Keith Beavon's Blog

Corpus of parsed texts

2012-02-12T20:55:00.002+01:00

Njyem was once an unwritten language as well as lacking a Bible translation.
We are passionately interested in solving both of these conditions. They are linked, as well, since there can be no good readers of the Bible in progress if there are no readers of general literature and no writers and revisers who can produce the translation.
In order of sequence, people should read untranslated literature before translations, which are always more difficult to read than works arising from ones own culture.
The corpus of texts in Njyem is being built up gradually as people contribute texts big and small to us. We transcribe them and then pass them through a parser, using FLEX, a program written and supported by SIL. Once the texts pass the "FLEX-test", they are distributed for further review and comment.
Nineteen texts are at this point.
Interested parties wanting access to them can contact me.

Genesis in Njyem

2012-02-06T19:39:00.002+01:00

Deaconess Therese NOUMBOUK and I are going back to the origins of God's self-revelation to man, translating Genesis. It is sad but true that the families of mankind have largely lost the record of the creative and redemptive purposes of God. Genesis is the account of this work... God's sovereign work in creating and sustaining the Universe, including its redemption.
We are now in the midst of creating a pre-draft through Adapt-It, basing this on the Nzime translation, which has already been consultant-checked and which is being sold and in use among the Nzime.

The catechism in Njyem

2012-01-28T09:53:00.005+01:00

People are more familiar with the word "cataclysm" than "catechism". That's where we have gotten as a culture.
Sad!
The catechism was the original "Guide to following Jesus." This is a way of construing the Gospel from within the worldview of a people-group. Their questions are answered from a biblical perspective. It is a pastor's task.
The structure of a catechism is simple and very profound.
The question: What do you believe about "x"?
The answer: We believe "y".
The scripture text. This is the best part. The part the Holy Spirit promises to anchor in peoples' hearts. Often, they memorize them.
The catechism is now done in first draft, adapted into Njyem from Nzime.
The Njyem people are indiscriminate, always wanting what their neighbors, the Nzime, have. Now they too can read about what the Bible contains and why it matters above all that they should become followers of Jesus Christ... Jesus the Messiah.

Map of the Njyem area

2012-01-14T13:19:00.002+01:00

The map shown here uses wavy lines for rivers and straight ones for roads. Ngoyla is shown as "Meko'o melɛl", which means "Three stones", and Souanké is shown as "Nsʉa-nkee", which means "On the other side of the Nsʉa River".

Two ethnic groups are indicated: the Nzime, to the north, and the Fang to the west. To the south, they are in contact with the Bekwel.

Jesus is the Avenger

2012-01-13T12:36:00.003+01:00

The Njyem have determined that the right way to characterize Jesus is their "Avenger". That is the translation of mikuna-bʉr. This is made up of a nominalizing prefix mi- (cl.4, which in a few cases refers to a single person), the verb -kuna, meaning "avenge", and bʉr, "people".
Everyone wants an Avenger to defend their interests in the event of an attack by a powerful enemy. The enemy most to be feared is Satan, or the devil.
There is a grain of truth in this attribution of a title to Jesus. The Bible says, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." (I John 3:8) It also says, "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." Hebrews 2:14-15
Does this need to be balanced against other texts? I think it might need that, especially given the fact that our sins have created an enemy of God, whose justice requires the punishment of the sinner, or of his perfect substitute.

Contrafactuals

2012-01-12T23:16:00.006+01:00

When a linguist seeks to break out of mediocrity and make headway into expressive power in a new-to-him/her language, often (s)he will look at areas like his/her use of contrafactuals.
Today, Teresa Noumabouk gave me one in an essay she wrote, which I have shown in the window below this one:
ǃYesus-Krist, nye adi, ansye ɨ si nyɔꞌɔ wa, mpe bʉr, bé ankʉ to bee ciꞌ ɨ mih me Nsɛm Sɔŋ.
"If Jesus Christ had not come to this earth, people would not have been able to see life in the eyes of ("before") God the Father."
I have been looking at all the contrafactuals in the New Testament, overt and implied, and have broken them into 2 groups: Those with negation in the first, conditional part and those without negation. The contrafactual shown above is clearly in the first group, since there is negation in the conditional phrase: "If Jesus Christ had not come to this earth..."
The puzzling part is that there are two negations there: the first is before adi, "not remain/stay", and the second is before ansye "not come".
The second part of the contrafactual always begins with mpe, which means something like "then the following would be true, except for the fact that it is not." The truth is that we can "see life in the eyes of God the Father!" I am so glad for Teresa, that she has gotten the message of life in Christ.
I am now attempting to see that all these contrafactuals get the best translations they can. Then the other parts around them will be much easier to fill in.

Yesus-Krist, nye é Mikuna-bʉr

2012-01-12T19:53:00.002+01:00

Mʉr, nye ɨ lejala ne lekœꞌ œ́, mpu Nsɛm di ɨ lekwɛl yi, nebe é, Nsɛm a ntɨh mwɔn we é, nye ntaa nse kwɨr bʉr tʉŋʉ lebyeb, nse kœb é, yi kɔbla. Ciꞌ bimpam ga bina, yé a be é, abu mbɨa ciꞌ, nebe é, bé a kœkœꞌ œ́, tʉŋʉ lebyeb ne lekaŋ bensɛm beswih. To kumo ne bʉr be Ɨsraɛl, mbi bʉr Nsɛm a twɔr wi.Nɔ ɔ́, Yesus-Krist a nse jwe é, ɨ lense kwɨr ga mɨna tʉŋʉ lebyeb. Nɔ ɔ́ mɨna bé ɨ lejala je ga nye menyʉl ga mɨna, ne biciꞌ ga bina, ne sa yiyɛh mɨna di é, mɨna sa ga á saꞌ yi, yi beꞌ ɨ dyoo le, nebe é, nye a jwe é, ɨ lɔb ga wina.
Ɨ jɔɔ nye a kwɨr ga mɨna yi, yé a baabe ne mɔnɨ, ngʉ gol, ngʉ byʉʉ bisa biswih é byé bɛm ndama bi. Yé a be é, nfe ne mecio me. Ɨ lɔb waa é mɨna jala ne leje menyʉl ga mɨna ne biciꞌ ga bina, ne sa yiyɛh di é, mɨna sa ga á saꞌ yi, yi beꞌ ɨ dyoo me Yesus-Krist, di Mikuna-bʉr nyɔ. Yé é wasa á, mɨna to bwɨ ga ciꞌ ɨ mih me Da.
ǃYesus-Krist, nye adi, ansye ɨ si nyɔꞌɔ wa, mpe bʉr, bé ankʉ to bee ciꞌ ɨ mih me Nsɛm Sɔŋ.
Térèse Noumabouk, silo Jadɔm

Transition Primer in Njyem Ready for Testers

2012-01-11T22:49:00.002+01:00

If there is anyone out there with DropBox, they can get the transition primer we are done working on.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16109934/NjyManTrans-booklet.pdf
It is for mother-tongue speakers of Njyem who are literate in French. In 64 pages (A5), it teaches the fundamentals of the Njyem writing system. It assumes the knowledge of characters which are also found in French and used in both languages in the same way.

