Relative articles

This is a relatively complicated part of the Badwe'e grammar, so we are adding it to the second volume of the transition primer.

There are 2 series of relative articles in Badwe'e, one series when the article is in phrase-final position and another series when it is in phrase medial position. There are four words that we've noticed which move the article to the phrase medial position:

1. The interjection

2. The word "thus" or "then the following would be true"

3. The conditional "if"

4. The interrogative "is it true?"

Examples would help. Here is one:

In phrase final position, the article harmonizes with the preceding vowel. If the preceding letter is a consonant, the article is a barred "i".

Badwe'e Gospel of Mark in the new orthography

We have just finished adapting Badwe'e MARK to the new orthography, which has fewer tone marks. It is available for downloading here.

Post-primer in Badwe'e

We were amazed to see the quality and volume of a post-primer that Ferdinand Elanga brought to us! It is available here for any and all to download and print. Sorry, it is only in Badwe'e (ISO 639-3: ozm)!

Revising the Njyem Transition Primer

Seven Njyem-- all young adults in university programs-- came to the Cameroon Training Center in Yaounde on March 23 and 4 came on March 30 to report on their work revising the Njyem transition primer. Some of this work was done in a group setting on Sunday afternoons, but others were working on their own, finding things to correct or comment on. They hope to work on this again and bring it to conclusion. We are keyboarding the changes and are very hopeful that they will be encouraged by the outcome of our collective efforts. Here it is in its present state. We are now sending out a few copies to people in the village to use in literacy classes and to correct further.

Jonah in Badwe'e

Mary and I are checking the exegesis of Jonah (Badwe'e) before sending it back to the authors with our comments.

Dramatic recording of Genesis

The work of preparing scripts for the dramatic reading of Genesis is going fast! I am using the program Dramatizer, which is available free. The recording should be in July, after enough readers are trained. We hope to get funding for a playback device to use in presenting this version of Genesis to the Nzime people. It may also be played on CD devices and on the rural radio.

A notebook computer for Rev. Ndjelo

The past week we trained Rev. Ndjelo on a notebook computer running Windows 7. For his work of Bible translation, he has Paratext and Open Office.

The Njyem Grammar

It's coming! The first part of the Njyem grammar is now available in French. I have written on the voices, modes and will now describe the tenses and negation.

The transition primer is getting checked.

On the 20th a group of 28 Njyem met at the home of a community leader to study the new transition primer. From the first page onward, they found things that needed fixing. We have incorporated their proposals in the on-line copy of the transition primer at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16109934/NjyManTrans.pdf They will be meeting again on the 27th and report back on their proposals.

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

On the 13th a group of 28 Njyem met at the home of a community leader to study the new transition primer. From the first page onward, they found things that needed fixing. We have incorporated

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

On the 13th a group of 28 Njyem met at the home of a community leader to study the new transition primer. From the first page on

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

On the 13th a group of 28 Njyem met at the home of a community leader to study the new

Nzime Genesis to the Printer

We are excited by the progress that has been made. The Nzime are eager to receive the teaching of Genesis and it has now gone to print. The printer is Guilllaume Nguezere, one of those trained in the SIL printshop, which has since been closed. We are producing 220 of them. Before the Badwe'e translation of Genesis can go to print, we need to receive the reactions of the Badwe'e reviewers.

Nzime Genesis to the Printer

We are excited by the progress that has been made. The Nzime are

The Njyem of Yaounde are meeting to learn to read and write their language

This Sunday (March 13), some of the Njyem living in Yaounde will be meeting in one of their homes and begin to study and correct the new literacy booklet we have been creating. It is of great importance to us all that they commit themselves to follow through with this process of becoming readers and writers of Njyem. If they do, we can continue with much less difficulty in the direction of producing audio and written Scriptures.