producing determines how many of the surface-structures of the discourse will appear. The high-level choices determine the low-level choices.
The term "discourse genres" describes those major types of discourses that we use in speaking. These are universal, and may be described as "deep-structure" or as "notional". One of my lectures will be on the taxonomy of discourse genres. I am using the diagram shown in this post, which comes from Robert Longacre's The Grammar of Discourse, 2nd edition. Another lecture will deal more specifically with narrative discourse.
Bob was my MA supervisor in 1978-79 at the University of Texas at Arlington, where I got a MA in linguistics.

6/29/2009

The Camper is Road-ready Again!

There are steel cornerpieces inside and outside the camper where the togglebolts pull down, and that gives us a lot more confidence that we will have more visits to the people-groups of the forest thanks to the camper. We are very grateful for the excellent welding and carpentry that went into it.
Another improvement are the two additional solar panels that we'll be taking with us to pump up the deep cycle batteries. (In the forest there are days when you never see the sun, just clouds, so you need as big a collector of sunlight as you can carry with you.

6/28/2009

New Translation Consultants to be trained


We have a seminar here in Cameroon next month that is under the supervision of the Africa Area (SIL). The seminar director is Mary Breeze, who is based in Ethiopia. It starts July 6.
It is oriented toward assisting translation advisors in their progress toward the new job "translation consultant". As a Cameroon Branch SIL translation consultant, I have two lectures to prepare for it, as well as a devotional message. One lecture is on discourse genres and the other is on narrative discourse.
The accompanying picture shows our academic library.

Prayer Letter from June 2009







This is one of the new styles for prayer letters that Wycliffe Bible Translators created and advocates.

Prayer letter from March 2009



6/25/2009

Bonjour, mes amis francophones!

Je vous salue! Nous avons publié ce blog dans lʼintérêt de rendre accessible les nouvelles de nos collaborateurs dans le Province de lʼEst. Les quatre principaux sont:
  • François Médard MEDJO, fils du chef de Somalomo, du dialecte Badwéʼé; Travaillant à Lomié parmi les Nzimé; en train de terminer sa formation d'alphabétiseur en langues nationales.
  • Rufine ADJOWA, de Te'esaŋ, qui anime le peuple Njyem depuis bien d'années, à la mesure de ses possibilités.
  • Ferdinand ELANGA, de Mboumo, du dialecte Badwé'é; travaillant à Somalomo et à Mindourou; en train de terminer sa formation d'alphabétiseur en langues nationales.
  • Maurice EKOALEA “Janvier”, dʼAlouma; travaillant à Somalomo. Il vient de commencer sa préparation pour une formation théologique en vue de devenir pasteur dans l'EPC, Consistoire Nkol Mvolan.

Ils sont en train de diriger les ONG qui auront le souci permanent:

  • d'alphabétiser tous les Koozimé (Badwe'e, Njémé, Nzimé, Njyém)
  • de leur donner les textes bibliques dont ils sentent le besoin
  • de leur aider à éviter les MST
  • de leur aider à surmonter les problèmes comme la pauvreté, l'abus de l'alcool, l'accès difficile à l'éducation

6/23/2009

Keith at work in the evening

The little orange table sits on a pedestal in the middle of our camper home. After the supper dishes are cleared away, I work on the database of Genesis, incorporating the changes that the translation committee asked for.

Our home in the village of Somalomo


Our floor in the camper is 7 ft by 44 inches. It fits in the box of our Toyota Hilux well. Mary created a lot of hot meals there with jars of food she canned in Yaounde.

Oliver is fixing the Skamper

We are very grateful for Oliver's skills as a welder and craftsman. He is putting a new piece of treated wood into the camper.
He will also be putting in some corner brackets to help distribute the strain on the camper as we go over bumps.

Damage to the Skamper


We are ripping out a board in the camper that was infested with wood-borers and damp.
This is the second time we have had to rebuild and remodel the camper. It's on jacks in front of our apartment in Yaounde.

The Skamper on our Pickup


We were ready to leave our Badwe'e coworkers after 19 days spent assisting them in the translation of Genesis. Many were touched by the message they heard. Some of our coworkers are in the office that we all helped build. They have solar panels on the roof.