Adaptation of New Testament

2012-01-11T10:41:00.005+01:00

Terese Noumabouk and I are done adapting Matthew from Badwe'e into Njyem. This means
that we are now 26.5% done with the preparation of a first draft of the Njyem New Testament.
One of the problems we run into is that the Njyem language seems more rich than the Badwe'e in some respects, which means that more distinctions in meaning have to be made as adaptation proceeds.
Three examples will help prove the point: 1.) In Badwe'e, all crowds are the same. One refers to a crowd as "emɛl e bʉr". In Njyem, it is necessary to know if a crowd has a collective purpose and
identity. If it has a collective identity, it is called "nyee bʉr". If it is simply a mass of people, it is "mwa bʉr".
2.) In Badwe'e, actions that are either promptly-initiated or quickly-executed are all described by the adverb "kpahbe". In Njyem, an earlier distinction continues to be maintained, with promptly-initiated events being characterized by the adverb "kula" and quickly-executed events being described by "kwɛh".
3.) In Badwe'e, all things that "surprise" you (twɨra) are the same, but in Njyem, if one is "scared and surprised", the verb is "letwɨra", while if you are caught off-guard and surprised, the verb is "lesɔga".

Njyem in a state of language change

2012-01-08T16:28:00.003+01:00

The problem with the Njyem is that they have 3 neighboring languages causing their language to shift: Fang, Nzime and Bekwel. We think that we know there is a village that is out of the range of any of these: Djadom. I imagine that we’ll be staying in that village and that we’ll be processing all the vocabulary and verbal constructions we can, using FLEx, and maybe standardizing the language better.
It is a real problem to have such a language-in-change. The people sense that it is really endangered.
A lot of them are leaving the center of the language area and going to the peripheries, where they experience more language-change. Others leave the area entirely.
We will probably find that Djadom has only a small population.
We hope that what we are doing will speak to their hearts.

The Keyboard is Coming

2012-01-08T04:15:00.002+01:00

As we prepare for our next visit to the Njyem area, we are thinking about the difficulty of maintaining our computers, some of which have great demands on electric power. There is one notebook computer that is a power-sipper, however, and we are getting it ready for daily service as a place to revise our Scripture portions.
It has two dead keys, though, so we have ordered a keyboard to be sent out by DHL. This will come with the first-class US mail that has been accumulating in our account with
MyUSA.Com, who gives us great assistance.

The Batteries for our Truck Camper

2012-01-08T04:12:00.003+01:00

We just got 2 36-amp 12-volt batteries for our truck-camper, which means we can take it on its return voyage to the Njyem area.
It may become the camper's final voyage.
We recharge the batteries with solar panels and use the power for lighting in the evening and for powering our computers.

Matthew done In 1st Draft

2012-01-08T04:09:00.002+01:00

Working with Teresa Noumabouk, Keith has completed the first draft of Matthew's Gospel in Njyem. This brings the pct of the NT drafted to 26.5 %.
The immediate goal is now finishing the catechism in Njyem.
After that, we resume work on Genesis.

Here is the rest of the story of the missing belt!

2011-10-17T03:48:00.000+01:00

On Dec. 9, a long rainy season finally ended, and Mary and Keith left their apartment in Yaoundé, Cameroon, for a trip to Ngoyla, the home of the Njyem people.After an apparently uneventful arrival in Lomie, they woke up the next day to discover the battery was dead! The local car repairman declared the alternator dead—not true, as it turned out—and proceeded to tear it apart and rebuild it. The difficult part was when he started using a hammer and chisel on it. Finally he got it back together again only to discover the REAL source of the problem. The alternator was hammered back into near-original shape late on the 11th under the light of a flashlight.

Now the Beavons were 216 miles away from any alternator that had not yet felt the blows of hammer and chisel. Praying for God's care, they continued their trip farther to the southeast, where we crossed a ferry and went into the home area of the Njyem people.They shared their food and fellowship, helping them to reorganize themselves for a new launching of the Bible translation movement that has been faltering in some degree since 1996.On Dec. 22 they drove back to Lomie and on the following day they made it to Yaoundé. God took their minds off the alternator, in part by giving Keith a tropical virus that gave them something else to think about. No sooner had they gotten back to Yaoundé than the battery light went on! Parked at our training center, Keith lifted up the hood and was amazed at what was missing: any sign of a belt to the alternator! Upon closer examination, however, he found loops of steel that once held the belt together.God chose to let us limp back with a car whose diminished capacities he knew about all too well. He let the abused and damaged alternator spin around with a belt that was ended up looking like fishing leader. The timing of the breakdown of the belt after the repair was synchronized perfectly with the end of the trip 400 miles later. Only God can do this.Mary read Keith’s thoughts when she said, “One thing about doing these old-fashioned Bible translation projects is that you get to see old-fashioned miracles.” This miracle of the alternator belt is as old-fashioned as the one related in Deut. 29: 5: “During the forty years that I led you through the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.” Truly, God is leading us back to the Njyem to bring them the joy of his Word!

What's missing from this picture?

2011-10-17T03:36:00.001+01:00

A functioning fan belt!

We are praising the Lord who sees no problem here but who brings us home to Yaounde without allowing the idiot light to flash even once!

Adult Literacy in Ngoyla

2011-07-30T17:23:00.001+01:00

Cyrus Nkouom is excited about the opportunity that he has to teach Njyem young adults to read and write in their language. He will be looking to us to furnish him with 200 copies of literacy materials that will facilitate his task. The literacy sessions will be August 8 and 9.

Adapting the Scriptures to the current orthography

2011-04-03T19:49:00.004+01:00

We have just adapted Badwe'e MARK into the new orthographic system. The next project will be Nzime LUKE.

Relative articles

2011-03-29T21:26:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-29T21:17:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-25T14:29:00.004+01:00

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

2011-03-23T21:34:00.005+01:00

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

2011-03-22T17:09:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-19T21:18:00.003+01:00

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

2011-03-19T21:12:00.004+01:00

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

2011-03-17T16:39:00.004+01:00

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.

