Language vitality through Bible translation

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Language Vitality Through Bible Translation

“Bible translators were doing crowd-sourced translation and language revitalization long before these concepts existed. They have made major contributions to the introduction of orthographies, literacies, and texts into languages that were often otherwise exclusively oral. And they continue to make an outstanding contribution to language vitality, as the chapters in this volume amply attest. Bible translation can be transformative for a language, especially during the life of the project itself, when it engages some of the best minds of the community in solving formidably difficult problems in semantic mapping, orthography, metaphor, and language standardi-zation. It may extend in influence far beyond the original project and shine as an example of best practice in ensuring language survival.”

K. David Harrison, Associate Professor, Linguistics Department, and Coordinator, Cognitive Science Program, Swarthmore College;

Director of Research, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages “Language Vitality Through Bible Translation provides valuable case studies from around the world about the complex interplay of language documentation, literacy, religion, colonial inheritance, anti-imperial impulses and indigenous language use. The volume is a needed corrective to any simple notion of Bible translation among minority groups around the world, not only concerning who is driving the efforts, but also about the relation of translation work to cultural practices and community development. The contributing authors have all had direct involvement in Scripture translation projects. As a result, readers are given an insider perspective on important questions that commonly arise about Bible translation activities, such as: What, if any, is the role of missionaries in promoting language vitality? Doesn’t the Christian tradition degrade the value of linguistic diversity? Does the historical role of Christianity in colonizing and assimilatory activities destabilize the ethics of Bible translation work today? Does the introduction of literacy into communities via Bible translation undermine language vitality in any way?”

Lindsay J. Whaley, Professor of Linguistics, Dartmouth College

LANGUAGE VITALITY THROUGH BIBLE

TRANSLATION

LANGUAGE VITALITY THROUGH BIBLE

TRANSLATION

MARIANNE BEERLE-MOOR AND VITALY VOINOV, EDITORS

PETER LANG New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw

Table of Contents

Foreword: Bible translation as transformative language revitalization viiK. DaviD Harrison

Introduction to Language Vitality through Bible Translation 1Marianne Beerle-Moor anD vitaly voinov

Part I. East Asia

1. Language endangerment in the light of Bible translation 21JosepH Hong

2. Bible translation’s contribution to Agutaynen language vitality 33J. stepHen QuaKenBusH

Part II. Africa

3. Bible translation, dictionaries, and language development: The case of Gbaya 53pHilip a. noss

4. Bible translation and the promotion of mother tongues in Africa 75DieuDonné p. aroga Bessong

5. The Nuba Moro literacy program 91eDwarD riaK KaJivora

vi taBle of contents

Part III. The Americas

6. Bible translation and language preservation: The politics of the nineteenth century Cherokee Bible translation projects 99paMela Jean owens

7. The new Lakota Bible as anti-imperial translation 113steve BerneKing

8. Endangered languages and Bible translation in Brazil and Papua New Guinea 125MicHael caHill

Part IV. The South Pacific

9. Bible translation as Natqgu language and culture advocacy 145BrenDa H. Boerger

10. Encouraging language revitalization through education and Bible translation among the Ap Ma of Papua New Guinea 177Jill riepe

Part V. North Eurasia

11. Bible translation as witness to a forgotten language: The case of Caucasian Albanian 187Marianne Beerle-Moor

12. The role of Bible translation in preserving the languages of Dagestan 207Boris M. ataev

13. The effect of Bible translation on literacy among Nenets Christians 217eun suB song

14. Can Bible translation revitalize the dying Shor language? 225gennaDy v. KostocHaKov

Language index 241

Foreword: Bible translation as transformative language revitalization

K. DaviD Harrison

As a child, I was exposed to Bible translation through my missionary parents who worked with the Ermineskin Cree Nation in Alberta, Canada. We had Cree Bibles and hymnals around the house, and although I did not read the Cree syllabary, I enjoyed looking at the curly and angular shaped letters. On a portable wind-up gramophone, I would listen to Cree versions of famous Methodist hymns like Fanny J. Crosby’s “Pass me not, O gentle Savior.” I first heard this hymn in Cree, not understanding the words, but singing along with the syllables. Years later I would hear it performed by folk-rock luminary Bob Dylan, rapper MC Hammer, and various gospel singers, find-ing it equally moving across languages and genres.

Can scriptures and hymns be accurately (and adequately) translated? And what value does the process of translation add to the language itself? Transla-tors grapple with these problems daily, not only in the realm of semantics and syntax, but in the poetics, the prosody, and the metaphor. As German Orrin’s 1885 Cree Hymnal notes in the introduction, “There are imperfections in the translation. It is difficult to compress this sweetly flowing tongue into the measure of English verse.”

Full Bible translations now exist in 511 languages, according to a 2013 report by United Bible Societies. An additional 2,139 languages have partial translations. This makes Bible translation by far the most ambitious, most multi-lingual translation effort in the history of mankind. It is the largest parallel corpus that has ever existed, and far exceeds in cumulative line count any other work of literature.

viii foreworD

And there is no sign of letting up. The United Bible Societies estimated in 2012 that 4,455 languages still lack any translation, and new translations are being started each year. For example, in the Federated States of Micronesia the Mokilese (1,500 speakers) and Pingelapese (2,500 speakers) communi-ties began their Bible translation projects in 2012. While visiting Mokil Atoll in 2013, I was honored to meet elder Ichiro John, a leader of the Mokilese Bible translation team. He sat in his lagoon-side boathouse with his Bible, concordance and notebooks spread out on a board, laboring over verses from the Gospel of John. “We decided we want the Bible in our own language,” John explained.

Mokilese is a good example of how Bible translations can be truly community-driven. The Mokil people conduct Sunday services almost entirely in the Mokilese language, including the announcements, hymns, sermon, and after-church conversations. But scripture passages must be read in Pohn-peian, a sister language, since it is the closest available Bible translation. Even though all Mokilese people understand Pohnpeian, they would prefer to have the Bible in their own vernacular. And so they have begun the long and ar-duous project. Along the way, they will be contributing to the vitality of their endangered language, by coining new words, producing new texts, and cre-ating new modes of public discourse in their church and other social spaces. Apart from those benefits, a Bible translation will bring prestige and respect for Mokilese, both within the community and without. Prestige is a key (yet intangible) variable in language resilience and survival, and factors into young people’s decisions to keep or abandon a language. So the translation project will breathe new life into this threatened tongue, while also serving the Mok-ilese community’s spiritual needs.

Bible translators (both indigenous and expatriate) were doing crowd-sourced translation and language revitalization long before these concepts existed. They have made major contributions to the introduction of orthog-raphies, literacies, and texts into languages that were otherwise exclusively oral. And they continue to make an outstanding contribution to language vitality, as the papers in this volume amply attest. Bible translation is transfor-mative for a language, especially during the life of the project itself, when it engages some of the best minds of the community in solving formidably dif-ficult problems in semantic mapping, orthography, metaphor, and language standardization. But it also extends in influence far beyond the original proj-ect, and shines as an example of best practice in ensuring language survival.

Introduction to Language Vitality through Bible Translation

Marianne Beerle-Moor anD vitaly voinov

Institute for Bible Translation in Russia/CIS

The original impetus for producing this collection of articles was a Russian- language volume of papers (Gadilija et al. 2010) focused on Bible translation and language preservation in the former Soviet Union. That volume, Perevod Biblii kak faktor razvitija i sokhranenija jazykov narodov Rossii i stran SNG (‘Bible translation as a factor in the development and preservation of the lan-guages of the peoples of Russia and the nations of the CIS’), was published by the Moscow-based Institute for Bible Translation (IBT), with which both co-editors of the present collection are affiliated. Since the Russian materials are not easily accessible for many people interested in language preservation and Bible translation, and because such endeavors are carried out not merely in Russia but around the world, it was deemed advantageous to broaden the discussion geographically and to shift to English in this volume. Our primary goal is to present case studies from around the world which show that Bible translation projects taking place in many countries today are promoting the vitality of local languages, both those that are endangered and those that remain fairly healthy but are unempowered, and furthermore, that in many cases it is precisely Bible translation and associated activities that have helped vernaculars to develop and strengthen their position in society.

Bible translators began actively talking and writing about language endangerment soon after the seminal article by Michael Krauss (1992) in Language, but a hands-on approach to language maintenance and revitaliza-tion has been present in the Bible translation (or BT) movement since the very beginning of BT activity in the modern era. In fact, the BT movement itself was to a certain extent responsible for raising awareness about endangered

2 introDuction to Language VitaLity

languages among general linguists before the clarion call of the early 1990s, and also for preserving data in many endangered languages where no or few other lingusts were working, by analyzing and describing these languages, publishing grammars and dictionaries, and developing vernacular literacy ma-terials. Although a large number of such efforts by Bible translators have been reported in scholarly venues, the specific publications were fairly insulated and limited in distribution—mostly working papers and articles published in more or less in-house trade journals, such as the United Bible Societies’ The Bible Translator and SIL’s Notes on Translation and Notes on Linguistics.1 It is a shame that much of this valuable material, very relevant to the present worldwide interest in language conservation, has so far been accessed by only a small number of readers who are insiders to the BT movement. With the present volume, we want to bring the relevance of BT for language vitality to the view of a wider audience of linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, NGOs, and minority language speakers—all those who are concerned about worldwide language loss.

The perspective that BT may actually be beneficial to languages and cul-tures under stress is not new. For example, Sanneh (1989) argues that Chris-tian translation work “touches on the vitality of language” (p. 206) and was partially responsible for the rise of anti-colonialism and the resurgence of national cultures in various parts of the world. In certain ways, the present volume could be seen as a further fleshing out of Sanneh’s argument. But this perspective is not universally subscribed to. Among certain linguists and an-thropologists, the opposite belief is deeply entrenched: that BT is necessarily an expatriate missionary activity and therefore must be detrimental to local languages and cultures, since all missionary activity is by definition believed in these circles to be inherently harmful to indigenous forms of thinking and speaking. The debate about this attitude is in particular closely tied to the work of SIL International, as witnessed to by the symposium on “Missionar-ies and scholars: The overlapping agendas of linguists in the field” at the 2007 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, and subsequent articles published in Language as “SIL International and the disciplinary culture of linguistics” (Dobrin et al. 2009). Although our volume is not intended to be polemical, it does seek to make the following contributions to this discussion.

First, the articles in this volume demonstrate that it is not only expatriate Westerners who are involved in the BT movement, but also representatives of the indigenous peoples into whose languages the translation work is being carried out. Thus, it is not completely accurate to automatically identify BT with a “mission endeavor” that is “irreconcilable with the principle of self- determination, because it brings about change according to terms largely

Marianne Beerle-Moor and Vitaly Voinov 3

determined outside the community itself” (Epps & Ladley 2009:645). Although missionaries definitely play a part in many BT projects around the world, they are often there at the invitation of native speakers, who typically have a major role in the BT process and are uniquely qualified to determine whether or not they believe the given BT project to be advantageous for their language and culture. Likewise, it is not only native Christians that initiate and support BT activities in their language, at least in the Russian context; in many cases, non-religious people and members of other faith traditions who consider the Bible to be world class literature also promote its translation into their language for purposes of language development.

Second, whereas the LSA and Language discussions centered specifically on the role of SIL International, the present volume shows that there are other significant players in the world of Bible translation as well. While it is acknowledged that SIL International has been a leader in the contemporary BT movement, other organizations exist, with overlapping but non-identical agendas to SIL’s. They, too, are making major contributions to BT and are likewise concerned with the vitality of the language communities they work with. All organizations have their own institutional goals; it is hard to find any two institutions in any field that have identical goals. Thus, as Dobrin & Good (2009:623) point out, the ultimate institutional goals of academic linguistics are distinct from those of SIL International, although there is a shared inter-est in the linguistic description of marginalized languages. Likewise, every organization involved in BT work has its own story, and these stories are often different from that of SIL. Some are evangelical Protestant, while others are not. Some are focused on BT as an integral part of Christian mission activity, while others are primarily concerned with producing the translations, with little or no concomitant mission activity, leaving language communities to use the translation however they wish. Thus, whatever institutional specifics there might be in SIL International, these should not be automatically associated with Bible translation per se, since this is a multipolar movement involving numerous and variegated movers.

The organizational membership of the contributors to this volume in-cludes the United Bible Societies, SIL International, the Institute for Bible Translation in Russia, Pioneer Bible Translators, The Seed Company, and the American Bible Society. Not all of the contributors are primarily linguists in their main line of work, although all have had advanced lingustic training and are conversant with issues of language endangerment and revitalization. Some are field workers currently involved in a specific BT project; others are roving consultants for translation projects, either in a specific part of the world or globally; yet others are currently administrators, but have formerly


been involved in the actual workings of specific BT projects. Besides linguis-tics, other specialized fields that the contributors are experts in include trans-lation studies, anthropology, literary analysis, Biblical studies and Christian theology. Some are expatriate missionaries; others are natives of the area and/or language group about which they write. This variety of backgrounds, expe-riences, and academic specializations brings a valuable diversity of viewpoints and interdisciplinary approaches to the table; we do not seek to homogenize them so that they would all be the sort that one finds in the writings of Western academic linguists. What unites all of the contributions, however, is the belief that the practice of BT is primarily positive in relation to language vitality.

The exact title of this volume was deliberated at length. The initial Rus-sian volume dealt with language preservation through BT. It is no surprise that all Bible translators want the language they work in to enjoy use by their community of speakers for many more years and hope that their translation work will facilitate this. Certain languages which are now no longer spoken have been preserved in the historical record solely or primarily by means of written Bible translations (e.g., Caucasian Albanian [see Beerle-Moor’s ar-ticle, this volume], Old Georgian [Manning 2001:69]). In this regard, BT might also be viewed as a form of language documentation, in that it produces a significant textual corpus in underdocumented languages, including those that are still spoken today. This textual data can be used for obtaining at least basic linguistic descriptions of these languages. For example, Heider, Hatfield & Wilson (2011) describe an innovative project headed by Matthew Dryer at SUNY Buffalo that uses data from Bible translations in several Papuan languages to produce grammar sketches of these languages. However, this is not the rigorous and full-fledged documentation aimed for by today’s doc-umentary subdiscipline of linguistics, which focuses on archiving digital re-cordings of primary data. Nor is the data produced by BT in itself equivalent to the tripartite descriptive approach—dictionary, grammar and texts—of the Boasian tradition. Likewise, it is readily acknowledged that, at least historical-ly, translated Scripture texts have often not been ideal representatives of the actual structure of the recipient language due to the overly literal translation approach that was dominant among Bible translators until the principles of dynamic translation gained popularity in the mid-twentieth century thanks to the work of Eugene Nida and others (e.g., Nida & Taber 1974). Even in the production of dynamic translations, the text remains a translation and is rarely completely natural.

Next, we thought about framing the volume as being primarily about language endangerment and BT, since most of the languages discussed in


this volume are endangered. But not all are, and not all BT projects around the world are working with an endangered language. The BT process has relevance for the strength of unendangered languages as well. We briefly con-sidered the title “Language revitalization through Bible translation”, but quickly realized that some languages into which BT is being conducted are still healthy and do not require intentional efforts at RE-vitalization. Finally, we settled on the more general title “Language vitality through Bible trans-lation”, because we firmly hold that BT together with its associated activities help to at least maintain the existing level of a language’s health, and in many cases also boost its vitality to higher levels. In choosing this catch-all term as our title, we suggest that BT inclusively benefits the above mentioned activi-ties of language preservation, documentation, revitalization and maintenance.

In general, there are two main ways that BT can contribute to an increase in a language’s vitality level. The first of these has to do with the actual, phys-ical book (or in oral translation projects, audio recording) that is produced. This has historically taken place in European languages such as English and German, in which an authoritative version of the Bible (the King James Ver-sion and Martin Luther’s translation, respectively) has become a foundational part of the literary canon and to a large extent been responsible for standard-ization in the language (see Nicolson 2011). This type of vitality increase typically occurs among peoples who already belong to the Christian faith tradition and can be expected to make heavy use of the Scriptures in their language.

