Nzime Catechism Going Forward

A Presbyterian pastor, Rev. Ernest N., Said that he finds the catechism a valuable resource for his preaching. He has been using its questions and answers to help his congregation in Messok master the important concepts of the Christian faith. These are supporting the biblical texts that are the basis of true doctrine.
He wants a printing of 200 catechisms to be done by early next month. We are trusting God to make this possible. The plan he has is that two of them would be placed in every chapel throughout the district ("consistoire" in French). We are praying for this to take place in an God-honoring manner.
I have taken the 64-page booklet to a printshop here in Yaounde and they hope to have it ready in 1 to 2 weeks. I asked them to try for 1 week, so we could get it out to the Presbyterians meeting in Zoadiba for their annual leadership training session, Aug. 18-22.
Another important rendez-vous is Sept. 13-26, when lay preachers will be meeting in Zoulabot 1, a town on the eastern border of the Nzime region, on the way to Yokadouma. The lay preachers should find this tool very helpful as they meet with those seeking to know the truth in God's Word.

New insights into the Swo phonology

A consonant is sometimes followed by a fricative in Swo. For example, some words are "b" followed by a vowel and others are "bv" in that same position.
What is growing clear is that the affricates (bv, pf, kf, dv, etc.) are all followed by a "high" vowel, /u/. I am going to be looking to see if the affricates are also found before the equally high vowels /i/ and /ɨ/. The barred "i" is high, central, unrounded.
So far, this looks very similar to what is happening in Badwe'e and in Nzime. In those languages, there is "oral cavity friction" accompanying a consonant when the following vowel is [+high].
These are subphonemic alterations in the pronunciation of a consonant.
If the Swo language truly has predictable affricatization before high vowels, the presence of the affricate would not be need to be marked.
The data would suggest this to be true. On Aug. 6, Pastor Ossimba and I observed that the affricate "ts" in [tsɨrɨ], "meat, animal", is indeed coming before a high vowel, /ɨ/, [high, central, unrounded]. It obeys the rule, therefore, that a stop becomes affricated before a high vowel, such as /i/, /ɨ/ or /u/.

So Phonology Underway

The So people are showing evidence of considerable interest in their language and are reporting that more and more people are asking how they can be involved in determining their own future. They want a future in which they can write to each other and even to future generations.

They can do this only if they have a written language.

Pastor Simon Pierre OSSIMBA and I worked this afternoon on the phonological description of their language. I began by giving him a brief lecture on phones, phonemes and graphemes.

The concern we first addressed is to understand their inventory of vowels. We are in the process of collecting words that can reflect to us how many letters are in the inventory of phonemes.

So far, we are making good progress and seem to have tentatively identified the following vowel system:

Genesis being brought to completion

Genesis is an exciting and troubling book to translate into Badwe'e. Our team is struggling and finding their efforts rewarded by success. Our part in this is the exegetical check and the pre-publication check. We are hoping to get another consultant check in August.
This is likely to be a spot-check.
Part of the pre-publication spot check involves doing a "free" translation of the Badwe'e text into French.
After that, the next part is a "parse" of each word into its components. Words are dissected and prefixes, roots and suffixes are displayed in such a way that the computer "understands" them.
This is bearing fruit in another way: the dictionary is being built up.