2011-03-17T14:58:00.007+01:00

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

2011-03-17T14:58:00.002+01:00

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

2011-03-17T14:58:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-17T14:58:00.000+01:00

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

2011-03-11T14:29:00.006+01:00

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

2011-03-11T14:29:00.000+01:00

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

2011-03-09T10:29:00.002+01:00

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.

Our Next Trip

2011-02-26T12:30:00.003+01:00

Travel conditions will permit it. The rains have come early and we are as surprised as everyone else.

A page from the Njyem grammer

2011-02-22T21:55:00.002+01:00

A page from the Njyem literacy book

2011-02-22T21:49:00.003+01:00

In this lesson, we are teaching the letter "u", which is pronounced as in English rather than in French. This means that the Njyem readers would find it slightly challenging and they have to read it differently than if it were in a French word.

The Njyem Transition Primer

2011-02-16T06:59:00.008+01:00

To see a PDF file of the Njyem transition primer, go to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16109934/NjyManTrans.pdf. The lessons and key to the exercises are complete. I have also added an index to the topics taught in addition to the letters. In a few days we go back to the Njyem area and test it and teach people to write their language in the southern canton. We have not been there before, but some people there know us from having met us elsewhere. We will go with our camper this time and look for a place in the area where we can set up a permanent base.

Gospel of John, ch. 6, in Njyem on the Internet

2011-02-14T20:50:00.005+01:00

Etienne Amfangnsok and I have adapted John 9 into Njyem, from Nzime, and it is now available for reading at http://kulnjyem.blogspot.com/2011/02/levangile-selon-st-jean-ch-9-en-njyem.html. We hope to have audio files there someday, but we don't know when. The main job we have is still to get the transition primer roughed-in for his departure on Thursday.

The Idioms of Njyem

2011-02-13T19:55:00.003+01:00

There is an idiom in Njyem that means "unrelenting". It is based on the ant called "njyoomaa" that is known for being large, having large mandibles and never releasing its grip when it bites its enemy. The expression is lekwaa lebu'u le njyoomaa. Literally it means "to hurt anger of the ant 'njyoomaa' ". It means that the person with this anger is going to maintain his angry posture unrelentingly.

Fighting malaria through literateness in Njyem

2011-02-12T19:11:00.008+01:00

Here is a 1-page presentation of the information needed in order to survive the perils of malaria.

The Njyem Alphabet

2011-02-12T19:09:00.002+01:00

Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/mbeavon#p/a/u/0/dJpifGMqclk and you will find a narrated display of the Njyem alphabet!

Our ministry in Cameroon

2011-02-10T17:19:00.004+01:00

Here is a bit of video on our ministry.

The Parabole of the Lost Sheep

2011-02-10T17:19:00.000+01:00

Here is a bit of the Gospel in Njyem for your listening pleasure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZs-Mf2zK0A

God enabled us to return home with no alternator belt

2011-01-04T17:19:00.006+01:00

Psalm 18:32-33 says, "It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights." This past trip to Ngoyla was accompanied by a miraculous return. I managed to drive back with a damaged alternator/water pump belt. By the end of the trip, it was no belt at all! I have a picture of it... it looks like some dirty wire, certainly not a belt that was meant to turn an alternator and water pump. It was just draped around the pullies loosely, certainly not pulling anything. But the Lord made my way perfect! Not only did the battery never run out of electricity during the 600-mile trip, the engine never stopped and the red light never came on to indicate that the battery was not charging. It came on only after we had arrived at our destination. This was the third time that God has done this. The first two times were when a metal tube, a piece of the carburator, was aspirated into the engine block of our VW combi and when I mistakenly dumped kerosene into my gas tank instead of gas. In each of these three cases, I never knew that a problem existed until we had arrived safely at our destination. God is working miracles!

A New Committee to Give Leadership to the Njyem

2010-12-23T21:35:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, Dec. 23, Mary and I returned from the Njyem city of Ngoyla, Cameroon, where we spent 10 days. We introduced the Njyem language committee to the new orthography for their language that we designed and encourage them to try. It is available to anyone with interest in such things at my public drop box, as is described here. On the 18th the language committee board was elected. The President is Aimé Mbɨ. He and the others of his board have a 2-year mandate. Their positions do not entitle them to any salaries. The name of the language committee is CODELAN: Comité de développement de la langue njyem. The authorities of Ngoyla were not physically present during the meeting, but they were invited and gave us a public place to meet in. The committee will meet again in January to approve an action plan. We are going to write a training manual as fast as possible to assist them in meeting their goals.

AIDS Awareness Needed for the Njyem

2010-12-06T14:07:00.003+01:00

In February I worked with Collette Nkom on an AIDS brochure that is now available for use in helping the Njyem community resist this terrible danger. You can print the document from Adobe Acrobat on any printer.

The Gospel of Mark in Njyem

2010-12-06T13:18:00.004+01:00

In February 2010 we sent a preliminary version of Mark to the Njyem villages. We are now done with a light revision of the whole Gospel, incorporating some new proposals for the writing system. We will be going out to Ngoyla on Dec. 10. You can see the document here, in Open Office Writer format, which works well in Word, as well. We are also taking a summary of the writing system to test out: pg1, pg2 and pg3. If we can convince ourselves that people are learning to write and to read with a minimum of effort, we will do the pedagogical manual that corresponds to this orthographic standard.

Now Available to You!: The Njyem orthography

2010-12-04T15:20:00.007+01:00

The Njyem orthography ("writing system") is described in French on 12 half sheets ("A5"). Included in it are some sample texts. This is our attempt to make this available to the Njyem community and to its French-speaking friends. The front and back sides of page1, page2, and page3 make up the entire Open Office document. We returned from Ngoyla Dec. 23 and know now that some speakers of Njyem can become literate and writers using the new system. If anyone in Brazzaville, Souanke or Ouesso can make use of it, please send me news of your experience and the reactions people have to it.

Collaborative Research

2010-12-02T22:11:00.003+01:00

We in SIL are all about cooperation, and nothing means more to me than cooperating on the frontiers of science. In that vein, I am posting the zipped-up FLEx project on Swo ("[sox]" in the Ethnologue) that I have been working on for about 2 months. This project will be going dormant if others don't pitch in and make it their shared concern. FLEx is the package of programs that is properly referred to as "Fieldworks Language Explorer". It is free, which by no means indicates that we set a low store of value on it. "Why are you letting this promising project go dormant", you ask. The answer is that we must move back to the Njyem project, which has the potential of taking off.