The second general way that BT boosts language vitality stems not from the effects of the published book, but rather from ancillary activities that tend to be conducted within the recipient language community by the translation team in parallel to their BT work. Modern-day translation projects are fre-quently accompanied by:

• programs that focus on developing vernacular literacy (without using this as merely a transitional stage to LWC literacy), including the prepa-ration of reading materials, both secular and religious, that increase the vernacular’s active domains of usage;

• community development work (i.e., humanitarian aid, medical work, educational programs) that increase the life span of members of the language community;

• linguistic description of the recipient language, such as grammars, dictionaries and journal articles;

• radio broadcasting in the recipient language (frequently also a domain expansion);


• other language-in-use and cultural revival activities for community members.

An important affective by-product of such activities is that they tend to raise the opinion that native speakers have about the value of their mother tongue, as well as the opinion of this language held by neighboring peoples and other outsiders to the language community.

We have arranged the papers according to the primary geographical area that they deal with, with separate sections for East Asia, Africa, the Americas, the South Pacific, and North Eurasia. In a few cases, more than one geo-graphical area is examined (e.g., Cahill produces examples from both South America and Papua New Guinea, while Hong looks at both East Asia and the South Pacific), so an index of all the languages mentioned in the volume is provided as a brief appendix at the end of the book. Some of these papers were written specifically for this volume, while others have been revised or translated from work previously published in other venues. Three of the sec-tions include a shorter, less detached vignette that offers a more personal look at how Bible translation activities affect local language communities at the grass-roots level.

1. East Asia

Dr. Joseph Hong, translation consultant for the United Bible Societies in East Asia and the South Pacific, contributes an article on “Language endan-germent in the light of Bible translation”, a revised and updated version of his article originally published in The Bible Translator in 2001. It provides an overview of the current discussion regarding language endangerment, the various reasons for language death both historically and currently, and its neg-ative implications for humanity. Although Bible translators are mainly moti-vated to produce a Bible, they often unintentionally contribute to language preservation. The fact that “translation work and language preservation are inextricably intertwined” is illustrated by examples from many languages, pri-marily from East Asia and the South Pacific. Several individuals are mentioned who are not just Bible translators, but also advocates for their mother tongue. The article concludes with some philosophical reflections about language diversity.

The focus of the article written by Dr. J. Stephen Quakenbush, SIL In-ternational’s Global Scripture Access Services Director, is on the Agutaynen community of the Philippines, where two surveys on language use and atti-tudes were conducted by the author a quarter of a century apart. Comparing


their results (using the EGIDS vitality scale), Quakenbush argues that the general rise of language vitality in Agutaynen during this time period despite the threat posed by Tagalog is at least partially due to the positive view of Agutaynen encouraged by the BT activities in the community. These includ-ed the promotion of Agutaynen literacy, celebrations of Agutaynen culture and language through the arts and new media formats (video programs and radio broadcasts), and the training of community leaders for greater em-powerment in cultural maintenance efforts even among Agutaynen who live abroad. Although Quakenbush acknowledges that “the door is slightly ajar” for Agutaynen to give way to Tagalog in the future, he is hopeful that these activities related to BT have strengthened the language’s position in society sufficiently for younger generations of Agutaynen speakers to continue to take pride in their language and pass it on to their children.

2. Africa

The Africa section begins with a paper on the Gbaya language by Dr. Phil Noss of the Nida Institute at the American Bible Society. Noss has in the past been a professor of African linguistics at the University of Wisconsin at Mad-ison and a translation consultant and translation coordinator for the United Bible Societies. He accounts for the development of Gbaya mother-tongue literacy as due primarily to Protestant, Catholic and interconfessional mis-sionary efforts, with their major focuses on both the translation of Bible por-tions and other church literature and on the production of reading primers and secular reading materials for the broader language community. Noss also discusses the role that both missionary Bible translators and secular language scholars have had in doing foundational lexicographic research in Gbaya, ex-amining in greater detail stages of Gbaya lexical borrowing as reflected in var-ious Gbaya dictionaries. He then contrasts the current status of Gbaya dialects on different sides of the Cameroon-Central African Republic border. Noss concludes that Yaayuwee Gbaya is currently flourishing in Cameroon in the face of pressure by French, English and Fulfulde, the primary trade language. He attributes this “Gbaya Renaissance” to the full translation of the Bible (“a primary corpus and repository of the language”), the language standard-ization offered by good dictionaries, and the efforts of missions and churches as “primary organizers and supporters of the Gbaya literary effort”. In post- independence CAR, on the other hand, missions and churches for the most part supported the use of languages of wider communication rather than local languages and, until recently, did not follow up on pre-independence Bible translation work into the local Gbaya dialects. As a result, although Gbaya in


CAR is well documented by linguists, without institutional support it “re-mains essentially oral without a writing system”, and is therefore handicapped in relation to Sango, the national language.

Dr. Aroga Bessong, who passed away while this volume was being prepared for publication, was a translation consultant for the United Bible Societies in West Africa. Dr. Bessong’s contribution is an article on “Bible translation and the promotion of mother tongues in Africa”, revised from a paper published in his 2010 edited volume on sociolinguistics and Bible translation in Africa. Bessong begins with the premise that “multilingualism should not be seen as merely an annoying obstacle, as tends to be thought in Africa. Rather, it is the disrespect of linguistic human rights that is the true obstacle.” Focusing on literacy in one’s mother tongue as a basic human right (UNESCO 2008), Bessong argues that “the present democratic global context that promotes human rights also favors pushing for mother tongue enhancement, and that BT organizations are playing a positive role for better results on this front.” He describes several such initiatives taken by national Bible translation or-ganizations in Nigeria, Central African Republic and Burkina Faso. These efforts run contrary to many of the policies implemented by colonial author-ities and post-colonial governments to discourage local language usage, as illustrated by the historical language situation in Cameroon. Although the missions and early churches in Cameroon made “commendable inititatives” to promote mother tongue use, more recent attitudes held by African church leaders towards literacy in local languages mirror government policies and elite interests by favoring international languages and other languages of wid-er communication. Bessong calls on BT organizations to continue and even step up their efforts to promote local language literacy so as to counteract these detrimental policies.

The Africa section ends with a vignette by Dr. Edward Riak Kajivora of the Bible Society of South Sudan about a literacy program set up as part of the project to translate the Bible into the Nuba Moro language of Sudan. The literacy program was established in 2005 with the goal of teaching children and adults to read and write in their mother tongue, which was in danger of disappearing under pressure from Arabic. Kajivora reports that qualified teachers left their government posts in order to take part in the literacy cam-paign. Within a few years, numerous literacy classes were opened both in the town where Nuba Moro people are refugees from war and in the Nuba Moro home mountains. Although an alphabet had been created for this language by missionaries in 1930 and a New Testament had been published in 1965, no other literature had been produced until the start of this literacy campaign. Thanks to the efforts of this campaign, thousands of copies of new books


were printed in Nuba Moro and people started to be proud of their own hitherto despised and partly forbidden language and culture.

3. The Americas

The Americas section starts with an article on “Bible translation and lan-guage preservation: The politics of the nineteenth century Cherokee Bible translation projects” by Dr. Pamela Jean Owens, retired professor of Reli-gion, Women’s Studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This is a reprint of a paper that was originally pub-lished in The Bible Translator in 2006. Owens, herself descended from the Cherokee Nation, takes a historical look at how “the survival of the Cher-okee language and, ultimately, the continued sovereignty of the Cherokee people” were supported by translations of Bible portions in the early 19th century. The Cherokee syllabary, though not originally designed by Se-quoyah with Bible translation in mind, was soon after its creation employed for this purpose, although competing translations of the New Testament were also produced that did not use the syllabary. Because the 19th century Cherokee speakers quickly learned to read their syllabary better than the Anglo-American missionaries, they were able to exercise a great deal of control over how the Bible texts were actually worded in their language. Thus, “Christianity came to the Cherokee on their own terms, not those of the missionaries.” The Cherokee Bible translations, together with their native (non-translated) Christian hymns, helped the Cherokee to maintain their language and identity to the present day despite policies of linguistic repression on the part of various U.S. government authorities.

“The new Lakota Bible as anti-imperial translation” by Dr. Steve Ber-neking, translation consultant for The Seed Company, takes a translation studies approach in showing that the current re-translation of the Bible into Lakota is essentially a political act of resistance to colonization, in which the Lakota people demonstrate and affirm their independence from Anglo-American impositions on their religion and worldview. While grounded firmly in the Christian tradition (which is of course much older than Anglo-American so-ciety), the Lakota elders engaged in this project have made it a priority to say things the way Lakotas actually say them, not the way Anglo mission-aries thought they should be said when producing the first translations of Bible portions into Lakota in the 19th century. Thus, the new Lakota Bible is an example of “a translation done by natives, for natives” and is in the fullest sense a consciously performed act of the self-determination that Epps


& Ladley (2009) do not believe to truly be a part of the Bible translation endeavor.

Dr. Michael Cahill, Editor-in-Chief of SIL Global Publishing Services, reports on the case histories of several languages in Brazil (Hixkaryana, Pirahã, Mamaindé, Paumarí) and Papua New Guinea (Binumarien, Bahinemo) that were on the brink of extinction but have recovered and started to thrive pri-marily due to the presence and positive influence of BT activities in their com-munities. Besides the undeniable factor of improved medical care that is often brought into small language communities by BT personnel, Cahill also notes the importance of worldview changes introduced by the translated Scriptures in these communities. He demonstrates that, at least in the languages of these case studies, coming to believe the message of the Bible improved the dignity and self-esteem of the language bearers, many of whom had previously been subject to a poor self-image due to denigration by majority ethnic groups surrounding them. Likewise, as Cahill shows, in some cases BT has led peo-ple to discard cultural practices stemming from previous religious beliefs that reduced their ability to thrive and grow as a people, such as cyclical revenge killings and fear of the spririt world that inhibited their movement to a better residential location. Although BT work does not automatically guarantee the language a future, language development is bolstered by the presence of com-mitted long-term outsider advocates coupled with the “tremendous boost in morale” that the message of the Scriptures can give to readers.

4. South Pacific

The South Pacific area is represented by an article on “Bible translation as Natqgu language and culture advocacy” by Dr. Brenda H. Boerger, Special Consultant for Language and Cultural Documentation at SIL Internation-al and the instructor of the language documentation course at the Gradu-ate Institute for Applied Linguistics in Dallas, Texas. Boerger reflects on her quarter of a century of work as an outsider advocate for the Natqgu (Natügu) language of the Solomon Islands that was sparked by her involvement in the Natqgu BT project. She demonstrates that this project involved several areas of activity besides actual translation work, all of which promoted the vitality of the Natqgu language—training, literacy work, church work, and cultural engagement. Based on these factors, and her own collaboration with linguists not involved in BT, she suggests that instead of antagonism, cooperation between BT personnel and conservationist linguists from the academy offers the best path for outsiders to effectively help a native community to maintain or revitalize their language.


The vignette on the Ap Ma people of Papua New Guinea was contributed by Dr. Jill Riepe of Pioneer Bible Translators. Riepe writes about her frus-trating experience of wanting to learn and promote a language on the verge of disappearing but getting little support from the Ap Ma, who themselves did not use the language much anymore. Convinced that it would be better for the people if their mother tongue became a part of their lives again, she is working to reverse the decline in certain areas of language use, such as in churches where Bible texts were previously read only in languages of wider communication, and in primary schools for which a bilingual curriculum in Ap Ma and English was produced. A trilingual dictionary produced by Riepe may also provide an additional stimulus toward revitalizing Ap Ma. Ultimate-ly the decision must be made by native speakers themselves, but these efforts by Riepe at least make revitalization a possibility, whereas it did not previously even appear to be an option.

5. North Eurasia (Russia/CIS)

The final section of our volume offers four articles by scholars working with the Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) in Russia and the CIS. The section begins with a paper by Dr. Marianne Beerle-Moor, former director of IBT and one of the volume’s co-editors, on the re-discovery of the long-lost Cau-casian Albanian language thanks to the recent decipherment of Caucasian Albanian manuscripts containing Bible texts. Beerle-Moor first briefly surveys early versions of the Bible and points out writing systems that were designed specifically for the purpose of producing translations of Scripture in these languages, such as the Glagolitic (Slavonic) script and the Abur (Old Zyrian) script. At least one of the languages spoken by the Albanian people of the East Caucasus during the 1st millenium A.D. also had a writing system designed for the purpose of BT, but this translation was forgotten with time. Manu-scripts containing Bible texts in this script were discovered in the 20th century and finally deciphered by Caucasian language scholars towards the turn of the new millenium, demonstrating that the ancient Caucasian Albanian language is closely related genetically to the modern-day Lezgic languages of Dagestan and Azerbaijan, especially the endangered Udi language. Besides opening a new treasure trove of data for historical linguists, the deciphered Albanian script also serves as a new source of pride to speakers of Udi and other Lezgic languages and is spurring writers to produce new materials that are strength-ening their languages’ position in society.

Dr. Boris Ataev has worked with IBT as an editor for the Avar translation project in Dagestan (East Caucasus region). His article gives an insight into


the complicated language situation of Dagestan and points out possible po-litical solutions. While the necessity for implementing laws dealing with the many different languages in Dagestan is still being discussed, the Institute for Languages, Literature and Arts in Makhachkala (the Dagestan branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) has worked out a program for the preservation and development of potentially endangered languages. This program endors-es a plan for producing more literature in the languages, including the trans-lation of the Bible in cooperation with IBT. Ataev stresses the fact that while translations of any literature into minority languages enrich those languages, this is especially true for translations of the text of Holy Scripture. This is not just because of the linguistic problems that must be overcome to produce a good translation of the Bible, but also because of the need to bridge the cul-tural distance between the world of this text and the different religious world of the Muslim readers. In this way, such translations contribute to inter- religious understanding and strengthen the cultural and spiritual values of the various people groups whose languages either already have a written tradition or are newly written. For the latter group, BT brings additional benefits such as the creation of an alphabet and the choice of a dialect as the normative base for the literary language.

Eun Sub Song (M. Sc.) is IBT’s project coordinator and exegetical advi-sor for the Nenets New Testament project in Russia’s Far North. She contrib-utes a description of the sociolinguistic situation of the Nenets language, its dialects and its speakers. One of the focuses of her work is on the improved literacy skills of the Nenets people. As an outsider advocate of the Nenets lan-guage, she can encourage and inspire mother tongue speakers both through her own knowledge of Nenets and through the Bible texts translated, tested, published and distributed throughout the vast Nenets area. This vignette is a personal account of the difference that can be made by promoting the use of a language in decline, first of all in churches and schools, but also with the hope of wider implications in the not too distant future.

Dr. Gennady Kostochakov, the author of a recent book entitled I am the Last Shor Poet has worked with IBT as the translator in the Shor New Testa-ment project in central Siberia. His contribution to this volume is unique in that he is the only author in this volume who writes about his own mother tongue, the seriously endangered Shor language, and the problems he has en-countered in his BT work. Kostochakov’s arguments are emotionally charged and his style is somewhat different from what is commonly found in academic linguistic papers. However, his paper is fully worthy of inclusion in this vol-ume because it comes from the pen of an insider and gives a complemen-tary point of view on how BT can help language vitality in an endangered


language. Kostochakov begins with a detailed historical account of the forma-tion of his language and ethnicity, followed by a linguistic description of con-temporary Shor, which is under heavy influence from Russian. Examples from his translation of John’s Gospel show how natural syntax can be given back to the language and Russian loan words can easily be replaced by Shor lex-emes. The translation was published as a diglot with the Russian text, which “allows readers to exist in the conceptual realm of two languages at the same time,” and which is a way of increasing their knowledge of Shor. Both Shor and Russian have their place in the life of the Shor people and should be like “fresh air to each other” instead of one dominating the other. There is hope of achieving this goal by translating more books of the Bible and publishing them as diglots with Russian.

