Orthography Statement in Swo

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

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

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

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

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

Faith Comes By Hearing, Annual Report

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

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

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.