Room for us in Ngoyla

2010-11-25T15:01:00.003+01:00

Researchers have gone to Ngoyla to study the spread of AIDS and its precursors that are in the animal kingdom still, waiting to cross over to people. They have made a building available to us when they are not using it. This will be a big help to us in getting established there.

Collaboration between SIL and the Church

2010-11-25T14:44:00.003+01:00

This week many denominations from Cameroon sent their representatives to the training center of SIL to discuss how they can cooperate in completing the Bible translation task here in Cameroon. Pastor Ernest Njyelo of the Nzime translation program attended the 3-day conference. He is a Presbyterian pastor working in the Nzime area.

Maps with better names

2010-11-25T14:35:00.004+01:00

On Nov 24 I was asked to represent SIL at a map-making conference here in Yaounde and to talk to people brought in from many countries about the characteristics of the languages in the southern part of Cameroon. Since my background is in the eastern part of Cameroon, I asked a Cameroonian linguist to present the material. We worked on it together and he was very capable, giving the map-makers the help they needed. His name is BINDOM Aime. We are grateful for the Lord's provision of such help. In my brief speech, I urged them to make an effort to use the right names for places. I pointed out that it can sometimes be difficult. Sometimes people refer to a place by means of the name of the clan living in that place.

Encouragements to Continue

2010-11-23T17:50:00.003+01:00

I called a speaker of Njyem today and he expressed his surprise that I had his number. Then he encouraged me to ramp up our efforts to bring God's Word to the Njyem, saying that they have a new openness to the "call from heaven" to become disciples of Jesus. We are looking and praying for this sort of reaction. Now we are waiting for the roads to dry out after a crazy rainy season. We are also interested in finding out from Komatu who might be in Yaounde with his zeal.

Where the 4 Language projects are at present

2010-11-19T11:02:00.003+01:00

Where are the 4 language projects at present?

The Nzime: The NT was done in 1998 and is now out of print. On Nov. 20 two Nzimes completed the read-through of Genesis, which is now in second draft. These were Pastor Ernest Njyelo and Student Pastor Olock Aubin. The next step is to have 25 copies for Rev. Njyelo to present to a four-day reviewer's meeting that should happen in Lomie in January. Then we can typeset it and printing it. They also want the reviewers to work on the catechism: "I Belong to God". Olock Aubin wants to finish drafting Exodus and revise it. We are applying to The United Bible Society for a license of Paratext.

The Badwe'e: Again, the NT was done in 2003. The text of Genesis has been checked and approved for publication. The church is re-reading it prior to publication. Diphath Messia is leading that process to a conclusion.

The Njyem: Mark is in use, we hope. The rest of the NT needs to be adapted into Njyem from Badwe'e. The need is for speakers in Yaounde who can work on the language with us. The problem with their doing this in Ngoyla is that there is no electricity. We are looking for the Lord's guidance.

The Swo: The orthography statement I am working on is close to being finished. I am working with Pastor Ossimba on a transition primer, to be used by Swo people who read and write French and who want to begin doing that in their language. On the 15th of Nov., the Pastor had 5 other Swo pastors meet and begin cooperating on the interchurch translation committee. Meanwhile, he is drafting the Psalms rather than continuing with Genesis. (Three chapters were done.)

The Value of Passwords

2010-11-19T10:55:00.003+01:00

The XP computer that was stolen in Lomie was returned by the thieves and the only reason we can see for it is that it was protected by a password. We have now cleaned it up (it was dusty!) and put in a new 160 Gb hard drive, adding antivirus software, open office and a typing tutor. Now we have a work-station in our office here in Yaounde for the people who are in need of it. I am thinking that the Lord is about to send us someone. Who that may be is unknown. We could use a volunteer from the Njyem, the Nzime, the Badwe'e or the Swo. We are eager to assist these people-groups in getting the enhanced capacity needed for undertaking their own publication tasks.

Swo Translation Committee

2010-11-15T17:49:00.003+01:00

Today Rev. Ossimba met with other leaders of the Swo Christian church and set up their committee that will make literature and recordings in Swo a possibility. They will have their own structure for setting goals and accomplishing their purposes for language development.

The First Edition Fulfilled Its Role

2010-11-14T20:30:00.006+01:00

The Nzime people were well served by the first edition of the New Testament, but will be happier with the second, which will have a simplified orthography and Genesis, together with introductions and glossary entries.

Simplified Orthographies

2010-11-14T20:07:00.003+01:00

Beginning in the 1970's, we started writing tone marks over vowels so that all tones would be represented in the writing system. More recently, we have seen that this was counter-productive. It was sort of like giving a person a drink from a fire hose. They needed some marks to show them the tones of certain words, but they didn't need accents for every vowel, and when they say them in such profusion, they learned to disregard them. The new orthography is not tone-free but tone-lite. (In French, we call it "allege" in accents.) The original orthography would be useful for people who are not mother-tongue speakers of the language, but there never were many of those. Their needs will be served well by the existing publications. In the future, our publications will be focused on the needs of the mother-tongue speakers.

The Badwe'e New Testament Nearly Sold Out

2010-11-14T20:00:00.004+01:00

We only have 8 copies of the Badwe'e New Testament in our office. There is a comparable number in the Somalomo office of the Badwe'e inter-church translation committee. More were purchased by the Roman Catholics of Essiengbot and some are still held in Djaposten. Perhaps no more than 200 remain of the original 1000 that were published in 2003. The publisher was Wycliffe Bible Translators. We are very hopeful that they can have a new publication in a simplified orthography together with Genesis.

Nzime New Testament out of print

2010-11-14T19:54:00.004+01:00

Our coworkers in the Nzime project now tell us that the last copy of the New Testament has found its owner and that more are needed. Undoubtedly this has come as a result of the growth of the Hosannah! listening groups. Now we are waiting for the pastors to send the word that it is time to publish Genesis in Nzime along with the New Testament in a revised, simplified orthography. This New Testament was published by The Bible League in 1998. There were 1000 copies done. We are grateful for their vision in standing with us in the effort to bring God's Word to the Nzime people.

Pastor Ossimba's name

2010-11-13T00:30:00.003+01:00

The right way to write Pastor Ossimba's name would be sɨmba without the OS at the beginning. This is the way they say "miracle" in Swo, his language. It is a word that also refers to any "amazing exploit". It is hard to know for sure what point those who named him were making. I know that he is too humble to have claimed to do amazing exploits or miracles. Undoubtedly he would say that God has graciously shown how faithful He is in the way that He has used the Pastor for His Kingdom purposes.

Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 in Second Draft

2010-11-08T12:29:00.003+01:00

Pastor Ossimba drafted Genesis 2:4 to the end of chapter 3. This morning (Nov. 8) Marie-Thérèse Nanga and I did a revision of the spelling. The pastor will be looking at our work when he comes back from church-meetings in the Swo area.

A Language Map showing Southeastern Cameroon

2010-11-07T01:27:00.003+01:00

The arc of our ministry in Cameroon and Congo begins at the south in Souanke, where we have never set foot. That is where Njyem is spoken, however. Our ministry among the Njyem started in 1987. The language is spoken to the north among the Cameroonian Njyem up to the Dja River. Then you are among the Nzime, where we began in 1976. Their neighbors to the north are the Badwe'e, where we began working in 1981. The Swo people are at the left-most end of the arc. We began work among them in 1986.
The total distance of the arc is 200 miles from the beginning of the Swo people-group to the end of the Njyem. That is 200 miles as the hornbill flies; it would be longer if the trip involved roads.

A Quantitative View of Our 38 Years in WBT

2010-11-06T16:48:00.003+01:00

I joined Wycliffe December 1972. For me, it was where I found my wife, Mary, and entered into the lives of many people.

Some were in the USA, people who saw some of God's handiwork in me. They wanted to become partners in this adventure.

Others were in Cameroon. Some of these were already looking for God to work in their lives at a deeper level, through their heart languages. Others had their eyes opened gradually as they were persuaded to undertake a new way of being God's people.

We are still on the journey and look for God's guidance, providence and blessing as we help the people-groups of Cameroon know him better.

New Swo Project Workers

2010-11-04T07:48:00.004+01:00

Since Monday, I have been working with Marie-Therese Nanga-Ele, a speaker of Swo residing in Yaounde. She comes in the mornings to work with me on refining my beginner's knowledge of Swo and of its grammar. She has a more and more confident attitude about the meaning of little particles that occur naturally in texts. This week we worked on a complete revision of Genesis 1-2:3 which Pastor Ossimba Simon Pierre brought me last night. He wants to take it back to the village in the form of a little tract on Monday, Nov 8. He comleted the translation of Genesis 2:4-3 and I have a copy to keyboard. My surprise was that the Pastor has also made the mental adjustment this week to being a Bible translator. Around Tuesday the writing system "clicked" in his mind and he sensed that he could write the language. He also reported that he ran the calcultations concerning the time remaining before he finishes the Swo Bible(!). So much for those who said a Swo Bible translation was an unlikely need. Things have a way of taking on a life of their own.

Sunday School Materials in Swo

2010-10-30T11:48:00.004+01:00

Since we have a chapter of Genesis in "pretty good" condition, we can produce a "shell book" on the six days of creation. The part we are illustrating in the two pictures accompanying this post are for Day Two.

Phonological analysis in Swo

2010-10-29T21:38:00.003+01:00

As you can see in the accompanying table, there is complementary distribution between one sound and another in Swo.

The conditioning environment is a following vowel that is "close", as is the case of /i/, in the front of the oral cavity, /ɨ/, in the center of the oral cavity, and /u/, in the back of the oral cavity.

A sound followed by such a close vowel must be strident or fricative, while the sound before the open or semi-open vowels is a simple stop.

The allophones of /p/ are [f] and [p].

The allophones of /b/ are [v] and [b].

The allophones of /t/ are [t] and [ts].

The allophones of /d/ are [d] and [dz].

The allophones of /k/ are [kf] and [k].

The allophones of /g/ are [gv] and [g].

Swo Transition Primer Underway

2010-10-28T07:40:00.004+01:00

The Reverend Ossimba says he wants to do the work of writing the first pedagogical book in Swo, their "transition primer".

It will be used by Swo who are literate in French.

The first page done is shown here.

Pastors Meeting

2010-10-28T07:35:00.003+01:00

Pastor OSSIMBA Simon Pierre wants to meet with the other Swo Pastors next month to see what they are proposing to do concerning the Swo language and Bible translation project. It is good that he sees that their contributions are needed.

Swo Grammar

2010-10-25T16:35:00.004+01:00

Just as unwritten languages have organized systems of sound and meaning (or "phonologies"), they also have complete and complex grammars, in which words exemplify a part of speech and these words are ordered in a complex way.

The sentence shown here made my Swo colleague smile. He said that it is as though he was stammering.

The Swo Need to Understand the Gospel Songs

2010-10-25T15:26:00.002+01:00

Pastor Ossimba also said that adults in the church sing Bulu songs that they have no understanding of. They are singing everything with as little comprehension as English speakers when they sing "Kumbaya." How many think it must mean "come by us"? Who can parse it and explain its meanings and applications to a life lived on the edge? The Swo who sing Bulu are in the exact same position as we are singing Kumbaya. They are incapable of translating their Bulu hymns or of feeding their thirsty souls on the meaning held within. But we know that the German nation was as much transformed by the hymns Luther wrote as by anything else he did. The will of God is that they should be worshiping God in their hearts and with their minds. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God." Col. 3:16 (ESV)

The Swo Need the Gospel

2010-10-25T15:07:00.004+01:00

Pastor Ossimba explains why the Gospel is needed among the Swo in their language. The first reason is that they don't understand Bulu well enough and the other is that they are so poorly taught through that language that they get the wrong meaning as often as the right one. During a Christmas service, Swo children were asked to recite verses from the Bible, and one chose the passage about the baby Jesus being laid in the manger "where animals ate their food". The child, speaking in Bulu, something quite different, that he was laid in the manger "where the cattle killed and ate people." The Pastor surmised that the children probably thought that surviving the evil cattle was Christ's first miracle.

The Stolen-and-Returned Computer in for Maintenance

2010-10-25T13:14:00.006+01:00

It is true! The Toshiba XP laptop that had been stolen and then returned is back! Unfortunately, it needs some antivirus protection and it needs to be cleaned of viruses. The hard drive sounds a bit "off", too, so maybe it needs replacing? Francois Medjo asked Brigitte, the head of the Nzime Language Academy, to drop it off. We are very grateful for God's protection of the laptop and the way the computer services department can help us. The head of the department is David Anderson. He is a valued participant in the Bible translation movement. We use Eset antivirus, which now costs as little as $8.25 per PC per year. When we send the new virus definitions out to our coworkers, they protect their computers up the the same level as ours in the capital. The laptop needed a new hard drive and a thorough cleaning out of the accumulations of dust. It is now getting ready for serious work again.