Since our volume is not intended to be primarily apologetic in nature, this introductory article does not attempt to systematically work through all of the possible criticisms of looking at BT as a possible tool for promoting language vitality. For example, we do not grapple with the “simplistic con-ception of Christianity as a missionary imposition” and the overly “narrow conception of cultural authenticity” (Barker 1992:145) that have permeated the approach of many professional anthropologists and ethnographers, begin-ning with Malinowski, and have led them to dismiss offhand the possibility of anything related to Christianity as having value for indigenous minority cultures. The contemporary Western scholarly dualism that depicts Christian-ity and things associated with it as “irreconcilable with authentic indigenous beliefs” (Barker 1992:148) has, in our estimation, already been aptly dealt with by other scholars, such as Yale historian and missiologist Lamin Sanneh (1989, 2003) and University of British Columbia anthropologist John Barker (1985, 1992).

However, several important questions over which the BT endeavor has been criticized in the past are explored by the individual contributors in their papers, providing a focused look at how these issues work themselves out on the ground in specific contexts instead of merely theorizing about them in general. For example, Mike Cahill examines how the changes produced in an indigenous culture’s social life when it shifts to Christianity may be beneficial to the very existence of this culture. The practical examples he pro-vides from cultures in Brazil and Papua New Guinea counter the view that a shift of religious identity in an indigenous culture is by definition detri-mental to its well-being. While all Bible translators readily acknowledge that biblical concepts introduced into a culture through a translation of Scrip-ture are often foreign to this culture, their foreignness is not to be auto-matically equated with either harmfulness or a nefarious underlying political


agenda to produce subservience among colonialized groups (see Pennycooke & Makoni 2005:148). Pamela Jean Owens’ article on the Cherokee makes a similar point by showing that the Cherokee succesfully adopted and adapted Christianity to fit their existing cultural system and profited as a people by doing this well, as reflected in their translations of Scripture. A different but complementary viewpoint on this question is offered by Steve Berneking in his paper: whereas the 19th century Christianization of the Lakota Sioux peo-ple was done in an imperialistic fashion that did impose foreign values and perspectives on them, the Lakota are currently reclaiming their tradition and authority as decision-makers while continuing to hold on to the essentials of the Christian faith. The new Lakota Bible translation project demonstrates how indigenous culture and Christianity can go well together—“both/and”, not “either/or”—when native speakers of the language take the lead.

In the present introduction we can, however, briefly touch upon some other controversial issues about translation work within minority communi-ties that are not dealt with directly in the included papers. One of these issues is that producing a new translation of the Scriptures can lead to a splintering of the recipient society.

In terms of social cohesion, tensions may arise because some members of the recipient society accept the new BT and want to use it while others reject it. This can be true both due to general worldview differences between subcultures (e.g., the Christians in the society welcome the translation, while many non-Christians do not see much value in it) and as an interdenomina-tional problem (e.g., one denomination accepts the rendering of a certain key term while another adamantly refuses to accept this rendering, as is the case with the terms for “God” in various translations of the Bible into Mon-golian). Bible agencies for the most part seek to be as inclusive as possible of all potential audiences in producing their Scripture translations, but pleasing everyone is recognized to be ultimately impossible, so a particular prima-ry audience is often indicated in a translation project plan (a.k.a. translation brief). A translation team may then seek to minimize the arising intergroup conflicts by including all voices in the decision-making process. In keeping with the ethos held by many Bible agencies today, steps are taken to avoid creating sociolinguistic divisions among the recipients of the translation. For example, in the BT project into the Lezgi language spoken in southern Russia and northern Azerbaijan, consultation with Lezgi speakers showed that since there is already a single literary language accepted by speakers of all Lezgi dia-lects on both sides of the political border, it was important to produce a single translation of the Bible, not different translations for the different dialects.


Another issue that may arise is that the standardization of certain language forms through the publication of a potentially authoritative text such as the Bible may lead to the pejorativization of other forms. This is true whether the standardized form is a specific language in a multilingual society or a specific dialect of a single common language. The excluded forms may come to be seen as non-standard and therefore not as good as the standard version. A seri-ous problem stemming from this is that “standard languages, regardless of the good intentions with which they are proposed, all too often become weapons in class and regional conflicts”, as Rehg (2004:509) notes. However, it does not automatically follow that language standardization should be avoided at all costs just because it may later be misapplied for political purposes. Choosing inaction due to fear of possible negative repercussions of action is often not a justifiable solution, and this principle applies to BT as well. We should also note that when a particular dialect is selected to serve as the basis for a new trans-lation of the Bible, this choice does not necessarily mean that other dialects of the language are actively discouraged from producing their own translation. Nevertheless, it is not common to find a Scripture translation in more than one dialect of a small language, due to the sizeable expenditures of time and resources that a typical translation project requires. In selecting a specific va-riety of the language to be the receptor, BT can be said to be at least partially responsible for pushing other varieties of the language further away from ac-ceptability in society. Thus, while an authoritative translation of the Bible can be generally good for the language’s prestige and status as a whole, it may be at the same time detrimental to some of the varieties of this language that are rel-egated to its periphery by virtue of not having been chosen for the translation.

One more controversial issue is whether or not vernacular literacy, seen by many Bible translators as necessary for their labor to bear fruit and men-tioned frequently in this volume’s papers, is always beneficial to minority lan-guage groups. Rehg (2004), for instance, has argued the opposite, claiming that in certain cases vernacular literacy projects may even be detrimental to a small language’s vitality. The gist of this criticism is repeated by Pennycooke & Makoni (2005). However, Rehg’s argument focuses on literacy projects as conducted by Western linguists with the support of secular academic institu-tions. BT organizations, to the contrary, often prefer to conduct their literacy projects through local churches and in close relation to the actual BT project. As Rehg himself points out, the earlier efforts of missionaries to Micronesia to promote literacy were successful specifically because they pursued not literacy for its own sake, but a very functional goal; they succeeded “in part because they had a clear purpose in mind — to enable Micronesians to read the Bible” (2004:513).


While we do not make any claim that vernacular literacy is always ben-eficial to language vitality, we think that it is inaccurate to state that liter-acy promotion by Bible translators in oral cultures is generally harmful to local languages, as Pennycooke & Makoni (2005:151–152) seem to believe. Several articles in this volume (Boerger, Kajivora, Noss, Riepe and others) demonstrate to the contrary that the promotion of vernacular literacy in tan-dem with other BT activities has had positive effects in supporting a lan-guage’s vitality and is considered by its speakers and language advocates as being overwhelmingly beneficial in their specific context. At the same time, we may note that audiorecordings of minority language Scripture translations are getting more and more attention today among Bible agencies as they seek to address the preference for listening over reading in primarily oral language communities. Thus, although vernacular literacy programs are often associat-ed with BT, they are not an indispensable part of a translation project. Nev-ertheless, such programs do appear to be a useful ancillary activity to BT that in many cases does promote language vitality in indigenous communities.

It is our sincere hope that the articles contained in the present volume will stimulate further reflection and promote collaboration among all lan-guage workers that are striving for the good of threatened languages around the world today, be they Bible translators, general linguists, or native com-munity members.

Acknowledgments

We are tremendously grateful to Brenda H. Boerger, David J. Clark and Simon Crisp for their help in editing several of the articles in this volume, as well as to IBT colleagues for their help in preparing maps (Maria Ratova), assisting with other graphic design issues (Alexander Kunin, Tatyana Mayskaya), and researching references (Lyubov Samozvantseva).

Note

1. Brenda H. Boerger (p.c.) notes that SIL and cooperating organizations have made significant efforts in recent years to make publications available electronically. For example, the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics has been publishing the GIAL Electronic Note Series (http://gial.edu/academics/gialens) since 2007, while the Papua New Guinea branch of SIL has started digitizing its print archives and making them available at http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/png_pubs.asp?pubs=online. Numerous linguistics, translation, and other publications are also available at http://www.sil.org/resources/publications. These publications on minority languages are more accessible today than they have been in the past.


References

Barker, John. 1985. Maisin Christianity: An ethnography of the contemporary religion of a seaboard Melanesian people. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia.

Barker, John. 1992. Christianity in western Melanesian ethnography. In James Carrier (ed.), History and tradition in Melanesian anthropology, 144–173. Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press.

Dobrin, Lise M., Jeff Good, William L. Svelmoe, Courtney Handman, Patience Epps, Herb Ladley & Kenneth S. Olson. 2009. SIL International and the disciplinary cul-ture of linguistics. Language 85(3): 618–658.

Dobrin, Lise M. & Jeff Good. 2009. Practical language development: Whose mission? Language 85(3): 619–629.

Epps, Patience & Herb Ladley. 2009. Syntax, souls, or speakers? On SIL and community language development. Language 85(3): 640–646.

Gadilija, K.T., M. E. Alekseev, M. Beerle-Moor, A. S. Desnitsky, M. Ju. Lomova-Oppokova & T. O. Majskaja (eds.). 2010. Perevod Biblii kak faktor razvitija i sokhranenija jazykov narodov Rossii i stran SNG [Bible translation as a factor in the development and preservation of the languages of the peoples of Russia and the nations of the CIS]. Moscow: Institute for Bible Translation.

Heider, Paul M., Adam Hatfield & Jennifer Wilson. 2011. Repurposing Bible translations for grammar sketches. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers 2011: 51–65.

Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68(1): 4–10.Manning, H. Paul. 2001. On social deixis. Anthropological Linguistics 43(1): 54–100.Nicolson, Adam. 2011. The Bible of King James. National Geographic Magazine 220(6):

36–61.Nida, Eugene A. & Charles R. Taber. 1974. The theory and practice of translation. Leiden:

E.J. Brill.Pennycooke, Alastair & Makoni, Sinfree. 2005. The modern mission: The language effects

of Christianity. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 4(2): 137–155.Rehg, Kenneth L. 2004. Linguists, literacy, and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Oceanic Linguistics 43 (2): 498–518.Sanneh, Lamin. 1989. Translating the message: The missionary impact on culture.

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.Sanneh, Lamin. 2003. Who’s religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West. Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans.UNESCO. 2008. International literacy statistics: A review of concepts, methodology and

current data. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Part I. East Asia

1. Language endangerment in the light of Bible translation

JosepH Hong United Bible Societies

1. Introduction: The reality1

Working on Bible translation over the years, particularly in the area of minori-ty languages, I often have to confront the issue of safeguarding the languages for which we translate the Bible. By “minority languages” I don’t mean sim-ply a language spoken by a minority group in the presence of another lan-guage spoken by a majority of the general population. Here, the expression also means an endangered language spoken by an ever shrinking number of people, so much so that it is inevitably on the way to extinction.

The situation is of course a matter of deep concern for people who are involved in translating the Bible, since many Bible agencies would not translate the Bible if they knew that soon few people would be able to read and under-stand it. Over the years, the United Bible Societies fellowship has laid down a set of criteria to help us develop a priority list of those languages we should translate into and those languages we probably should not translate into. Hav-ing a priority list is indeed a sensible strategy, for we have to make the best of our limited resources. Here I will not go into the details of these criteria, such as the minimum number of speakers, the status of the languages concerned, the percentage of Christians in the speech community, and so on. In fact, these criteria may vary from region to region, or even from country to country. A lan-guage spoken by millions of people, for example, may be considered “minority” in countries with very large populations like India or China, but surely not in a region like the South Pacific or a country like Papua New Guinea. For exam-ple, in China, the minority Zhuang language [ISO: zha] is said to have almost

22 language enDangerMent in tHe ligHt of BiBle translation

15 million speakers (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014). It is a minority language compared to Mandarin Chinese with 1.3 billion speakers, but no country in the South Pacific can boast a population of such a magnitude of 15 million. In fact, a few national languages in the South Pacific have only about 10,000 or fewer speakers, such as Nauruan [nau], Tuvaluan [tvl] and Niuean [niu]. So a set of criteria has to be put in the perspective of a given context.

Very often, the reality we face is that we have a translation project that has been going on for some years, but there are social and political pressures on the language and in some cases its survival is even questionable in the long term. This is what I have experienced with the Mien Project in Thailand. Although the survival of the Mien language [ium] is not under serious threat on a global level, with well over one million speakers, mostly in China, Laos and North America, Mien speakers in Thailand for whom we translated the Bible are to some extent under pressure. There has been for some years a language policy in Thailand to promote Thai as the national language and to discourage the use of minority languages. Even though this policy is not always enforced, on a visit to a Mien village in northern Thailand some years ago I was told that Mien children there who are educated in Thai are reluc-tant to speak Mien, and even feel ashamed to be seen speaking it by their Thai friends and foreigners.

Expatriate Bible translation consultants working closely with the native speakers and eager to maintain a cordial relationship of trust surely feel that it is against their conscience to tell translators and reviewers something like, “Hey, look, it is pointless to continue translating the Bible into your lan-guage. There are not many people speaking your language! In school your children are learning the national language, not your language. In one or two generations, no one will use it any more!” or perhaps, “Let’s forget about your project! You only need a print run of 1,000 copies. Who is going to pay for the high printing cost?” Quite the contrary, we would rather encourage our native-speaking fellow workers to persevere in their work and to keep on promoting their own native languages.

When holding workshops for the Tsou Bible Project in Taiwan, I reminded local church leaders to promote the use of their native language Tsou [tsu], one of Taiwan’s smallest minority languages, with only about 6,700 speakers.2 Like Taiwan’s other dozen minority languages, all belonging to the Austro-nesian family, Tsou is an endangered language because all its speakers are educated in Chinese. Tsou literacy, by which I mean anything written down in the language and printed, is practically non-existent. It goes without say-ing that young people of the Tsou community, just like the young Mien, are losing the use of their native language.3

Joseph Hong 23

2. Why do languages die?

Experts often suggest that there are at least two major causes of language death. First, a language may disappear simply because its speakers are physi-cally and abruptly wiped out, by events such as war, famine or disease. This is usually what happened in the past, as for instance during the periods of discovery and conquest of new lands, and colonization. In these situations, when whole populations came into contact with other populations, some groups were wiped out. For example, the Tangut language (or Xixia in Chi-nese) ceased to exist in 1126 when all its speakers were slaughtered by Kublai Khan (Dalby 2002:215). In most of the cases, it was the language of the conquered people that was lost and replaced by the language of the conquer-ors, such as when the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul adopted the Latin language of their Roman conquerors and developed it into today’s French,4 or when some native Americans forsook their Aztec and Inca languages and adopted the Spanish language of their conquerors.

Another cause, more insidious and less obvious, is the gradual assimila-tion of one speech community by another that is seen as superior, such that the first community abandons its own speech form and adopts the speech form of the second community. This situation of language shift, which can be fittingly described by the title of the popular song “Killing Me Softly”, usually takes place over a long period of time and a number of generations. Consequently, as the older generations speaking the ancestral language die out, their language dies with them. One example is Manchu [mnc] in north-western China, a dying language spoken today by only a few elderly speakers confined to the City of Heihe and Fuyu County in Heilongjiang Province. This case is the reverse of the ones in the previous paragraph, in that the language of the conquerors, Manchu, has been replaced by the language of the people they conquered. Dorian (1998:3–4) mentions similar cases of con-querors adopting the language of the conquered, such as the Viking invaders who settled in the north of France adopting the Roman speech forms of Normandy, and the Norman conquerors of England who allowed their own language to be swallowed up by English. Likewise, I can add that during the 3rd to 5th centuries Germanic tribes, such as the Franks, started occupying Roman territories west of the Rhine and ended up adopting the Latin dialect of the conquered Gallo-Romans.