Our camper in Somalomo, Cameroon

Our camper stayed on our truck the whole time we were in Somalomo (19 days).
It was shaded by oil palms. Our shower tent was behind it with a tarp giving us a bit of privacy from those passing on the road.

6/22/2009

The Seed Company partnered with the Badwe'e

The costs of the translation of God's Word are great, however it is done. In the case of the Badwe'e New Testament, much of the cost was covered by The Seed Company, affiliated with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Wycliffe Bible Translators was the publisher of the New Testament and paid for the printing. I have included links to these organizations. The Seed Company is based in Arlington, Texas. They are very worthy of the help and prayers that any may be moved to give on their behalf. They can only partner with groups like the Badwe'e if they have support from people like you.

Domesticating wild animals

"Braconnage" or "poaching" is the great enemy of a sustainable and diverse fauna.
There are serious problems with the way the forest is being used and abused by the people in the area of Somalomo. There are also some very laudible efforts by ECOFAC of the European Union to teach people better habits.
One promising idea is promoting the cane rat, or "aulacode". In Badwe'e it is pankomo. It would be a tasty addition to anyone's dinner, but the domestication of this animal is not part of the Badwe'e skill set. We have attempted to help them learn to raise Guinea pigs (byah).
Cats ate them up. Nothing has seemed to work out as planned concerning the reorienting of the diet of the Badwe'e. Domesticating wild animals is pretty much a lost cause.

6/21/2009

Fixing the camper

We are in Yaounde and attending to the slide-in pop-up Skamper truck-camper that we use as our base of operations wherever we need to be working. It looks pretty beat-up now, with water damage in the wood and lots of places where there the tie-down togglebolts do not have a secure grip on the camper anymore.
Our truck is still going strong, however. It is a 1996 1-1/2 ton Toyota Hilux, 4x4.
So we have hired some local craftsment to make it servicable again.
We will not have time to use it before Dec. 1, when we are scheduled to come back to Cameroon after our 4-month furlough. We will be working on it in the interest of knowing that it is all squared-away before we leave for the USA on July 31. If something is lacking and must be purchased in the USA, we will be able to find time for that.

6/20/2009

The origin of the Koonzime people



The Koonzime ("OZM" in the Ethnologue) are a group of people with a common ancestor, Nzime ("Zime" if you speak the Badwe'e dialect). He had a son, Kɔɔ, who was a polygamist. He and one wife, Ampiʼi, had three sons, named Njeme, Nzime (for the grandfather), and Edweʼe. (click on the JPG at the left to enlarge.) These sons gave rise to the four ethnic groups known as Njeme, Nzime, Badweʼe and Njyem.

The Njeme, Nzime and Badweʼe speak one language, which can be called Kɔɔnzime, and which should probably have been hyphenated: Kɔɔ-nzime. This is the short form of the following phrase:

Dyɛɛ me Kɔɔ, mwan me Nzime

people of Kɔɔ child of Nzime

The three have discernable dialects and subdialects of Kɔɔnzime.

The Njeme split into two groups, one being on the northern border of the Koonzime, at Mindourou, and the other being south of the Dja River, south of Lomie. The latter group underwent a major linguistic change and they now call themselves and their language, now distinct, as “Njyem”. Their language is identified in the Ethnologue as “NJE”.

6/18/2009

Elanga Ferdinand and Francois Medjo

These two coworkers are in training as literacy promoters. They will be going to Burkina Faso next month for the last phase of their training. It started 2 years ago and has taken 4 weeks each time. They are very capable and committed. Ferdinand Elanga works in Somalomo and in Mindourou, while Francois Medard Medjo works in Lomie. They are currently assisting the Nzime and the Badwe'e to become literate, but may have more in their futures than these two ethnic groups. Many people-groups are in need of help to devise and implement their own literacy programs. Those wishing to be partners with their expanding literacy programs can send financial help via http://www.moneygram.com/. That firm works with Express Union to transfer money from any country to locations such as Lomie, the town where the Nzime program is based. They also can send it to Abong Mbang, a city near the base of literacy programs for the Badwe'e people. (see also EXPRESS UNION) Simply state the name of the person you choose to send help to and that person's cell phone number. (Elanga's phone number is 99358209; Medjo's number is 96333826.) They will contact them about the arrival of the funds.