Institutions for the Swo Bible Translation Movement

2010-10-23T08:07:00.005+01:00

The Swo people have institutions such as political parties, chiefs, savings societies and such, but they will soon require two more. The reason for this is that they are engaging in two new activities: (A) translating and engaging the Word of God and (B) learning to read and write in Swo. The first activity involves all those who call themselves Christian. They need not all be speakers of Swo, since everyone can pray. The work of translating God's Word and being fed and renewed by it is the work of the Church and it must therefore be the case that an inter-church committee takes shape to execute its work under the leading of the Holy Spirit. Ecumenism is rarely seen in the absence of Bible translation. (I have read this but lost the reference.) The creation of the Swo interchurch Bible translation and Scripture-Use committee is being attended to by a Presbyterian pastor, the Reverend Simon Pierre Ossimba. Its organizational meeting should take place in the first week of November. The second activity involves all those who speak Swo and want to be able to engage with others across the printed page. Imagine not being able to hear from those of another time or place! A language committee has been in the process of being created for 3 years, but without an alphabet or orthography statement, they have been unable to proceed. Now they have at least some of these resources and will begin assuming on their roles.

"Funny" letters

2010-10-22T10:39:00.003+01:00

These letters are new for the Swo who read French.

Becoming Literate in Swo

2010-10-22T10:15:00.006+01:00

Swo is a well-developed language, by which I mean that its speakers find no problem in dealing with all the issues of life without recourse to other languages. It has a "mature" morphological system, both for nouns and verbs, as well as a highly complex and structured sound-system. That does not mean the speakers can write it, however. I know one speaker who has tried to write personal names in the language and gotten all tangled up in writing the phonetic form of the language rather than its phonemic form. He has not proceeded very far. Others have tried to use the writing system of Bulu. That, too, has been frustrating. In order to help show the Swo people the path forward, we have made a 1-page "alphabet chart" that shows the letters in alphabetical order on one sheet of paper. For each letter, there is a word that exemplifies the use of the letter, and an illustration of the word. Its enduring virtue will be serving as publicity for the innovation, written Swo. It also helps desensitize people to the "funny" characters. This teaches them the number and identity of the characters in their language, and their order in the Swo alphabet, but it is not otherwise pedagogically useful. For them to become literate, however, we will have to write primers for the various audiences: a primer series for complete illiterates and a slim and simpler volume those who are literate in French or in Bulu but who want to read and write Swo. This is a transition primer. We have organized its contents and will be now starting on the first lessons.

Table of Contents for the Upcoming Swo Transition Primer

2010-10-21T17:25:00.004+01:00

This is the table of contents for the transition primer that we are planning to write. It is a much smaller one than was needed for the Nzime and for the Badwe'e, owing to the smaller inventory of phonemes and graphemes. Since we are using a phonemic orthography, we spare ourselves the need of teaching the use of allophones.

For example, we teach "d" in radical initial position and use it in radical-medial position, where it has the sound of "r". Were we to use the lettre "r" in that position, we would have been obliged to teach its use in a separate lesson from the lesson on "d".

The Swo Alphabet Chart

2010-10-20T22:00:00.005+01:00

The title of this chart is "Letters and Words of the Swo Language".

It is awaiting publication. I think this means a Swo donor has to step forward.

Swo Definite Article Following Relative Clauses

2010-10-19T23:59:00.009+01:00

The Swo have a very understated way of identifying a nominal as being the one that has become known through talking about it: They use the word "there", (/tê/ [tɪ14]).

Example: mòdò tê, ([mʊ4rʊ4 tɪ14]) "the person there (known, definite, being talked about".

This way of identifying is the noun as definite does not indicate anything about its noun class.

If a noun is modified by a relative clause, however, the definite article that follows the relative clause does get inflected for the noun class of the noun, however. In the accompanying table, you can see the 8 noun classes followed by the "relative article", an example and a translation. For those wanting to know where the relative pronoun ("who", "that") is, it is a tone change in the first word of the relative clause. An initial low tone in that clause becomes high, showing that it is the beginning of the relative clause. A translation in French follows.

Note that there is an abbreviated form of the relative article for nouns in classes 1,2,3 and 7.

Swo Verbal Morphology

2010-10-19T23:40:00.004+01:00

On Day Four, 10/19, Loungo Nang and I began working on the verbal morphology of Swo. One of the reasons is that if I am going to assist them in the creation of literacy materials, I simply must know the entire gamut of expression in Swo, especially how verbs are put together with tense markers, negation markers, and adverbs. We got a really good start on it!

Orthography Statement in Swo

2010-10-19T15:02:00.006+01:00

Today (10/19) before lunch we finished a version of the Orthography Statement for Swo, written in French. It is available to any who would like to read it. We made some important additions and corrections on 10/21 as well. Basically, it lays out the phonemes, allophones and graphemes of the language. If that didn't mean anything to you, suffice it to say that it tells linguists and nonlinguists a lot about the language: its letters, consonants, vowels and tones.

The Holy Scriptures in Swo

2010-10-15T21:18:00.010+01:00

At long last, the Word of God is being recorded in Swo. Lounga-Nang is excited by the experience of seeing Genesis 1:1-2:3 in his language. He will be taking around Yaounde with him tomorrow to show it to other speakers of Swo. Here is the first page of the sacred text. If you need more, ask.

News about the Badwe'e Translator

2010-10-15T04:21:00.004+01:00

Maurice "Janvier" Mvolo Ekoalea has returned to university for the 2nd year of 3. He passed his classes and enjoyed pastoral activities this "summer". Worthy of your prayers and support.

Building a dictionary and parser in Nzime

2010-10-14T23:05:00.003+01:00

A long-term goal is building a dictionary in Nzime. This is indirectly useful for the creation of a spelling-checker that can be used with Open Office. As I work through the dictionary, questions arise about the translation of Genesis in Nzime. I send these questions to Francois Medjo who is building a Nzime committee to work on the fine-tuning of Genesis, including the language academy.

Analysis of the Swo Phonology

2010-10-14T22:28:00.005+01:00

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.

Prayer Concerns For the Nzime FCBH Project

2010-10-08T19:20:00.002+01:00

Faith Comes By Hearing, Annual Report

2010-10-08T16:46:00.007+01:00

Christians are generally good in listening to the NT but the filling out of the reports still remains mediocre. People are getting used to filling them out little by little. The leaders of the Christian communities are finding more and more that the program contributes to the consolidation of the faith of the Christians and strengthening their dialog with

the Word of God. The recording helps some Christians and pastors to learn to read the Nzime NT. The catechists and some pastors as well as writers of hymns in Nzime are finding that the listening program helps them better to understand the Bible. It also helps them in the preparation of sermons and of hymns in the language.