Both Dalby (2002:279) and Harrison (2007:3–5) expect that it will take only a century for the total number of languages spoken in the world today to be reduced by half. Harrison estimates that we stand to lose a language about every ten days for the foreseeable future. Dalby even suggests that under two


hundred years from now the world total could be around 200, with none but national languages surviving. This prospect is not unlikely, given the rapid de-velopment of modern communication technology, the increasing globaliza-tion of mass media, and the emergence of new attitudes and political values, all of which favor the use of a smaller number of major languages of the world at the expense of minority languages. In other words, these major languages, aptly called “killer languages” by Price (1984), can be seen as culprits in the death of minority languages. Of course, there are many other factors and variables that bring about language shift, which occurs as a speech community finds that there is no advantage in retaining its ancestral language and prefers to adopt another language.5 Some linguists, for instance, compare the posi-tion of today’s English to that of Latin during the time of Roman Empire. They conclude that English will ultimately replace a great number of other languages in the world, but will later evolve into local varieties of English, just as Latin has evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, etc.6 Other linguists, on the contrary, argue that such a fragmentation of English will not occur, invoking reasons such as globalization and mass communication (Ostler 2010:62).

It is not only English that “kills”, though its impact is definitely felt on a global level. A whole range of national languages, each promoted within national boundaries and imposed on a population made up of many groups with different languages, is also as effective in doing the “killing”. In fact, writers have described the “linguistically destructive” emergence of national languages ever since the time of the industrial revolution and the rise of nationalism in Europe. Quoting from Grillo (1989), Nancy Dorian points out that the histories of several of the national languages of Europe, particu-larly those of French and English, are in fact “histories of a growing monop-oly on prestige and legitimacy by a single dominant speech form, all others being relegated to inferior status” (Dorian 1998:8). It is at the expense of the minority languages within their boundaries that European states such as France and Great Britain have succeeded in allocating “unique prestige and legitimacy to a single carefully cultivated supra-local speech variety as the nation’s official language” (Dorian 1998:9).

We can also observe similar consequences of the rise of national languages in the Asia-Pacific region in recent times. There are examples from countries which implement a strong language policy in order to bolster a sense of na-tional identity and unity, such as Mandarin Chinese7 imposed on the fifty or so other language groups in China, Vietnamese imposed on a similar number of groups in Vietnam, Burmese on over a hundred language groups in the Union of Myanmar, and of course, Bahasa Indonesia on a population that is really a vast mosaic of languages and cultures. Linguist Hein Steinhauer of

Joseph Hong 25

Leiden University, for instance, sees an uncertain future for the 500 or so local languages still used in Indonesia for songs, ritual and cultural ceremo-nies, since prospects for their survival are bleak in the face of Bahasa Indonesia [ind], which has for a long time been dominant in schools and communica-tions (The Economist 1998).

Today, the undeniable fact is that many minority languages are languish-ing and dying as they give way to a range of major languages promoted as regional or national languages. The prospects for many small languages in developing countries are particularly bleak. For instance, linguists are fairly certain that in less than a century, some 600 Bantu languages presently spo-ken across sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced to a mere dozen or two, and that the one hundred or so Melanesian languages currently spoken in the island group of Vanuatu in the South Pacific will disappear to give way to the creole language Bislama [bis] (Malherbe 1995:464).

In this modern world where technology and efficiency are the catch-words, there are strong, understandable reasons to promote national lan-guages, because their wide use will render mass communication, education, implementation of government policy and, of course, evangelization, much easier, cheaper and faster. It goes without saying that most governments tend to be less than tolerant toward minority groups living within their boundaries and speaking languages different from the national one.

3. The dilemma

Here I come to the core of the issue: As Bible translators or translation con-sultants, are we only concerned with putting the Bible into people’s own languages? Aren’t we also to some extent concerned about safeguarding the survival of their language and even their cultural identity? What attitude should we adopt in situations where languages are under threat of extinction? Should we simply leave the issue to linguists and to organizations which are directly concerned? We cannot do this; the issue remains a practical one and it is impossible for us to avoid it.

I say it is impossible to avoid the issue because in many countries and for many projects, Bible translation work and language preservation are inextri-cably intertwined. There are many examples I can give from my own expe-riences. Very often our fellow workers in translation projects are themselves experts in their own languages, and in some cases they are the only available specialists in the field. Remember, we are talking about minority languages spoken by communities that are usually considered under-developed or under-privileged; usually there are not many highly educated people in their


midst, let alone people specially trained to study, analyze and defend their languages. In other words, we often have to content ourselves with having people like pastors or priests doing not just Bible translation work, but at the same time being involved in other activities such as language teaching, lan-guage research and compilation of dictionaries.

Nevertheless, I am proud to affirm that translators of some of the Bible versions, people I have had the honor to work with, have also been pio-neers in the defense of their language or have had a very important role in the study of their language. Interestingly, some of them are not necessarily native speakers of the language concerned. Worthy of mention are some of these pioneers from projects in the South Pacific that I myself have been involved with:

• The Houailou Old Testament translator, Tell Kazarherou, is an officially recognized authority on Houailou [aji], a major Melanesian language spoken on the Grand Terre island of New Caledonia.

• One of the translators of the new version of the Bible into Cook Islands Maori [rar], Rangi Moeka’a, was also a recognized authority on the language and the major contributor to the published Cook Islands Maori Dictionary (Moeka’a 1995).

• Australian missionary to Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) Bill Camden, who launched the Bislama Bible translation over 40 years ago, was also a pioneer in the study of Bislama [bis], a creole language, and initiated the compilation of the first Bislama dictionary (Camden 1977), long before Bislama became the national language of the Republic of Vanuatu.

• French missionary to the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) Hervé Le Cleac’h not only completed the translation of New Testament and Psalms (Te Pi’imau Hou 1995) with the help of native speakers, but also pioneered work on a dictionary of Marquesan [mrq, mqm] (Le Cléac’h 1997).

We need not look only to the South Pacific for examples. There are many other projects in similar situations in other parts of the world. From south-east Asia, I can mention the Cho Chin Bible translator in Myanmar, Pastor Thang Ngai Om, as a case in point. Cho [mwq] is one of the Chin lan-guages, spoken by about 80,000 people living in the mountainous north-west of Myanmar. Originally animists, Christians now account for about 60% of the total Cho Chin population. During the 1930s study of the Cho language was pioneered by a missionary8 who with the help of the British governor prepared and published the first primers. Used in schools under

Joseph Hong 27

British rule from 1932 to 1948, these textbooks were abandoned after independence, when Burmese was imposed as the sole language taught in schools. This new situation led to the decline of the Cho language; peo-ple from the younger generation no longer spoke it properly, and a large amount of the language structure, its idiomatic expressions, and much of the folklore, were lost.

As a young primary school teacher and a new Christian convert, Thang Ngai Om was disheartened by the decline of his mother tongue. Once he had completed Bible training and started ministry in a church, he set about revising the Cho textbooks and reintroduced them in schools in 1980. Ever since, he has been actively involved in organizing teacher training workshops, compiling hymn books, collecting and recording folk tales, in addition to the Bible translation work he has been doing since 1988. In a sense, this Bible translator is the authority and the only available expert in the Cho Chin lan-guage, and we cannot afford to lose him from the Bible translation project. If it were not for his foresight and hard work, the Cho Chin language might not have enjoyed the vitality it has now, let alone the prospect of having a Cho Chin Bible.

Figure 1.1. Thang Ngai Om holding Cho Chin NT and draft of book of Nehemiah (used by permission).


4. Language diversity: Blessing or curse?

Most Bible translators and consultants are of course not directly concerned about whether a minority language is to survive or to become extinct.9 We always affirm that our only concern is to put the Bible in a people’s own lan-guage so that they can read and understand and accept God’s message. End of story! However, in an indirect way, we are in fact helping to preserve some of the minority languages for which we are translating. Very often, the Bible is the only literature available in the language, which its speakers consider not only as a sacred, religious text, but also as a model, a standard, a depository of their linguistic heritage, just as the King James Version was to the English language for several centuries. Even close to the motherland of the English language, there are challenges to meet, such as the desirable “resurrection” of the extinct Manx [mjd] and Cornish [cor] languages, the revival of Scot-tish Gaelic [gla], and the revitalization of Welsh [cym] and Irish Gaelic [gle] which constantly face the looming threat of English.

What this means for those who work in Bible translation is as follows: the more threatened a minority language is and the fewer speakers it has, and therefore the scarcer its literature is, the harder it is for Bible translation agen-cies to reject a request for a Bible translation from the leaders of its speech community. In retrospect, we can even conclude that if the Bible text is made available in a minority language that is under threat, that language stands a fair chance of survival. For example, the Marquesan language [mrq, mqm], spoken by about 9,000 islanders (estimate reported in May 2011 by the local Catholic bishop Msgr. Guy Chevalier), has undergone revitalization since the publication of the New Testament and Psalms in 1995. All religious services are now conducted in Marquesan. The local territorial government has even reportedly decreed in recent years that at least half of the classes in primary schools have to be taught in Marquesan.

We all agree that language does play an important part in the identity of a given people, like a mirror that reflects the soul of its culture, a vehicle that conveys its mindset, a framework that shapes its world view. Mithun (1998:189) has said that “language represents the most creative, pervasive aspect of culture, the most intimate side of the mind.” Without a doubt, it is a terrible loss when a community abandons its language; this is a loss not only on the level of cultural identity for the community concerned, but also on the level of linguistic heritage for the whole of humanity. As the stock of human languages is shrinking at a startling speed, the loss of language diversity will surely mean that we will never again have the opportunity to appreciate the full creative capacities of the human mind and spirit.

Joseph Hong 29

Harrison (2007:7) compares linguistic diversity to biodiversity and cau-tions that the 40% of the languages that are endangered represent a per-centage much higher than the figures for species of birds (11% threatened, endangered or extinct), mammals (18%), fish (5%) and plants (8%). He goes on to state that when languages vanish, what we stand to lose are the knowl-edge base of humankind, our cultural heritage such oral history, poetry, epic tales, creation stories, jokes, riddles, wise sayings and lullabies encoded in languages, as well as our scientific understanding of the limits and possibilities of human cognition.

On the other hand, some may wonder whether this is just the natural way that human society develops and that it has always been that way; some languages inevitably disappear, and new languages come up to replace them. After all, if we want to draw a lesson in the most literal sense from the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, we may even see this linguistic diversity in human society as a curse from God, a punishment on human beings so proud as to want to make themselves equal with God by building the Tower. According to the Genesis story, the confusing, or diversification, of languages is a way God used to prevent human beings from uniting themselves to rise against God. In the days of the early Church Fathers, there were speculations about the origin of human languages and about the first language spoken in the Garden of Eden. Italian semiotician and philosopher Umberto Eco even traced back in a burlesque way the history of these linguistic speculations and wondered whether before the Towel of Babel, humankind had known only one language, a perfect language spoken by Adam and his immediate poster-ity, and whether this perfect language could be a prototype of Hebrew (Eco 1997, 1999).

As workers involved in the ministry of Bible translation, we would rather believe that human speech is a blessing from God, just like speech in dif-ferent languages was bestowed as a gift on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit of God descended on the people, as recorded in Acts 2:1–11. It is one of the faculties that clearly distinguish humans from animals. The human ability to learn and perform speech, and even the ability of further developing and re-inventing it, is still very much a mystery that linguists and other scientists are trying to study and elucidate. This ability, of course, al-lows any speaking community to develop its own speech into a distinctive language over a long period of time, thus leading to the diversification of human languages. Bearing in mind the divine origin of human speech and echoing the ideal of linguist Malherbe (1995:449), we would rather raise our voice to proclaim this truth: No matter how many or how few the speakers are, no matter how advanced or how undeveloped the speech communities


are, all languages in the world are equal in dignity and nobleness, and have the same capacity to express the human mind, though not always with the same nuances. This diversity of languages is comparable to the individuality of people: Each person is different from others, and has special talent of his or her own; yet they are all equal in dignity and right, and deserve a place under the sun.

Notes

1. This paper is a revised and updated version of a previous paper written initially in 1999 for the occasion of the United Bible Societies Asia Pacific Region’s 1999 mini-workshop held in Thailand. It was then reworked and presented in 2000 at the United Bible Societies Triennial Translation Workshop held in Spain. A shorter version of the 2000 paper was published as Hong (2001), under the title “Bible trans-lation and endangered languages: Some general reflections”.

2. Statistics from Wikipedia.org, Chinese webpage, entry “臺灣原住民”. 3. In recent years the government of Taiwan has noted this trend and begun spending

money to preserve and promote Taiwan’s indigenous Austronesian languages. There is now a TV channel, in operation since 1 July 2005, entirely devoted to these lan-guages. The government has installed TV reception equipment in each household free of charge. See the webpage mentioned in footnote 2.

4. See discussions in Chapter 2, «Language and Change», of Dalby (2002). Gaulish, once spoken in one of the most important and prosperous provinces of the Roman Empire, was replaced by Latin within two or three generations, as the young elite in Gaul were educated in Latin. Gaulish lingered on for three or four centuries as an obscure magical language of the Druids before passing into oblivion. Its disappear-ance, it may be argued, could have been precipitated by the lack of a written tradition. However, another high profile language, Punic, spoken by the people of Carthage and representing a civilization with a highly developed written tradition, was equally replaced by Latin and forgotten within a few centuries.

5. A fuller discussion of language endangerment and language shift can be found in Grenoble & Whaley (1998, 2005).

6. For a detailed discussion about how Latin killed off a hundred local languages at the time of the Roman Empire and developed into a dozen tongues, see chapter 2 of Dalby (2002), as well as Ostler (2007).

7. An interesting article reporting on the current linguistic situation of China (The Economist 1999) points out the success of promoting Mandarin Chinese as a unify-ing national tongue, yet reminds readers that the eight so-called Chinese “dialects” are all in fact distinct language groups that still enjoy a certain vitality of their own.

8. According to data collected from interviews with Thang Ngai Om, Dr. Herbert Cope, missionary to northern Chin State among the Tiddim Chin during the 1930s, made a short visit to southern Chin State in the area around Kanpetlet, studied the Cho Chin language and, assisted by an educated Cho Chin man called U Ma Kin, designed an alphabet for the language. With the help of the British governor Major Burne, Cope published the first Cho Chin primers for four classes.

Joseph Hong 31

9. There are exceptions to this generalization. For example, the Institute for Bible Trans-lation in Russia and the CIS includes the development and preservation of indigenous languages as an explicit point in its mission statement.

References

Camden, William. 1977. A descriptive dictionary—Bislama to English. Bridge Printery, NSW Australia.

Dalby, Andrew. 2002. Language in danger. London: Penguin Press.Dorian, Nancy C. 1998. Western language ideologies and small-language prospects. In

Lenore A. Grenoble & Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered languages, 3–21. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eco, Umberto. 1997. The search for the perfect language. London: Fontana Press.Eco, Umberto. 1999. Serendipities, language and lunacy. London: Orion Books.Grenoble, Lenore A. & Lindsay J. Whaley. 1998. Toward a typology of language

endangerment. In Lenore Grenoble & Lindsay Whaley (eds.), Endangered languages, 22–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grenoble, Lenore A. & Lindsay J. Whaley. 2005. Saving languages: An introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grillo, Ralph D. 1989. Dominant languages: Languages and hierarchy in Britain and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harrison, K. David. 2007. When languages die: The extinction of the world’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hong, Joseph. 2001. Bible translation and endangered languages: Some general reflec-tions. The Bible Translator 52(2): 210–215.

Le Cléac’h, Hervé. 1997. Pona tekao tapapa—Lexique marquisien-français. Papeete, French Polynesia: Association ‘EO ENATA.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2014. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 17th edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Malherbe, Michel. 1995. Les langages de l’humanité: Une encyclopédie des 3 000 langues parlées dans le monde. Paris: Robert Laffont.

Mithun, Marianne. 1998. The significance of diversity in language endangerment and preservation. In Lenore A. Grenoble & Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered lan-guages, 163–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moeka’a, Rangi (ed.). 1995. Cook Islands Maori dictionary. Fiji: University of South Pacific.