6/17/2009

New Writing System

We have been in the habit of writing accents over vowels in order to represent the tonal part of the Nzime or Badwe'e languages. Any vowel without an accent was at low tone. If lexical tones (High, Low, or combinations of these) were changed by grammatical tones, the resulting phoneme of pitch was marked in the text. As a consequence, one word could have multiple orthographic representations. We lost "stable word image". Very few Cameroonians were able to master this, however, and so after 33 years of frustration, we have now discontinued this effort in favor of a proposal which has gained acceptance by our Cameroonian hosts: Instead of accents representing tones, they differentiate words or verbal constructions which need differentiation. Sometimes words that are true homophones are differentiated by means of accents. This is the case of the following pair of words:
edwe “to give”

edwè “to die”
Another pair is a case of near homophones. In this category I put the following:
ebè “to plant”

ebe “to be”
These are not true homophones since there are some contexts where they are different, due to the fact that “to be” is a toneless verb and “to plant” is a low-tone verb. But other word pairs have the same letters and different lexical tones. For example, in Nzime, there are three words that are minimally differentiated by tones. We use accents to differentiate them from each other: (double-click to enlarge) In the future tense (negated), there is a prefix on the verb with a high tone, but in the present tense, negative construction, the prefix on the verb has a low tone. The first is represented by á-, while the second is represented by a-.
Nye áto.

he/she Future:negative:go

He/she will not go.

Nye ato.

he/she Present:negative:go

He/she is not going.
By using a minimum of accents, people respond to the writing system as being something that they can master. Here is a sample of the difference the new writing system makes. The old is in the left column, the new at the right. (double-click to read it)

6/14/2009

Nzime literacy work well engaged

These pictures shows how younger readers and older alike are catching on to the idea of literateness. Here is one page of a book on the importance of learning to read:
Our coworkers in Lomie have done an good job in this regard, helping the Nzime move more and more in the direction of literateness. This is under the direction of Francois MEDJO, who is a Badwe'e who has moved into the Nzime community as an other-tongue African missionary. He is teaching a group of others to revise AIDS materials, bringing them into a new, simpler writing system.





This Nzime man is proud of his newly-acquired ability to write.


















This Nzime coworker, Ghislain Nka'ala, would like to become a pastor to serve his people better. He is looking for a school that has a program suited to his needs, and for people who have finances to share with him in this endeavor.
















There is nothing trivial about getting a nation of people, or a people-group, started down the path of literateness, where numeracy and literacy are known about, and where they are expected to play a role in the life of all but the youngest and the blind.








Njyem community requests more of God's Word

The Njyem people are not speakers of Nzime, but have a modest passive knowledge of it. The languages are definitely related. Recently I got word from my coworker Francois Medjo in Lomie that they have requested 20 of the Proclaimer units with the audio New Testament in Nzime. The Proclaimer is a digital playback device that contains a dramatic recording of the translation done in Nzime. It is furnished by the mission "Faith Comes By Hearing". We are very grateful for their financial support for this program. They are not looking at the financial return, that is for sure! Ten of these will be used by the Presbyterians and 10 by the Catholics to start listening groups. This represents a big step forword for them in their orientation toward God, wanting to be permeated by His Word. They seem to be turning their face toward Him in a new way! We continue being as committed as ever to assisting the Njyem to get a good version in their language of Genesis, Exodus and the New Testament.