A Christian, Ng*** M***, got baptized on account of the listening program in the Presbyterian community of Ampel. In the past, he prohibited his wife and children to go to church, but now he has become very committed to this and is active in the church. With the new policy of working together with church leaders, they are taking more and more the responsibility for promoting the program to their parishoners. Some of them, especially in the area of Messok and Lomie, even help the promoters and their supervisor in their travels and living costs while on the road. More and more Christians are coming to church services on Sunday. The life of the church is taking on a new vitality in the Lomie area. Priests and pastors are taking note of the results of the programs in the lives of Christians.

Open Office Is the Future of Minority Language Groups

2010-10-06T16:45:00.006+01:00

Open Office is a free suite of programs that is available to the poor of the world who might not otherwise be able to afford word-processing. One of the attractive features of Open Office, is its ability to make use of spell-checkers from any language. I am building a spell-checking dictionary now for Nzime, which should help in the creation of cleaner documents in the future.

Genesis going to the reviewers

2010-10-05T20:12:00.004+01:00

Today I printed out 2 copies of Genesis in Nzime and 2 in Badwe'e. We are close to printing, but we are hoping to give reviewers plenty of opportunity to interact with the text before it goes to press. So this is their big opportunity.

Reading through Genesis in Nzime

2010-09-28T15:54:00.009+01:00

Praise the Lord! The two leaders of the Nzime church we hoped to work with are now in Yaounde and we have finished 3 Days of reading and processing GENESIS! We have read and revised chapters 1-43, making lots of decisions about to say about some matters that are new to us, which do not occur in the New Testament (©The Bible League, 1998). I have finished the adaptation of the (checked) text of Genesis from Badwe'e to Nzime. The complete document will now be sent to the translation review committee when ready for them to read and check. These two church-leaders just said that what they need most next are the Psalms, and they want them ALL!

The Budget for the St. Mark's Building Project

2010-09-25T19:22:00.020+01:00

To see
this
budget
better,
double-
click
with
your
left
selector
on the
mouse.
You will
see it
enlarge.
Thanks for your concern.
The parish of Ngoyla lacks a safe and welcoming environment for the resident priest and for his parishioners when they need to come together.
They have an critically-important building project which includes a meeting-place for the church and a the parsonage.
This was proposed by the Priest of the Parish, Father Tarcisius Mpa, who can be contacted at peretarcisiusmpa@yahoo.fr. The Bishop in Doume-Abong Mbang, Jan Ozga, has approved it and authorizes this funding project. For more on this worthy project, see my post here.
If you are ready to help, a donation can be sent to the Reverend MPA through the Bishop.

Do you want to help? Does your church look like this?

2010-09-19T22:15:00.015+01:00

Here's a building project to help the Parish of Ngoyla!
The Roman Catholic priest of Ngoyla, Reverend Mpa Tarcicius, has received the full support of his bishop in Abong Mbang and Doume, and together they are asking all who are interested to consider helping him accomplish the task of building the chapel and the parsonage. These are very important if he is to reach out to the Njyem people.

The chapel, shown above, is in seriously deteriorated condition.

The parsonage, shown above, is done in the local manner. These houses are not of a standard that is durable or that provides real protection against insects, rodents and bats.

Why cannot the Njyem manage their own parish in Ngoyla with their own funds? Part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that they are virtually surrounded by a forest and wildlife preserve. Economic activity is severely reduced in such a place. Normally, that would include logging and trapping. A palliative proposed by some of the conservationists is "eco-tourism", but it turns out that there are very few westerners spending their vacations in the tropical rainforest of Ngoyla. It means in part that the people are really forced into a much lower standard of living.
Anyone wanting to help can contact me for details as to progress in fund-raising. My email is beavonkeith@yahoo.com. You may also pass on this information to others for their prayerful attention.

New Leadership for the Njyem Language Committee

2010-09-18T13:24:00.002+01:00

Last month Francois Medjo went by motorcycle 120 miles from Lomie to Ngoyla and back, one of the main places where the Njyem people, who speak a neighboring language, are located. Last year, we helped them to produce The Gospel of Mark and an order of worship for the Roman Catholic Church. After that, we noticed that there seemed to be little movement forward. They seemed at risk of losing interest in this project. Rufine Adjowa, a proud speaker of Njyem living outside of the area, requested that Francois pay the community a visit and see what could be done to restart the project. During his visit, he exhorted them about the need for ongoing programs of translation and literacy. They chose some new leaders for this project, including the schoolteacher, Mbi Aimé, and proposed a list of activities for the next three months. These include assembling a collection of Njyem proverbs and revising a draft hymnbook. A meeting will be held in December to look at what has been accomplished. The Roman Catholic priest of Ngoyla, Rev. Mpa Tarcisius, has a big role in the Njyem language committee even though he does not speak their language yet. He wants to participate in all these activities in the interest of building a viable Bible translation committee. Although these people are minimally impacted by the Christian Gospel, several groups of the Njyem who also understand Nzime somewhat have been listening to recordings of the Nzime New Testament. Please pray for a powerful movement of God among the Njyem.

Parsing Genesis

2010-09-18T13:23:00.001+01:00

In trying to get a high quality publishable text for Genesis in Badwe'e, Mary and I have been using a nifty program called Fieldworks Language Explorer. Produced by SIL programmers, it is now going into its seventh version. What we are doing with this program is called "parsing", which means analyzing every word in Genesis, to see that its spelling and meaning conform to a dictionary that we have been building up. This program is also helping us to prepare a document that can be adapted into other languages. At the same time, we are making a French back-translation that gives a reader of French a global view of the text and allows us to spot any parts of the message that might be missing. Here in Cameroon we receive help from our computer department in making good use of this program. Jenni Beadle and Matthew Lee are available to help us with this resource and teach us aspects of the program that are difficult. Please pray for these programmers and software trainers who "speak fluent Geek", as Matthew describes it, so that we can translate the Scriptures better into Badwe'e and other languages.

What Happens Next? The Adaptation of Genesis

2010-09-18T13:21:00.006+01:00

We have helped the Badwe'e translators complete and test a translation of Genesis, and on Sept 20 it was finally checked and approved for publication. The exegetical consultant for this task was Patricia Wilkendorf, who says she never has enjoyed a checking assignment so much. The text will next be adapted into Nzime, where the Christian community is eagerly awaiting it. The interchurch committee has picked two community leaders for this task: Rev. Ernest Njyelo, a Presbyterian pastor, and Jean-Marie Koonzo', a lay leader in the Roman Catholic Church. Keith will support the adaptation process. Pray for us that this process of adaptation which will produce a first draft will go smoothly. The dates for this work are Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. It will be at the SIL center in Yaounde. We are using Adapt It, a program developed and supported by SIL. It is in use world-wide, and it has proven its worth many places, assisting bilinguals to produce first-drafts of a high quality from documents in related languages. Badwe'e is related to Nzime, and this makes Nzime a good candidate for receiving an adapted form of Genesis. When Genesis is adapted into Nzime, the texts in Nzime and Badwe'e will then be published at our expense and distributed among these two people-groups at a small fraction of the true cost. (They are economically very disadvantaged.)