Ostler, Nicholas. 2007. Ad infinitum: A biography of Latin. New York: Walker & Co.Ostler, Nicholas. 2010. The lingua franca: English until the return of Babel. New York:

Walker & Co.Price, Glanville. 1984. The languages of Britain. London: Edward Arnold.


Te Pi’imau Hou—Te Tau Taramo (The New Testament and Psalms in Marquesan). 1995. The Bible Society in the South Pacific.

The Economist. 6 June 1998. Dying languages—English kills. 91–92.The Economist. 30 January 1999. Chinese Whispers. 89–91.

Other relevant recent books on language and language endangerment consultedCrystal, David. 2002. Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Deutscher, Guy. 2005. The unfolding of language: The evolution of mankind’s greatest in-

vention. UK: William Heinemann.Deutscher, Guy. 2011. Through the language glass: Why the world looks different in other

languages. UK: William Heinemann. Hagège, Claude. 2000. Halte à la mort des langues. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob.Hagège, Claude. 2009. On the death and life of languages, translated by Jody Gladding.

New Haven & London: Yale University Press.Harrison, K. David. 2010. The last speakers: The quest to save the world’s most endangered

languages. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society. Hinton, Leanne & Ken Hale (eds.). 2001. The green book of language revitalization in

practice. London & San Diego: Academic Press. McWhorter, John H. 2002. The power of Babel (A natural history of language). London:

William Heinemann.Nettle, Daniel & Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing voices: The extinction of the world’s

languages. New York: Oxford University Press. Ostler, Nicholas. 2005. Empires of the word: A language history of the world. London:

Harper Collins.Tsunoda, Tasaku. 2005. Language endangerment and language revitalization. Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter.

2. Bible translation’s contribution to Agutaynen language vitality

J. stepHen QuaKenBusH

SIL International

1. Introduction1

In light of predictions that half of the world’s languages may disappear by the end of this century,2 it is imperative for those concerned about linguistic diversity to focus attention on the plight of smaller language communities around the world to determine what supports and what undermines their vitality. This paper offers observations from an SIL field linguist regarding factors which have strengthened the status of the Agutaynen [ISO: agn] lan-guage of Palawan, Philippines. The majority of the activities reported on here were undertaken in association with the translation of the Agutaynen New Testament between 1984 and 2004, and would not have taken place in the absence of a Bible translation project.3

Agutaynen is one of over 170 languages spoken in the Philippines. The Philippines thus exemplifies a highly multilingual context, where it is not un-common for two, three, four or even more languages to be employed in a community for different purposes. Four languages have been of special relevance to Agutaynen speakers of Palawan over the past century: English, Tagalog [tgl], Cuyonon [cyo] and Agutaynen. As for the role of English in the Agutaynen community, it was a highly valued language as it was through-out the Philippines. But English did not pose any real threat to the survival of Agutaynen in the 1980s, or to any other local languages of the Philippines for that matter, a situation which remains true to this day. It was of mandated importance in the classroom and in government offices, but for the most part

34 agutaynen language vitality

the presence of English for Agutaynens in rural Palawan province was more symbolic than actual. Too much of everyday life was lived in other languages.

Figure 2.1 Location of Agutaya (map used by permission of SIL International, A Brief Overview of Agutaynen Grammar, 2010).

Regional languages of wider communication have presented and still do pres-ent real threats to the survival of smaller languages in the Philippines. Still, in the mid-1980s, proficiency in the regionally dominant language of Cuy-onon could be said to serve strictly functional purposes. Agutaynens learned enough Cuyonon to pursue economic goals, but giving up Agutaynen in favor of speaking Cuyonon more generally was unthinkable. Agutaynens were Agutaynen and proud of it, and speaking Agutaynen was one of the most

J. Stephen Quakenbush 35

salient markers of Agutaynen identity. This sense of ethnic pride, together with the existence of a relatively homogenous homeland in the island municipality of Agutaya, made the future of the language seem “safe”.

But in the 1980s there was another Philippine language taking on great-er importance in the country. Agutaynens lived in the “Southern Tagalog” political region, and Tagalog served as the basis for the national language. Tagalog was taught in school, heard on the radio, and used in government offices in local Agutaynen communities, and became even more prevalent as Agutaynens traveled farther afield. In the provincial capital of Puerto Princesa City and beyond, Tagalog was heard on TV shows and at the movies, and read in newspapers. Tagalog had become the language of economic progress and upward social mobility. Would Agutaynens someday give up speaking their own language in favor of this more progressive, more predominant, and increasingly accessible Philippine language? Perhaps, but in the mid-1980s that prospect still seemed a distant one.

What about today? Is the Agutaynen language more or less vital today? This paper tracks an apparent increase in Agutaynen language vitality by com-paring the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted in 1984–85 with a follow-up survey in 2008–09 and posits that these gains are due, at least in part, to the activities related to a Bible translation project in the language.

2. Language vitality and endangerment

A number of tools and frameworks have been proposed for measuring lan-guage vitality and endangerment.4 This paper employs the EGIDS scale pro-posed by Lewis & Simons (2010), which is now being used to categorize the language development status of all the languages of the world as listed in Ethnologue. EGIDS expands Fishman’s (2001) 8-level Graded Intergen-erational Disruption Scale (GIDS), integrating distinctions of the UNESCO 6–level scale of endangerment (Brenzinger et al. 2003) and Ethnologue’s (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014) prior 5-criteria metric. The result is a 13-level Expanded GIDS, or EGIDS. (See Boerger’s article in this volume for a more in-depth presentation of this scale.) Crucial to this paper is the distinction between level 6a (Vigorous—a language used orally by all gener-ations) and 5 (Written—a language used orally by all generations and also in written form by at least parts of the community.) The 6a level is considered to be a “sustainable” situation—at least potentially—of oral use of a language, whereas level 5—although higher on the scale of vitality or development—is considered to be an inherently unstable situation barring some kind of formal institutional support for use of the written language.


2.1 Language endangerment in the Philippines

There have been conflicting reports over the past couple of decades about the situation of Philippine languages. Gonzalez (1998, 2000) claimed that none of the major and few of the minor languages of the Philippines was threatened, in that a stable multilingual situation had remained substantially unchanged for 35 years. As late as 2003, Wurm concurred, saying that minority language speakers routinely acquired a language of wider communication (LWC) without losing the language(s) they already spoke.

But overlapping with Wurm was Scebold’s (2003) study of Central Tagbanwa [tgt], which he found to be on the brink of extinction. Like-wise Headland’s (2003) “Thirty endangered languages of the Philippines” highlighted the fate of 32 Negrito languages, some of which were already extinct. Headland argues that the remaining Negrito languages are endan-gered due to the rapid loss of broad areas of traditional vocabulary which reflected the vanishing world and worldview of hunter-gatherer societies. Reid (2010) lists 25 extant languages in the Agta family and, like Head-land, notes that intermarriage with non-Negrito groups, education, and the subsequent incorporation into mainstream Philippine society has caused the switch from a hunter-gatherer to a horticultural lifestyle. Such social changes have caused rapid language loss in favor of neighboring languages and LWCs.

Others are also documenting language loss for some of the larger, non- Negrito languages of the country. For example, del Corro (2010) reports on a shift in the current generation in which the Pangasinan [pag] vernac-ular is being replaced by Tagalog as the language used to speak to children. Kapampangan [pam] is in a rapid state of decline for the same reason— parents are speaking Tagalog to their children instead of the vernacular (Pan-gilinan 2009 and personal communication).

A more nuanced evaluation exists for Butuanon [btw], a language com-monly considered to be on the verge of extinction. Kobari (2009) reports that while Butuanon is still widely used in the home and local community, with symbolic importance as an in-group identity marker, at the same time there is pressure toward the broader, more dominant Cebuano [ceb] language and Bisayan culture. The result is that Butuanons increasingly negotiate multiple ethnic and social identities through multiple languages, such as Butuanon, Cebuano, Tagalog, Filipino [fil], and English. Kobari also concludes that the Butuanon fluency of younger speakers is declining in favor of Cebuano. He posits that Butuanon may one day merge into the surrounding Cebuano- Bisayan context (Kobari 2009:203).


The obvious conclusion is that although the language endangerment sit-uation in the Philippines may not be as dire as in some other parts of the world, it nevertheless warrants attention. We see upon closer inspection that although local languages in the Philippines are not being threatened by English, there is clear evidence that a number are losing ground to larger Philippine languages such as Tagalog or Cebuano. For some such languages, even those with over a million speakers like Pangasinan and Kapampangan,5 it may be too late to reverse language shift.

3. Agutaynen language vitality increases between 1984 and 2009

Two sociolinguistic surveys were conducted on the Agutaynen language situ-ation in Palawan province, one in 1984–85 (Quakenbush 1989) and a second in 2008–2009 (Quakenbush 2011). The purpose of the first was to deter-mine whether written materials in the Cuyonon language might adequately serve the Agutaynen community and whether there was a proficiency-based or otherwise felt need to develop written materials in Agutaynen. This first survey was conducted through the use of participant observation and person-al interviews. The purpose of the second was to revisit the language situation a generation later—after the completion of the translation of the Agutaynen New Testament—to gather comparable data that might show any notable changes in Agutaynen language vitality.

In 1985 there were four primary languages of reference for the Agutaynen community: Agutaynen, Cuyonon, Tagalog and English, as already men-tioned in the introduction. These corresponded to the language of the home, the historic lingua franca of the province, the national language, and an in-ternational language. English remains an important language to Agutaynens involved in formal education, and in some cases for employment outside the Agutaynen community (including outside the country). It maintains some importance in the domain of government. But largely, English is of little prac-tical importance or relevance in the daily lives of most Agutaynens.

In the 1980s it seemed that the role of Cuyonon was shrinking while the role of Tagalog was growing. In 2009, the results of such a trend were clearly evident. Cuyonon had lost most of its function as a lingua franca, becoming solely a language for use with Cuyonons in the neighborhood (friends or political leaders) or in the marketplace (vendors). Even under those circum-stances, the use of Cuyonon is decreasing, while the use of Agutaynen or Tagalog is slightly increasing.

The role of Tagalog has been increasing since 1985. While no more than 10% say it is the language they like the most, and only 11% say it is the


language they want their children to learn first, it has solidified its role as a lingua franca in the province and the nation, and has become the primary lan-guage for education, government, commerce, mass media and social advance-ment in general. The reported use of Tagalog among Agutaynens themselves increased from 27% in 1985 to 43% in 2009. Tagalog can be used informally among Agutaynens “for joking around” but also in more formal situations “when you need to, like in a meeting.” The place of the Tagalog language in the public life of the Agutaynen community is well established and growing.

The Agutaynen language seems to have gained ground in terms of sen-timental attachment and expressed commitment to maintaining it between 1985 and 2009. The percentage of respondents who said Agutaynen was the language they liked the most increased from 75% in 1985 to 94% in 2009. The Younger generation now strongly expresses a desire to pass on the Agutaynen language to their children (92%, up from 66% in 1985), and more Agutaynens now say that their language will likely be used for a long time to come (89%, up from 80%). Agutaynen is overwhelmingly the language of the home and neighborhood. It is readily spoken with outsiders who learn it, and normally spoken among fellow Agutaynens even in a formal school setting. The exception is if there are non-Agutaynens present, in which case it is customary to switch to Tagalog. Tagalog has become the language for public life, but Agutaynen is still the language for private life. Perhaps three-fourths of Agutaynen homes now have Agutaynen books in them, including the New Testament, and two-thirds of the survey respondents in 2009 felt that Agutaynen should have some role at school. Overall, there seems to be a new sense that Agutaynen is worthy of formal study, a stronger sentimental attachment to the language on the part of the younger generation, and a greater certainty on the part of speakers that it will be used for a long time to come.

4. Activities of Agutaynen Bible translation which targeted revitalization

A number of factors have contributed to the generally more positive view toward the Agutaynen language today as evidenced in the 2009 survey. First of all, global awareness of the value and importance of local languages and cultures was greater in 2009 than in 1985. There may also be a natural gen-erational swing in attitudes whereby younger people are more motivated than their parents’ generation by “integrative” matters of identity whereas their parents were necessarily more focused on “instrumental” matters of eco-nomic need. But certainly concerted language revitalization efforts by Bible


translation personnel over the past three decades have had a positive impact on the current Agutaynen sociolinguistic environment. Those which have been most clearly associated with this increase are activities associated with Agutaynen literacy, arts and media, and the promotion of community activism.

4.1 Reading Agutaynen

In the mid-1980s Agutaynens had very little opportunity to read in their own language. Tagalog and English written materials, on the other hand, were widely promoted through the schools. Generations of Agutaynens had learned to read in these languages of wider communication, which had dic-tionaries and codified rules for spelling and grammar. Since Agutaynen pho-nology, and its phonemic inventory, did not exactly mirror either English or Tagalog, Agutaynens were sometimes puzzled about how to spell their own language. There were thus two barriers to literacy in Agutaynen—one atti-tudinal and the other practical. The prevailing attitude was that it was more appropriate to read in Tagalog or English, as a matter of tradition. And since these were the only languages actively taught in the schools, reading in these languages actually did seem easier, especially to adults. (In the experience of the author, children generally exhibited greater openness to and less difficulty in reading Agutaynen from the start.) The practical barriers were a lack of a standard orthography and a lack of reading materials.

In close collaboration with community members, local and expatriate teams associated with SIL developed specific strategies and tools to make reading in Agutaynen a more natural part of the Agutaynen experience. One of the first issues was how to spell Agutaynen.6 The older generation had learned certain Spanish spelling rules, such as “use ‘g’ before ‘a’ or ‘o’, but ‘gu’ before ‘i’ or ‘e’”. The five Spanish vowels (the same 5 vowels used for Tagalog) were not a bad fit for the four Agutaynen vowels, but neither were they a perfect fit. Unlike Tagalog or Spanish, Agutaynen does not distinguish between the front vowels /i/ and /e/ or the back vowels /u/ and /o/. Thus the system that children learned in school over-distinguished front and back vowels. More problematic was that none of the vowels ‘a,e,i,o,u’ were a perfect fit for the Agutaynen high central vowel /ɨ/. Sometimes the letter ‘i’ was used for this sound, sometimes ‘u’ and sometimes ‘e’. Another difficulty was how to symbolize a glottal stop, or lack of one. In Tagalog, two vowels written in sequence are understood to have a glottal stop between them. In Agutaynen, glottals do not occur between vowels, but only between a vowel and a consonant. Community preferences for Agutaynen spelling were tested through showing wordlists and sample para-graphs. Sometimes respondents preferred one form when words were shown


in isolation, but were not pleased with a paragraph of text which applied a particular convention systematically. Once the most widespread preferences were determined, the SIL teams worked with local speakers and authors to produce and promote a variety of reading materials using a consistent orthog-raphy. The first materials consisted of news sheets produced by silk screen, giv-ing local news, riddles, and other items of general interest. For nearly twenty years, a yearly poster calendar was produced with scripture verses in Agutaynen. Over the course of those twenty years, several Bible portions were published in booklet or graphic form, along with two editions of an Agutaynen song-book. Also published in Agutaynen-Tagalog-English format were a phrasebook and vocabulary, a book of locally told stories, and a book of poetry. In 2004 the diglot Agutaynen-Tagalog New Testament was dedicated. An Agutaynen- English dictionary was published in 2014. In addition to these more gener-al publications, a number of individual children’s picture books were used as “shell books”, where an Agutaynen translation was pasted over the original English or Tagalog text of the books. These children’s books formed part of an informal lending library.

Public launchings were held in various venues for the Gospel of Luke in the 1980s, Ginotay-gotay: A collection of poems in Agutaynen, Filipino and En-glish in the 1990s, and the New Testament in 2004. The Agutaynen-English dictionary was launched in Puerto Princesa City in October 2014. Each launching was an opportunity for publicly celebrating the Agutaynen language and culture.