6/07/2009

The translation of Genesis 1.28-2:4

28 Nye ze sʉ be mocyɛʼ mo mpom. Nye e be ó : « Byaʼ ga bwan ! Pwɨŋɨ ga le ejah. Bwan bɨn, bé òjala si nyiwɛh ! Jwɨŋɨ ga e l'ofu ndwe e bɨnɔn, ndwe e l'otir bɨbɛh ndɨ etiʼe é si ɨ ! » 29 Nye e be ó : « Mbe ga ! Mode ndɨ epah é bɨpeme mɨmbi mɨmbi ɨ, mode maa mɨmɛh, mɨ dwe bɨn ma ! Bɨlɨ ndɨ egumo mpumo e, mɨ dwe bɨn bya ó, bɨn deʼ ! 30 No ó, bɨka bibyɛh, mɨ dwe otir bɨbɛh bya, bé e bɨnɔn ndwe e bɨsa bibyɛh ndɨ etiʼe tin ɨ, byé beʼ be mode. » Yé nteme ntɔʼ syɛɛlɨ no. 31 Zyɛm ze bee ó, sa yiyɛh nye a sa ɛ, yé a kʉ be ó, é mbɨa. Pum ze dwine; mɛn ze lama. Elu e tobo ó nɨ. 1 No ó kʉ e si ndwe e bɨsa bibyɛh ndɨ tɨʼ ɨ, byé a sil ecyeŋɔ ɛ. 2 É jɔʼ Zyɛm a sil syɛɛ nye a sa ɛ, yé a be ó, yé mu etɛɛrɨ e moho tambɛl. Nye ze gbala, aka sa syɛɛ, nye osi sil syɛɛ yaa yiyɛh. 3 Zyɛm ze sʉ mocyɛʼ mo mpom me é moho tambɛl. Nye ze cyel we ti. Moho waa, wé « moho ti » ó, ebe, nye a si gwaʼ bɨsyɛɛ bibyɛh é moho waa, ze gbala, nye osi sil ecye bɨsa bibyɛh. 4 Tɔɔlʉ etɛɛrɨ e kʉ e si, wé ó nɨ. Would you like to read more? Would you like to hear audio? The whole Book of Genesis is now being recorded in Somalomo.

Advocacy for the Badwe'e

One of our abiding concerns is to assist the Badwe'e to acquire the contacts and the confidence to receive help of all kinds from interested parties. I have been thinking mostly of the Badwe'e in the cities of the world who have an interest in seeing their relatives progress in various positive directions. They can send money to the hard-working Badwe'e we work with through the Abong Mbang branch of Express Union. Moneygram is based in many of the countries around the world, and they can send money to Express Union. They should send it to Ferdinand Elanga, +(237) 99358209, or to Maurice Mvolo Ekoalea, +(237) 94838322. Ferdinand is directing literacy work among the Badwe'e, while Maurice is working on Bible translation and Scripture Impact. You can reply to this post and let me know if something is on the way from you and if you want to designate it for them. They will received 100% of the gift and send you a report and a thank-you. Soon, we hope, Ferdinand and "Janvier" Ekoalea will be able to manage their own blogspot, which they have expressed interest in doing. That day may be fast approaching.

6/06/2009

Back from checking GENESIS in Badwe'e

We drove back from Somalomo today. The trip was 273 km, of which we were on pavement for 140 km. Somalomo has a district office. The government officer was very hospitable and interested in us and our reasons for working among the Badwe'e. I visited one morning in his office and today Mary and I visited with him in his home. He let us take pictures of everyone there. He was very encouraging and interested in the possibilities for extending our work farther, impacting the institutions there and all the people of the area. He was mainly thinking about the ways in which they could be more effective in their work through use of the mother tongue. The coordinates for the office, homes and palm oil plantation of our Badwe'e coworkers are Lat N3 deg. 23 min. 43 sec and Long. E 12 deg. 44 min. 34 sec. This is approximately equal to "3.395000, 12.743300". I did a google map search on this spot and only saw clouds over forest, nothing in detail. We do experience a lot of cloud cover there, so it is not surprising to see that the satellite took a picture of fluffy white clouds from on high. We have a much better text of Genesis now. We are all excited by this step and are taking further ones. They are recording all 50 chapters and putting them on the Saber", a digital playback machine. We improved the wording of Genesis, too. Where Jacob is struggling with Laban, God rewards him by giving him spotted and striped sheep and goats. The word that our coworkers first gave us was motɔn, which upon further investigation meant either “buttons (on clothing)” or “freckles”. The right word is moba, which was new to me. This has the right meaning of spots in fur, not caused by dirt splashing up on otherwise clean fur. The spots are part of the natural coloring of the animal. This means that we have another word whose root is “b+a”. The other ones are: bà “cut up” (tones: Low, Low) ba “marry (when ego is male)” (tones: High, Low) ba “cut off piece of bark” (tones: Low, High) ba “spot” (tones: Low, High) ba “two” (tones: high, high) ba “split manioc, boiled) (tones: high, low) In addition, there are words that have “a” as the root and “b-” as a prefix of class 2: ba “definite article (used when a relative clause intervenes between the head noun and the article)” (tone: high) ba “these” (tones: high and low) ba “them (object pronoun used when there is another object to the verb coming before it)” (tones: low and high) Confusing?