Analysis of the Swo Phonology

The work on the Swo language resumed on October 14 at our home in Yaounde. Mr Lounga-Nang, a teacher by training, has spent a hard first day with me, Keith, addressing the issues of how his language should be represented orthographically. He said that he thinks Swo must be harder than any other language in Cameroon, but I think it's probably not that bad. I find it a good work-out to be involved in this activity again after doing this in Nzime, Badwe'e and Njyem. At one point, the dining room table was filled with slips of paper representing all the possible combinations of an initial consonant and a following vowel. (We have 16 consonants and 9 vowels.) At this time we are trying to connect a word with each of these CV, CwV and CyV combinations. We are practicing writing using the phonology-based orthographic system. Our experience in writing has been Genesis 1-2:3. Now the 25 letters have been identified, based on the study of the sound-system. We have done the alphabet chart and are hoping to do some more adaptation of Scripture into Swo. That is motivational for us and potentially for other speakers of Swo, too. Now the work on the dictionary is pushing forward. This will give us access to the lexical riches we need for the translation and help us keep the spelling errors to a minimum.