4.2 Agutaynen arts and media

Launchings for Agutaynen publications also included public performances of Agutaynen music, dance and drama. Traditional Agutaynen art forms like the komposo (ballad), komidia (sung drama with dance) and sayaw (dance) are traditional Agutaynen art forms typically performed during festival times prior to the 1980s, and which still generate interest, enthusiasm, and nostal-gia. The 40th anniversary of SIL in the Philippines in 1993 was celebrated in the San Vicente community with a drama written especially for the occasion, along with traditional dances, and a singing contest.

Festivals and holidays provided other opportunities for showcasing Agutaynen music, dance and drama. Christmas caroling is a popular fund-raising activity in the Philippines. Agutaynen Christmas carols were introduced to singing groups and elementary classrooms, and entered into a municipal contest.

In the 1990s, a five-hour video production of the Gospel of Luke was dubbed into the Agutaynen language by a team of native speakers, with


special showings arranged throughout the Agutaynen communities. At least two different Agutaynen variety shows have aired over provincial radio sta-tions in the capital city for periods of time. Unassociated with the Bible trans-lation program, these radio shows featured local news, interviews, readings (including from the Bible and other publications produced in association with the translation project) and performances of Agutaynen song and verse.

In 2012, two other agencies collaborated with the Agutaynen community to audio-record the entire Agutaynen New Testament. Professionally mixed with special sound effects, the end result became available for distribution in the Agutaynen community the following year.7

A common goal for each of the arts and media activities in which Bible translation personnel participated—apart from simple celebration of Agutaynen language and culture—was to reinforce the notion that public, creative use of the Agutaynen language in a variety of media was both natural and inherently rewarding.

4.3 Capacity-building for community language and culture activism

Training and organizing community leaders to guide Agutaynen translation- related and other revitalization efforts was also an important ingredient from the start of the Agutaynen language program. A seminar-workshop in prin-ciples of translation in 1986 led to the formation of the Agutaynen Transla-tion Advisory Committee (ATAC), a group of native speakers from Agutaya municipality who became organizers, reviewers, advocates, and ultimately publishers of Agutaynen materials. In anticipation of the completion of the translated New Testament, individuals from the various Agutaynen communi-ties throughout Palawan province8 gathered in Puerto Princesa City in 2002 to plan ways to launch and promote the Agutaynen scriptures. Under the leadership of local committees, the Agutaynen New Testament was dedicated with a fanfare of parades, presentations and performances in the communities of Agutaya and San Vicente as well as in Puerto Princesa City in late 2004 and early 2005.

The training and organizing events mentioned so far were joint efforts between SIL and local Agutaynen communities. There have also been at least two significant developments in language and culture revitalization in recent years that, though originating outside the primary local communi-ties, have been completely Agutaynen-led. One was the formation of a new organization “Buruyutan Agutaynen, Inc”, and a second was the creation of an Agutaynen blog, iHeartAgutaya (http://iheartagutaya.blogspot.com/), now with an associated Facebook group page.


In a presentation at the 2nd International Conference on Language De-velopment, Language Revitalization and Multilingual Education in Ethnolin-guistic Communities, Attorney Liezeil Zabanal (2008) described Buruyutan as “a non-stock, non-profit organization led by young Agutaynen profession-als living away from Agutaya” committed to “strengthening the Agutaynen community through preserving and enriching their distinctive culture, tradi-tions, heritage and spiritual and moral values.” Buruyutan’s vision statement is “a prosperous Agutaynen community united by its strong cultural identity, values and spiritual well-being.” Planned activities include sponsoring schol-arships for Agutaynen students committed to serving their local communities, and documenting the unwritten history of the Agutaynen people.

The blog iHeartAgutaya is another instance of a former resident of Agutaya designing a means for organizing fellow Agutaynens abroad (do-mestically or internationally) and for publicizing efforts to assist the home is-land. Blog designer Bobby Bryan Llanzana (email communication, 25 March 2009) describes iHeartAgutaya as something that began as a personal project in July 2007. The blogspot iHeartAgutaya gained a small but loyal group of advisors and regular contributors, and contains local news, musings, photo-graphs, YouTube links, a chat box, jokes, original stories and poetry, as well as selections from Agutaynen book publications. Non-resident Agutaynens are also increasingly using the associated iHeartAgutaya Facebook group page to communicate across distances, share news and photos, and discuss projects for the good of their beloved homeland of Agutaya.9

5. Summary and prospects

In 1984, the EGIDS status of Agutaynen was 6a “Vigorous”—used orally throughout the community. In 2012, due almost exclusively to activities as-sociated with the translation of the Agutaynen New Testament, the EGIDS status can be classified as 5 “Written.” Agutaynen is not yet at a sustainable level of literacy (EGIDS 4 “Educational”), because it is not yet actively sup-ported by the public education system. Although there are hopeful signs, it is not clear whether Agutaynen’s status will further strengthen to EGIDS 4 or slip back toward oral only use.

A more obvious shift in the language repertoire of the Agutaynen com-munity over the past generation has been between its second languages, with a shift away from Cuyonon and toward Tagalog. The position of the Agutaynen language remains relatively strong because of widespread use and positive attitudes toward it in the home and in the community. Likewise, the fact that speaking Agutaynen is one of the primary markers of Agutaynen


identity also works in favor of language maintenance. The new presence of some recognized Agutaynen literature also adds to the prestige of the lan-guage, both inside and outside the Agutaynen community. Nevertheless, giv-en the increasing role of Tagalog in Palawan province and the Philippines, and its occasional use being reported in the home or with other Agutaynens, the future prospects of Agutaynen remain similar to those described more than a decade ago: “the door is slightly ajar for the possibility of further lan-guage shift to Tagalog” (Quakenbush 1998: 11).

6. Remaining questions

Issues that either were not addressed or not sufficiently addressed in the 2009 survey involve actual levels of proficiency in the different languages, the type and nature of code-switching that occurs, and the degree and kind of change in the Agutaynen language as it is spoken by the different generations. This 2009 survey attempted to gain an impressionistic appraisal of language profi-ciency by asking three broad questions: “Which language(s) do you know the most?” “Which do you know the least?” and “Which do you know somewhat, but sometimes are at a loss for words?” These questions were not interpreted consistently enough on the part of respondents to yield very helpful data. The appearance of a new language “Bisaya” in the list of languages spoken at least a little bit was notable, likely reflecting a trend of continued immigration of Visayans to Palawan.

Neither the 1984 nor the 2009 survey addressed the particulars of code-switching as such, but merely asked if Cuyonon or Tagalog were ever used with fellow Agutaynens and if so, when. There seemed to be a qualitative difference in type of code-switching reported between these two languag-es. On the one hand, Cuyonon was used for special effect (joking) or when a Cuyonon was present. On the other hand, Tagalog had a broader range of uses among Agutaynens ranging from joking to participating in a public meeting, and was sometimes used for certain topics or purposes even among family members. Code-switching is an important topic because in a situation where Agutaynen is solely used for in-group communication, the extent to which Tagalog is used among Agutaynens with each other is the extent to which Agutaynen becomes endangered.

Change in the Agutaynen language itself over time was another topic not addressed in either of the surveys. It is doubtful that the change in Agutaynen approaches the level of loss of vocabulary reported for Negrito languages by Headland (2003). Neither does it seem at this point that Agutaynen is in danger of merging into Tagalog, as Kobari (2009) suggests is an eventual


possibility for Butuanon and Cebuano-Bisayan. Tagalog grammar and lexi-con are doubtless impacting Agutaynen, however. The extent of that impact remains a topic for further study.

A trend noticed in 2009 was the increase in number of marriages between Agutaynens and speakers of other languages. When individual Agutaynens marry and settle outside their local communities, the impact on Agutaynen language vitality overall may be negligible, although it is almost impossible for one Agutaynen parent to pass on his or her heritage language without the support of the local community. Given that marriages with non-Agutayn-ens are also increasing inside local Agutaynen communities, the possibility is real that these families will choose another language (most likely Tagalog) to speak with their children, who may then acquire only a passive proficiency in Agutaynen. It is also possible that in spite of the apparent increase in “sen-timental” attachment to Agutaynen over the past decades, younger people will continue to shift toward greater use of Tagalog even for in-group com-munication. The survival of the Agutaynen language over the next couple of generations is thus still far from certain.

In the final analysis, the future of the Agutaynen language of course rests with the Agutaynen language community. With an estimated 15,000 speakers spread through several geographic communities, the language could not be considered “safe” on the basis of absolute numbers alone. Neither could it be considered immune to local and global economic pressures or patterns of increased marriage outside the community. But neither is the situation hopeless. Strong values of identity, heritage and “belonging” work in favor of language vitality. One can hope that younger generations accustomed to the results of a Bible translation program (most notably, but not limited to, having a New Testament and other literature available in written form) will be more likely to take pride in, use and pass on the Agutaynen language in both spoken and written form. The 1984 and 2009 sociolinguistic surveys give some evidence that this is indeed the case.

Appendix 1: Agutaynen language vitality survey questions

Questions in black identical to 1985 survey. Questions in italics new with 2009 survey.

Biographical questionnaire

Were you interviewed in the original 1980s survey? Name


Mother’s first language Father’s first language Language of childhood home Language of home now Date of birth Place of birth Present location Years in present municipality Occupation Gender Education completed Cell phone number or email address for follow-up questions

Language attitudes questionnaire

1. What language do you like the most? Why? a. Is it good to be able to speak Agutaynen? Why?

(asked only if answer to question 1 is not Agutaynen) 2. What language do you want your children to know first?

a. Will they also learn Agutaynen? (asked only if answer to question 2 is not Agutaynen) 3. Do you think Agutaynen will be used for a long time to come? Why? 4. Where is the best Agutaynen spoken? Why do you suppose that is so?

Language use questionnaire

What language do you use when: 1. speaking with your siblings? 2. speaking with your children (even if hypothetical)/ and grandchildren

(if applicable)? 3. speaking with teachers during school hours? 4. speaking with Cuyonon vendors at the market? 5. speaking with a Cuyonon friend? What if he knows Agutaynen? 6. making a complaint to Kapitan X? (actual names used according to loca-

tion)7. making a speech at a barangay meeting? 8. speaking with the driver of a jeepney leaving Puerto? 9. speaking with strangers in town? 10. speaking with an unknown visitor arriving at your house? 11. speaking with a Tagalog mayor in his office? What if he knows Agutaynen?


12. speaking with a Cuyonon mayor in his office? What if he knows Agutaynen? 13. praying the rosary? 14. speaking with God personally? 15. Do you sometimes use English with other people? For example, when? 16. Do you sometimes use Cuyonon with other Agutaynens? For example,

when? 17. Do you sometimes use Tagalog with other Agutaynens? For example, when? 18. Is there anything you sometimes read in Agutaynen? For example, what? 19. Do you have any books in your home? What language are those books written

in? 20. Do you have an Agutaynen Bible in your house now? 21. Is there any other kind of book there should be in the Agutaynen language?

If so, what? 22. Do you think that Agutaynen should be used in school? Why? If so, how? 23. How can we tell if a person is Agutaynen? 24. Is it possible to have an Agutaynen person who doesn’t know how to speak

Agutaynen? What is your opinion of such a situation?

Language proficiency questionnaire

1. What languages do you know, even if just a little bit? 2. Of these languages, which one(s) do you know very well?3. Which one(s) do you know just a little bit? 4. Which one(s) do you know, but sometimes it seems difficult or you find yourself

at a loss for words (lit. “run out of words”)?

Appendix 2: List of publications in the Agutaynen language

Abejo, Gualberto A., Cedronio C. Pacho, Rolando Z. Edep, Victoria M. Nangit et al. 1997. Magistoria ita! Mga pinanimet ang mga istoria—Agutaynen-Filipino-English [Let’s tell a story! A collection of stories]. Manila: Agutaynen Translation Advisory Committee.

Baluyot, Ruth C., Marilyn A. Caabay, Josenita L. Edep, Pedrito Z. Labrador et al. 1996. Kantang padengeg ong Dios [Songs for honoring God]. Manila: Agutaynen Transla-tion Advisory Committee.

Caabay, Marilyn A. & Melissa S. Melvin (compilers), Josenita L. Edep & Gail R. Hen-drickson (editors). 2014. Agutaynen-English Dictionary with Grammar Sketch. (LSP Special Monograph Issue 58). Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.

Llavan, Peregrina A. Rauto. 2000. Ginotay-gotay: A collection of poems in Agutaynen, Fili-pino and English, with illustrations by Joseph Z. Llavan. Manila: Agutaynen Translation Advisory Committee.


1989. Mga bitalang pangaldaw-kaldaw/ Mga salitang pang-araw-araw/ Everyday words and expressions: An Agutaynen-Filipino-English phrasebook. Manila: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

1997. Si David ang Maiteg [David the Brave]. The Story of David, 1. Bible Society Com-ics. Manila: Philippine Bible Society.

1997. Si David ang Bantog [David the Great]. The Story of David, 2. Bible Society Com-ics. Manila: Philippine Bible Society.

1998. Bolong ang herbal [Herbal medicine]. 1998. Onopay boaten ta mga may taw ang agtrangkason? [What to do when someone has

the flu]. Health booklet. 1998. Onopay boaten ta mga may taw ang galo-tan ta wi tang sinangoni na? [What to do

when someone gets dehydrated]. Health booklet. 1999. Onopay boaten ta mga may taw ang napaso? [What to do when a person gets

burned]. Health booklet. 2004. Ang Bitala tang Dios: Ba-long Inigoan/ Ang Bagong Magandang Balita: Bagong

Tipan [The Word of God: New Testament (Agutaynen)/ The New Good News: New Testament (Tagalog)]. Manila: WPS/Philippine Bible Society.

Other Agutaynen-related publicationsHendrickson, Gail R. & Melissa S. Melvin. 1999. Child-giving and child-receiving in a

lowland Philippine society. Studies in Agutaynen, Part II. Studies in Philippine Lan-guages and Cultures 11(1): 91–113.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 1989. Language use and proficiency in a multilingual setting: A sociolinguistic survey of Agutaynen speakers in Palawan, Philippines. LSP Special Monograph, 28. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines. Available for download at: http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/plb_download.html.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 1991. Agutaynen glottal stop. In Richard A. Dooley & J. Stephen Quakenbush (eds.), Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota, Vol. 35, 119–131.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 1992. Word order and discourse type: An Austronesian exam-ple. In Doris L. Payne (ed.), Pragmatics of word order flexibility. Typological Studies in Language 22, 279–303. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 1997. Writing Agutaynen pronouns: Making the most of a mixed-up world. In Cecilia Odé & Wim Stokhof (eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Leiden, 22–27 August 1994, 685–694. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B.V.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen, compiler. 1999. Agutaynen texts. In Studies in Agutaynen, Part I. Studies in Philippine Languages and Cultures 11(1): 7–88.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2005. Some Agutaynen grammatical details. In Danilo T. Dayag & J. Stephen Quakenbush (eds.), Linguistics and language education in the Philip-pines and beyond: A festschrift in honor of Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, 437–477. Manila:


De La Salle University. Also presented at Taiwan-Japan Joint Workshop on Austro-nesian Languages, 23–24 June 2005, Taipei. Department of Linguistics of National Taiwan University, National Science Council of Taiwan, Linguistic Society of Taiwan. http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~gilntu/data/workshop%20on%20Austronesian/ 9%20quakenbush.pdf.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2011. Tracking Agutaynen language vitality: 1984–2009. Ma-nila: SIL Philippines. http://sil.org/asia/philippines/epublication/agn_Tracking_Agutaynen_Language_Vitality_2011.pdf.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen & Edward Ruch. 2006. Pronoun ordering and marking in Kala-mianic. Paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Lin-guistics, 17–20 January 2006, Puerto Princesa City, Palawan province, Philippines. http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers/Quakenbush-Pronoun%20Order. ing%20and%20Marking%20in%20Kalamianic.pdf.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen, Gail R. Hendrickson & Josenita L. Edep. 2010. A brief overview of Agutaynen grammar. http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/epublication/agn_A_Brief_Overview_of_Agutaynen_Grammar_2010.pdf.