The Gospel of Mark Being Broadcast

2010-09-18T13:20:00.001+01:00

Almost three years ago we had a dramatic reading of Mark recorded in Badwe'e. At first these were distributed with Megavoice units to a limited audience. Now, however, these same recordings are being broadcast on a rural radio station in the Badwe'e area. They are widely listened to for 15 minutes every Sunday.

Translating the Word of God: Are you "STILL HIGH"?

2010-09-18T13:18:00.002+01:00

When a translation is done, you study the meaning of the source language—Greek or Hebrew—and then you look for the lexical resources of the target language that convey the same meaning. It's never easy or boring. Often you come up with a good solution only to find a better one later. That is just what happened to us, by God's grace. A Hebrew expression, אֵינֶֽנּוּ, is translated by “is no more”. It occurs three times in Genesis 42:13-36, referring to Joseph. It is a “softer” or euphemistic way of dealing with the subject of death. Elanga Ferdinand, president of the language committee, helped me understand a Badwe'e expression for this: nye aka be kʉ: “he is not high anymore.”Whatever meaning comes to mind when you hear this, for those seeing life through Badwe'e eyes, the words mean that the person in question is no longer above ground. He has been buried and is dead. That is the meaning of this euphemistic expression for them. That is what they understand when they hear that “Joseph is not high anymore.”

"Lamentably, regrettably or unfortunately"

2010-09-18T12:17:00.007+01:00

If you have to convey to people the sorrow and disappointment underlying a situation, you must use the lexical resources that are language-appropriate.
In Hebrew, it would seem that the pathos ("sadness") of a situation was represented by repetition of the regrettable proposition that is being narrated. This is found at two places in the text of Genesis.
Gen. 11:30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. (English Standard Version)
Gen. 40:23 Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. (English Standard Version)
Parallelism is the distinguishing feature of Hebrew poetry, but is also found in narrative discourse, as shown above.
Given our sense that this structure is intended to convey to the Hebrew reader the pathos of the two situations, we look for the comparable expressions in Badwe'e and in Nzime. It turns out that the Nzime have a word, Nzamedwɛha, that lexicalizes the expression "regrettably; unfortunately" whereas the Badwe'e, a closely-related language, have a phrase (A vwa' e) that has the same effect. It can be translated "how lamentable with (or 'for')". They come across very differently when seen side-by-side!

Getting the Meaning Across

2010-09-08T20:02:00.004+01:00

In Badwe'e GENESIS, there is an interesting place where an accent rightly-placed will make the difference between Threshing Floor and Threshing Bed. The words for "area designated for use in..." and "bed" are duo (pitches: Low, Low) "bed" class 7 in sg. and class 8 in pl. and duo (pitches: Low, Low-falling) "area designated for use in" class 7 in sg. and class 8 in pl. To make the point that Joseph stopped at Atad's Threshing Floor rather than Atad's Threshing Bed, we add a "grave(Fr.)" accent on the "o" of duò. Now we have to record it and publish it for the Badwe'e people to hear and read. Pray for the funds lacking as we move toward these goals.

GENESIS in Badwe'e: Checked and Ready for Publication

2010-09-03T20:30:00.004+01:00

Patricia Wilkendorf has checked the Badwe'e translation of GENESIS. The work is now ready for the first of an unknown number of adaptations into related, Bantu languages. Everyone wants to preach and hear the Word of God about the great beginnings of the cosmos and of God's redeemed community.

Keith Beavon's Blog

Corpus of parsed texts

Genesis in Njyem

The catechism in Njyem

Map of the Njyem area

Jesus is the Avenger

Contrafactuals

Yesus-Krist, nye é Mikuna-bʉr

Transition Primer in Njyem Ready for Testers

Adaptation of New Testament

Njyem in a state of language change

The Keyboard is Coming

The Batteries for our Truck Camper

Matthew done In 1st Draft

Here is the rest of the story of the missing belt!

What's missing from this picture?

Adult Literacy in Ngoyla

Adapting the Scriptures to the current orthography

More to read in Badwe'e

Relative articles

Badwe'e Gospel of Mark in the new orthography

Post-primer in Badwe'e

Revising the Njyem Transition Primer

Jonah in Badwe'e

Dramatic recording of Genesis

A notebook computer for Rev. Ndjelo

The Njyem Grammar

The transition primer is getting checked.

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

La revue du syllabaire de transition commence

Nzime Genesis to the Printer

Nzime Genesis to the Printer

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

Our Next Trip

A page from the Njyem grammer

A page from the Njyem literacy book

The Njyem Transition Primer

Gospel of John, ch. 6, in Njyem on the Internet

The Idioms of Njyem

Fighting malaria through literateness in Njyem

The Njyem Alphabet

Our ministry in Cameroon

The Parabole of the Lost Sheep

God enabled us to return home with no alternator belt

A New Committee to Give Leadership to the Njyem

AIDS Awareness Needed for the Njyem

The Gospel of Mark in Njyem

Now Available to You!: The Njyem orthography

Collaborative Research

Room for us in Ngoyla

Collaboration between SIL and the Church

Maps with better names

Encouragements to Continue

Where the 4 Language projects are at present

The Value of Passwords

Swo Translation Committee

The First Edition Fulfilled Its Role

Simplified Orthographies

The Badwe'e New Testament Nearly Sold Out

Nzime New Testament out of print

Pastor Ossimba's name

Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 in Second Draft

A Language Map showing Southeastern Cameroon

A Quantitative View of Our 38 Years in WBT

New Swo Project Workers

Sunday School Materials in Swo

Phonological analysis in Swo

Swo Transition Primer Underway

Pastors Meeting

Swo Grammar

The Swo Need to Understand the Gospel Songs

The Swo Need the Gospel

The Stolen-and-Returned Computer in for Maintenance

Institutions for the Swo Bible Translation Movement

"Funny" letters

Becoming Literate in Swo

Table of Contents for the Upcoming Swo Transition Primer

The Swo Alphabet Chart

Swo Definite Article Following Relative Clauses