Quakenbush, Steve. 1987. Agutaynen grammar essentials statement. Manila: Summer Institute of Linguistics. MS.

Quakenbush, Steve & James Maxey. 1987. Agutaynen phonemic statement. Manila: Sum-mer Institute of Linguistics. MS.

Notes

1. This paper builds on results of a survey summarized more fully in Quakenbush (2011). Special thanks to Brenda Boerger for her assistance in crafting this updated and more focused report.

2. See, for example, information posted by UNESCO at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/ and by the Endangered Languag-es Project at www.endangeredlanguages.com. UNESCO states that at least “50% of the world’s more than six thousand languages are losing speakers” and estimates that “in most world regions, about 90% of the languages may be replaced by dominant languages by the end of the 21st century” (UNESCO 2003: 2).

3. The author resided in Agutaynen communities of Palawan for extended periods of time from 1984 to 2004 under the auspices of SIL Philippines, specifically in the municipalities of Roxas, Agutaya, San Vicente and Puerto Princesa City.

4. See, for example, Landweer’s (2006) eight indicators, UNESCO’s (2003) nine fac-tors, and the four categories of the endangerment scale of the Endangered Languages Catalogue https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iSAD2DO2iGfDfPmx-mjyS4fVRmi hzjBqgp3mamzkqt8/edit (accessed on 19 September 2012).

5. The 2000 National Census was the last to record the numbers of Kapampangan speak-ers (2,067,760) and Pangansinan speakers (1,185,905). Figures are cited according to del Corro (2010:65).

6. See Quakenbush (1997) and Quakenbush, Hendrickson & Edep (2009) for more discussion of Agutaynen spelling conventions.


7. The two agencies were NTM International and Faith Comes By Hearing. The Audio Agutaynen New Testament is now available for listening and download at http://www.bible.is.

8. Participants in this Community Action Forum came from Agutaya, Roxas, San Vicente, Puerto Princesa City, Sofronio Española and Brookes Point.

9. Agutaynen activity on the web continues to increase. A recently updated web site which strives to be a resource for locating all published materials in Agutaynen can be found at www.agutaynen.com.

References

del Corro, Anicia. 2010. Language endangerment: The case of the Pangasinan Bible. The Bible Translator 61(2): 64–70.

Gonzalez, Andrew, FSC. 1998. The language planning situation in the Philippines. Jour-nal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(5): 487–525.

Gonzalez, Andrew, FSC. 2000. English, Filipino, and other languages at the crossroads: Facing the challenges of the new millennium. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 13(2): 5–8.

Headland, Thomas N. 2003. Thirty endangered languages in the Philippines. Work papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 47. http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/wp/2003Headland.PDF.

Kobari, Yoshihiro. 2009. The current status of the Butuanon language and its speakers in Northern Mindanao: Findings on ethnic identity, language attitudes, language ability, language use and language change. Manila: De La Salle University doctoral dissertation.

Lewis, M. Paul & Gary F. Simons. 2010. Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55: 103–120. http://www.lingv.ro/resources/ scm_images/RRL-02–2010-Lewis.pdf.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2014. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 17th edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Pangilinan, Michael Raymon M. 2009. Kapampangan lexical borrowing from Tagalog: Endangerment rather than enrichment. Paper read at the Eleventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Aussois, France, 22–26 June 2009.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 1989. Language use and proficiency in a multilingual setting: A sociolinguistic survey of Agutaynen speakers in Palawan province, Philippines. LSP Special Monograph, 28. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2011. Tracking Agutaynen language vitality: 1984–2009. Ma-nila: SIL Philippines. http://sil.org/asia/philippines/epublication/agn_Tracking_Agutaynen_Language_Vitality_2011.pdf.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen & Gary F. Simons. 2012. Looking at Austronesian language vitality through EGIDS and SUM. Presentation at the 12th International Conference


on Austronesian Linguistics, Bali, Indonesia, 2–6 July 2012. http://www.sil.org/acpub/repository/Looking_at_Austronesian_Language_Vitality.pptx.

Reid, Lawrence A. 2010. Historical linguistics and Philippine hunter-gatherers. In Loren Billings & Nelleke Goudswaard (eds.), Piakandatu ami Dr. Howard P. McKaughan, 234–260. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL Philippines. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~reid/Combined%20Files/A70.%202007.%20Philip-pine%20Hunter-gatherers%20and%20Historical%20linguistics.pdf.

Scebold, Robert N. 2003. Central Tagbanwa: A language on the brink of extinction. Socio-linguistics, grammar, and lexicon. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.

UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. 2003. Language vitality and endangerment. Document submitted to the International Expert Meeting on UNE-SCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages. Paris, 10–12 March 2003. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/doc/src/00120-EN.pdf.

Wurm, Stephen A. 2003. The language situation and language endangerment in the Greater Pacific area. In Mark Janse & Sijmen Tol (eds.), Language death and lan-guage maintenance: Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches, 15–47. Amster-dam: John Benjamins.

Zabanal, Liezeil. 2008. Preserving intangible cultural heritage: The Buruyutan Agutaynen, Inc. experience. Presentation at 2nd International Conference on Language Develop-ment, Language Revitalization and Multilingual Education in Ethnolinguistic Com-munities, 1–3 July 2008, Bangkok, Thailand.

Part II. Africa

3. Bible translation, dictionaries, and language development: The case of Gbaya

pHilip a. noss

The Eugene A. Nida Institute for Biblical ScholarshipAmerican Bible Society

1. Introduction

On the 18th of February 1996 the liturgist’s refrain rang out, “The Gbaya have received their Bible today! The Gbaya have received their Bible today!”1 The venue was a former upcountry mission station on the edge of the Adama-wa Plateau in West Africa; the occasion was the dedication of the first Bible in the Gbaya language in the city of Meiganga in northern Cameroon.

On the 9th of June 2012 the proclamation was made, “God has spoken to us in our very own language!”2 The venue was the parade grounds of the city of Garoua Boulai on the border of Cameroon and the Central African Republic; the occasion this time was the dedication of the first edition of the Gbaya Bible that included the deuterocanonical books, and the launching of the second edition of the 1995 Bible.

These public ceremonies, combining religious sanction, official recogni-tion, and public reception, provide dramatic evidence of the status accorded to the Gbaya language [ISO: gya] and its Bible by the Gbaya community. The present state of the language is due in great part to missionary initiatives under-taken in the 1920s and maintained and supported by Protestant and Roman Catholic communities during the period of colonialism into the present era of nationhood in Cameroon and the Central African Republic. This chapter offers evidence of the contributions toward language preservation and renewal that resulted primarily from initiatives of religious organizations in the writing of the

54 tHe case of gBaya

language, the development of literacy and reading materials, the production of grammars and dictionaries, and the translation of the Holy Scriptures.

2. Language description

The Gbaya language of the central African savannah and gallery forest country is today a stable language of relatively local use, spoken in a variety of dialects on both sides of the Cameroon-Central African Republic border. It is part of an extensive language cluster known as Gbaya-Mandja-Ngbaka belonging to the Ubangian language group of the Niger-Congo family.3 With more than a million speakers, it extends as a continuum from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) northward through the Central African Republic (CAR) and west and southwest into central and south-eastern Cameroon and down to the border of the Republic of Congo.

Figure 3.1. Map of Gbaya and the Gbaya-Mandja-Ngbaka language cluster.

Each of the three language family segments comprises a number of dialects that are mutually intelligible only among the nearest neighbors. The speakers of this linguistic continuum have lived in the general area of what is now the western part of the Central African Republic as long as the historical record allows the past to be reconstructed. The Gbaya language moved from its

Philip A. Noss 55

central African locale into what is now Cameroon in the nineteenth century (Burnham, Copet-Rougier & Noss 1986), and today occupies a prominent position among that nation’s languages.

The earliest records of the Gbaya are oral, some dating back to the early nineteenth century as reported in the writings of Heinrich Barth following his travels to the Adamawa region south of Lake Chad in 1851. The first European explorers, military officers, and administrators who arrived in this area of central Africa recorded word lists and began compiling lexicons. The French Lieutenant Louis Mizon who traversed the region of the Kadei and Mambéré rivers in 1892, visiting the historic town of Koundé in Cameroon, and Djambala (Berbérati) in what is now the Central African Republic, was the first European to write about the Gbaya from his own personal experience (Burnham 1980:12; Moñino 1995:701).

Gbaya linguistic data was first published in Les Bayas: Notes ethnographiques et linguistiques by the French colonial administrator François Joseph Clozel, who in 1896 wrote about the ‘Biyanda4 dialect and its speakers. The earli-est writing on speech forms close to the Yaayuwee (or Kara) dialect of this study was the German Lieutenant N. Naumann’s short wordlist of Gbaya words from Buar (today’s Bouar in CAR) published in his article “Die Bajas-prache” in 1915. Hermann Hartmann’s record of the ‘Buli dialect appeared in “Die Sprache der Baja” in 1931. Günter Tessmann’s “Die drei Sprachen des Bajastammes: To, Labi, Baja (Kamerun)” also appeared in 1931. In this article, the German ethnographer presents findings from his research con-ducted in German Kamerun in 1913, including lists of words from Kara and several other Gbaya dialects.

3. Writing and translation

The shift from an essentially oral society to a literate society is a lengthy pro-cess, perhaps an unending one as all cultures rely on orality to some degree for communication. Translation, likewise, is a process that often occurs over long periods of time. Such has been the case with writing and translation in the Gbaya context. In the end, the translation is never finished, as languages and cultures face new challenges and opportunities.

3.1 The colonial era

The first missionaries among the Gbaya were the American Lutheran founder of the Sudan Mission, Reverend Adolphus Gunderson, his wife Anna and two deaconesses, Olette Berntsen and Anne Olsen, who arrived on January 28,


1924, in territory inhabited by the Gbaya. They began mission work in the town of Mboula south of the Adamawa Plateau in central Cameroon. Gunder-son had learned Hausa [hau] while serving with the Sudan Interior Mission in Nigeria 1912–16, and on arriving in Ngaoundéré in Cameroon in 1923, he began studying Fulfulde [fub]. However, in Mboula the local population was primarily Gbaya, with a significant Mbum [mdd] minority. Missionary Ruth Christiansen writes that from the very beginning, “Mr. Gunderson had to spend much of his time putting the Baya tongue into writing, so that reading materials could be prepared for the school…Fortunately Gunderson was an excellent linguist” (Christiansen 1956:27). He quickly began translating the Scriptures into Gbaya. Scripture texts and songs were translated, and reading classes were begun. Adolphus and Anna Gunderson and their team placed great emphasis on Bible translation, literacy, and schooling in the local Gbaya language.

In 1929 the Sudan Mission began work in Meiganga, a sub-prefecture and important military post established during the Gbaya rebellion against the French colonial power. The uprising was led by prophet-cum-nationalist Karnu to the east in Oubangui-Chari and it spread widely throughout Gbaya communities in Cameroon in 1928–29 (Burnham 1980:52–54; Christensen 1990:118–134). The Gbaya dialect spoken in Meiganga and the surrounding area was Yaayuwee. This speech form was also spoken in the area of Abba across the border in French Equatorial Africa (AEF) where the Sudan Mission opened a new mission station in 1930. Yaayuwee was virtually identical with Gbaya Kara (Kala) spoken in Bouar and was adopted as the language for use by the Sudan Mission.

The first Gbaya primers were produced in 1933, and in 1934 a collection of songs was produced in three languages, French, Gbaya, and Fulfulde. The songbook included the Gbaya translation of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments, together with the first translated Scrip-ture selections: Psalm 19:14; Psalm 51; Psalm 119:11; Isaiah 55:1–13; and John 15:7. The texts of John 3:16, 1 John 1:9, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed were included in French.5 At approximately the same time, translation initiatives were taking place among other Gbaya groups in French Equatorial Africa by other mission groups. Mark and Acts were published in Gbaya-Mbéré (Southwest Gbaya) in 1933 and the New Testament in 1951 through the efforts of the Örebro Mission from Sweden in the area surround-ing Berberati to the south. To the west around Bossangoa, translation work in Gbaya-Bossangoa, also called Gbéa/Gbeya, supported by Brethren mission-aries from the United States, resulted in the publication of Mark in 1934 and by 1952 the four Gospels and Acts had been published as portions.

Philip A. Noss 57

Although Rev. Gunderson began translation efforts very early on the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew was the first Scripture portion to be printed in the Yaayuwee dialect. It was published as the Evangile ko Mat-thieu by the Sudan Mission in 1939. Due to delays caused by World War II, the Gospel of Mark was not published until 1948 (Lode 1990:209–210). This was the missionary era of Bible translation, when foreign missionaries would learn local languages and, together with assistants and collaborators from the community of new believers, would translate the Scriptures into hitherto unwritten tongues.6 In the tradition established by Gunderson, the Sudan Mission gave very high priority to reading and writing both in primary school settings and in catechetical teaching. In 1950 a Bible school was opened in Baboua, thirty-five miles inside AEF, and one of its first problems was the lack of teaching materials. Ruth Christiansen recalls the challenge: “So the question ‘Where do your books come from?’ is natural enough. We cannot buy books in the Baya language, nor is there any library that could furnish us with Baya school materials” (Christiansen 1956:214). The writing of manuals in Gbaya and translation efforts were intensified. Madel Nostbakken, a Canadian who had arrived in 1938 and had been posted to Abba for fulltime translation work, was appointed to be the Gbaya book editor; the mimeograph and Rex-o-graph were the basic printing machines.

Numerous reading materials were prepared including literacy materials (1952, 1963), Luther’s smaller catechism (1939, 1952), Bible stories (1953), expanded songbooks (1953, 1973), the four Gospels and Acts (1954), Bible doctrine (1963), instructions on household duties (1964), and many others. An abridged version of the English classic Pilgrim’s Progress was translated by a Gbaya, Joseph Bissohong, and published as Neno ko Chretien in 1963; a selection of Paul White’s Jungle Doctor fables by an unidentified translator appeared in 1964; and a collection of Aesop’s fables translated by Marthe Houma Yagong followed in 1969.

To provide support for the reading effort, Lloyd and Beryl Sand launched a literacy program for village catechists in AEF in 1955. In 1963 they pro-duced a new primer based on the method of Wesley Sadler of the Literature- Literacy program at the Africa Literature Center, Kitwe (Sadler 1962).7 After making adjustments to the Sadler method, based on their daughter’s kinder-garten lessons in English that concentrated on teaching letters first, rather than syllables, their Gbaya literacy program became highly successful. The primer was popularly called Naa Baa Saa, literally, “Mother took a squash,” from the book’s first three words.8 The program was subsequently introduced and used with equal success in Cameroon (C. Noss 1976).


The founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon dates to 1890 with the arrival of Father Heinrich Vieter in Douala. The Congregation of the Oblates of Mary (O.M.I.) visited Meiganga in 1946 as they arrived in north-ern Cameroon for the first time. The following year, Father Michel le Berre founded the Catholic mission in Meiganga, calling it “La Mission du Christ-Roi” (“The Mission of Christ the King”), and was soon joined by Father Jean Bocquené. The priests’ assignment was to build the facilities needed for the mission effort. Fr. Pierre Bodénès, O.M.I., arrived in November 1952 with the assignment of studying the culture and language of the people, a task that he undertook with dedication and enthusiasm. Looking back, he affirms (p.c., 8 June 2012) that the difficulty of the Breton language, his own mother-tongue, and the fact of having to learn French as a foreign language as a schoolboy admirably prepared him for learning Gbaya. A short while after his arrival, he was joined by Yves Blanchard, also a priest of O.M.I., who was “passionné pour les Gbaya et leur langue” (“impassioned for the Gbaya and their language”), in the words of their colleague Fr. Yves Le Jollec (Le Jollec n.d.:13).

Establishing mission work in a new language for the Catholics required the preparation of catechetical materials, songs, liturgies, and Scripture texts, just as had been the case for the Lutherans. New materials were drafted, mimeographed, tested, and then printed. A catechism, Katekiz Katolik, was published in 1958, songs were prepared and collected under the title Gima-Gasi-Sõ, “Songs for praising God”, and liturgies and lectionaries were produced in mimeograph form.

3.2 The post-colonial era

On January 1, 1960, Cameroon became an independent nation, and in December of the same year the Lutheran churches that grew out of the efforts of the Sudan Mission and the Norwegian Mission Society were con-stituted to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon and the Central African Republic (Lode 1990:161).9 Translation work continued as it had previously, primarily as a missionary activity with assistance from mother tongue speakers. The first Gbaya New Testament was published in 1968 by the young Bible Society of Cameroon and Gabon,10 and Genesis and Exodus were published as a single book privately in 1970 through Imprimérie LECO in Kinshasa.

In December of 1970, church leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon (EELC) and Gbaya dignitaries held an ad-hoc meeting in Meiganga at which they formally decided to take steps that would lead to

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the translation of the entire Bible. The efforts of this committee resulted in an invitation being extended to the author, then teaching in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with the goal of establishing a translation and literature program in Gbaya. This local initiative in Cameroon led to the opening of the Gbaya Translation Center in 1971 through the auspices of the American Lutheran Church with headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Located first in Ngaoundéré, the Center moved to its permanent site in Meiganga in 1972. The objective of the new Center was to serve the needs of the EELC in translation and litera-ture, and its primary goal was the translation of the Bible into Gbaya.11

Inspired by the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, an interconfes-sional Bible translation effort was launched in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Mission in Meiganga. In accordance with Bible Society policy, the translation team was comprised of Gbaya mother-tongue speakers. The first drafts of a Catholic New Testament translation, prepared by Joseph Ndongué of Djohong under the sponsorship of Fr. Bodénès, were offered to serve as models for the new translation project.12 In his memoirs, Fr. Yves Le Jollec places the translation program in the larger context of church relations when he writes, “The translations of the Bible in Gbaya strongly contributed to a closer relationship” between Protestants and Catholics (Le Jollec n.d.:55; translation mine). With the Center located in Cameroon, the Gbaya-speaking Christian community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Central Af-rican Republic was represented by membership on the translation team. The review committee was made up of Protestants and Catholics with representa-tion from both countries and included expatriate exegetes and consultants.13 The Center was officially associated as an “antenna” of the Federal Linguistic and Cultural Center in Yaoundé, for which its staff carried out linguistic and anthropological research as part of their programmed activities from 1972 to 1982.

Because a first Gbaya New Testament had already been published and was in use by the church, the new team set about translating the Old Testament. The principles of Eugene Nida’s dynamic equivalence approach to transla-tion were adopted, placing emphasis upon the communication of the message over maintaining formal correspondence with the source text (Nida & Taber 1969:22–24). The language model would be the speech of young adults, with a preference for the style and form of oral expression (Noss & Blanchard 1975). The team’s first interconfessional priority was the joint adoption by Protestants and Catholics of the most basic documents for catechesis, namely, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Scripture translation was carried on while discussion of orthography changes and key theological terms was


underway.14 The team’s translation of the Psalms was published in 1974 by the Bible Society of Cameroon and Gabon, a new test translation of the Gos-pel of Matthew was published in 1975 by the EELC, and an Old Testament sampler of Ruth-Jonah-Nahum was published in 1976 by the Gbaya Transla-tion Center. In 1982 the new interconfessional translation of the New Testa-ment, entitled Mbe Noo-Tok, was published by the Bible Society of Cameroon with a corrected reprint in 1985.15 The Bible, with a revised New Testament, was published in 1995 by the Bible Society of Cameroon and reprinted in 1996.16 A great many other documents were prepared and produced through the Center including revised literacy materials, a new catechism, books of ad-vice for women, health guides, first-aid helps, fish-raising instructions, graded new reader Bible portions, and Scripture easy-reading texts. Gbaya folktales, collections of original poetry in Gbaya and French, and booklets of hunting tales and advice-giving retold and written in Gbaya by school children were also published.

Following the launching of the Bible with the 66 canonical books, a Catholic team of Gbaya school teachers, Koulagna Abel and Abdoulaye Serge, together with two female translators, Marie Béatrice Patouma and Doudou Rachel, led by the Roman Catholic priest Pierre Bodénès translat-ed the deuterocanonical books (DC books, also called the Apocrypha). The Roman Catholic Missal, using Scripture text from the interconfessional Bible, was published by the Ngaoundéré Diocese in 2005, and in 2006 the official imprimatur was granted by Bishop Djida Joseph, the Bishop of Ngaoundéré, for the publication of a Bible edition with the DC books. At the same time, corrections were prepared for reprinting the 1995 Bible. The corrected ver-sion in two separate editions was published in 2011 by the Bible Society of Cameroon: a black cover Bible with the 66 canonical books for Protestants and a red cover Bible with the 66 books plus the deuterocanonical books for Roman Catholics.

With the Bible, the Missal, catechisms, liturgies, and songbooks available in the Gbaya language for Catholics and Protestants, Rev. Touka Daniel, a Gbaya Lutheran theologian, linguist, and translator, undertook the task of rendering Martin Luther’s Augsburg Confession into his mother tongue.17 Given the many religious sects that are being introduced into Cameroon, he wanted Gbaya Christians of the Lutheran tradition to know what they believe. His translation of the Augsburg Confession was published together with Luther’s Smaller Catechism in 2007 with the title Kõõdoowen me Oksbur in Gedek Kalata Usamo ko Luther. The basis for the translator’s lexicon and theological conceptualization was the Gbaya Bible, for this is the sin-gle most comprehensive text printed in the Gbaya language. Although the

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arguments of the Augsburg Confession arise out of the context of the Bible, this document is significantly different from the Bible in that it is a polemical interpretation that carries biblical concepts to a very high level of theological argumentation.

For example, Gbaya traditional religion speaks about Sõ-e-wi, literally, the “God-who-put-people”, who is the biblical God of Creation.18 There are also the persons of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Bible, but how would the Gbaya language represent the concept of “Divine Essence”?19 There is a Gbaya expression, wii-see-mo, expressing the essence of something, literally, the “real liver of the thing,” as the liver is the organ that is believed to embody one’s spirit and emotions. This expression has been adopted as a term in the rendering of the Augsburg Confession to signify the “Divine Essence”, that is, Wii-Sõ, the “Essence of God-ness”. To speak of persons or people, the Gbaya use the word bii. Therefore, “in that Divine Essence [Wii-Sõ] there are three persons [bii]” and “All those three are only one Divine Essence [Wii-Sõ ‘dot].” The last word ‘dot is an ideophone that portrays something standing alone, independent, all by itself.20 In the process of translating the Augsburg Confession, Touka Daniel was obliged to press the Gbaya language further than either the first or second generation of Bible translators had dared to do.

4. Gbaya lexicography as language documentation and preservation

Since first contact with the Gbaya people by the earliest European explorers and officials, scholars involved in Bible translation and mission work have played important roles in Gbaya linguistic and lexicographic research.21 Tou-ka Daniel compares a dictionary to a granary. Similar to a storehouse of grain, he says, a dictionary is a storehouse of words. It holds the words, reminding us of their existence, offering explanations, and reflecting the customs and practices of the people who speak those words. In his own words, “A dic-tionary presents the language and culture that constitute the very essence of the speakers of the language.”22 Dictionaries express the living nature of a language at a given point in time. The choices of vocabulary items included or excluded by the lexicographer are inevitably partially ideological, and the result affects the cosmological picture represented by the dictionary.

Madel Nostbakken compiled a 116-page volume entitled Dictionary: Baya-English English-Baya. This first lexicon was produced locally in mimeo-graphed form in the 1960s. No date is given. It contains 1950 Gbaya entries with English glosses, and 1940 English entries with Gbaya glosses. For each Gbaya vocabulary item, grammatical identification is noted, followed by the


English gloss or possible glosses. The English-Gbaya lexicon is a very close reversal of the Gbaya-English data. The dictionary was designed as a practi-cal lexicon for language learners, especially those in the mission and church setting.

During the same era, the Catholic priest Yves Blanchard was developing a Gbaya-French lexicon. His lexical inventory was combined with a similar lex-icon that was being compiled by the author at the Gbaya Translation Center. Their co-compiled work was published as Blanchard & Noss (1982) jointly by the Mission Catholique de Meiganga and the Église Évangélique Luthéri-enne du Cameroun as Dictionnaire gbaya-français: dialecte yaayuwee, and was reprinted in 2008. Users are introduced to the dictionary by seventeen pages of preliminary materials comprised of a preface, a table of contents, an introduction to the dictionary process, linguistic notes, a statement of orthographic and lexicographical principles, a table of abbreviations, and a bibliography. The 553 pages of the hardbound volume count 8544 entries, of which one in four is an ideophone. Supplementary pages at the end of the volume set out the counting systems of Yaayuwee and of the closely related Lai dialect. Tables of the names of the days of the week and of the months of the year are also provided for Yaayuwee.

During the past four decades, the French ethno-linguist Paulette Roulon-Doko of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris has been conducting research on the ‘Bodoe language and culture (publishing also under her maiden name Roulon). The ‘Bodoe are a com-munity of some 5,000 people living in and near the town of Ndongué in the western Central African Republic not far from the border with Cameroon. Their speech form is the ‘Bodoe dialect, which Roulon-Doko identifies as belonging to Gbaya Kara.23 Having first published a phonological analy-sis with Yves Moñino in 1972, Roulon published a syntactic and semantic analysis of the Gbaya verb in 1975, and in 2008 she published a dictionary, Dictionnaire gbaya-français (République Centrafricaine).24 The 700-page paperback volume is comprised of a Gbaya-French dictionary of 530 pages, a 49-page catalog of proper nouns, a French-Gbaya lexicon of 81 pages, and a 12-page index of scientific terms. These are preceded by a 15-page intro-duction succinctly describing the language and presenting the lexicographer’s methodology. 7,321 ‘Bodoe lemmas are presented in classical dictionary fash-ion. The French-Gbaya lexicon of some 7,000 lexical items is an important practical tool for the non-Gbaya speaker who wishes to locate a Gbaya word.

Roulon-Doko’s dictionary constitutes a significant expansion in Gbaya lexicography from the Blanchard-Noss dictionary and earlier lexicons and

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dictionaries of diverse Gbaya speech forms. It provides extensive scientific data, and in the author’s own words, “informs us about all the aspects of the life of these hunters-gatherers-farmers, who live in a green savanna whose animal and vegetation worlds they know equally well, and where they carry out their daily activities” (p. 7, translation mine). For anyone who wishes to learn about the life and language and world of the Gbaya on both sides of the Central African Republic-Cameroon border, this dictionary is a great treasure store of documentation.

The three Gbaya dictionaries document a historical process of lexical bor-rowing that reflects the accommodation and adjustments that Gbaya speakers have made in the face of power structures that they have encountered and continue to meet in today’s world of international politics and mass commu-nication. Early in the nineteenth century before the first German and French explorers arrived on the scene, well before the Germans called Kamerun a colony, Hausa and Bornuan merchants brought their wares from northern Nigeria, including boxes, machetes, sewing needles, gunpowder, and their Holy Book, the Qur’an (Burnham 1980: 10–12; 1981). As the Gbaya moved westward following wild game and seeking fertile land for their sesame and cassava fields, they encountered the Mbum [mdd], speakers of an Adamawan language, who lived on the Adamawa Plateau and along its southern edge. The Mbum had a centralized political structure to which the acephalous Gbaya made accommodation by settling and intermarrying with them as occurred in the village of Mboula. They also met and settled in proximity to the Mbonga people [xmb] who spoke a Jarawan Bantu language and whose culture of millet and yams was very alien to the Gbaya cassava culture. As Fulani warriors from the city states of northern Nigeria brought jihad in the late nineteenth century to what is now northern Cameroon, the Gbaya found themselves on the frontier of war and slave raids. Initiation rites and the se-cret initiation languages of To and La’bi, adopted from neighboring peoples, played crucial roles in the preservation of their society and culture (Vidal 1962, 1976; Christensen 1990:84–99).25 The history of social and political friction in Gbaya-Fulani relations preceded the establishment of colonial au-thority; the friction extended through the period of German and French colo-nialism, and it continues unabated to the present day (Burnham 1996:134ff).

Lexical terms provide evidence of Gbaya cultural and political history. They borrowed Bantu words for animals and plants found in the forests to the south. Court terminology and borrowed weaponry point to Fulani and Kanuri political and military structures that the Gbaya faced during jihads and slave raids. Names of objects that featured in commercial transactions were borrowed from Hausa and Arabic. Other borrowings reflect cultural


practices and persons associated with the rites of initiations, as well as recent terms for material objects and modern technology. Islamic religious terminol-ogy was borrowed from Arabic through Hausa and Fulfulde, while Christian terminology has been borrowed through French and English. A post-colo-nial reading of Gbaya history would need to include the world of the Gbaya under threat and in flux as long as lexicon, archeology, and memory are able to reveal.

The Nostbakken lexicon cites and identifies a great number of borrowed words from French. Many are religious terms (Sabbat “Sabbath”, grâce “grace”), while others are cultural, such as words for time (semaine “week”, Noël “Christmas”), officials and officers (gouverneur “governor”, sergent “sergeant”), and objects (table “table”, vin “wine”). Of words borrowed from other languages, Nostbakken identifies only four as of Fulfulde origin, and one as Hausa. None are identified as being of English origin, though we find both kapita “captain, overseer” and soza “soldier” in the Gbaya list. No borrowings from other languages are indicated, and a number of borrowed items are not so identified. A great number of the borrowings are recogniz-able from the Scripture translations of the time.

In their introduction, Blanchard & Noss (1982: vii) draw attention to the influences on the language from the vast territory in which it is located. They alert the dictionary user to the varied and diverse currents of history that have flowed across this central part of Africa as reflected in Gbaya vo-cabulary. Lexical items may come from neighboring languages with whom the Gbaya have had contact—Fulfulde and Hausa to the west, Kanuri [kau] and Arabic to the north, Sango [sag] to the east, Bantu languages to the south—as well as from the French and English heritage of the colonial era. The dictionary tries to reflect both historical and conservative contempo-rary borrowing, indicating as frequently as possible the etymology of the borrowed word.

Roulon-Doko in her introduction informs the dictionary user that bor-rowed words will be identified as borrowings and that the source language will be specified, for example, dàràpóo, borrowed from the French drapeau (“flag” in English). The source language may be Fulfulde or Arabic through Fulfulde, and this is indicated. When the source language identity is taken from the Blanchard-Noss dictionary, this is acknowledged (2008:13). Bor-rowed religious terminology is markedly absent. Although names borrowed in current ‘Bodoe usage are included in the dictionary of proper names, the author excludes terms from both Christianity and Islam for the Divine. However, she does associate the theophoric name sõ-hãã, literally rendered as “ancestor gave”, with the French Dieudonné (“God-given”). The initial

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element of the Gbaya compound word is actually the term that is usually used for God, but is not so identified here.

The Gbaya dictionary compilers each made choices within the scope of their resources and ideologies to document and enhance the usefulness of the Gbaya language for its mother tongue speakers and for outsiders, the famous “other” in our current and future world, through the written and printed word. Later dictionary-makers have been able to benefit from the work of their predecessors, documenting, and hopefully preserving, the Gbaya language for posterity.

5. Language use and renewal

None of the Gbaya speech communities possessed a written tradition be-fore the arrival of Hausa traders and European officials in the nineteenth century. Gbaya society did not possess a courtly system, or a long-distance trading network that would have required a writing system. European explor-ers and military officers had an ethnographic interest as indicated above, but there was no official effort to recognize or codify the Gbaya language. In the post-colonial period, however, Gbaya has come to be treated very differently in Cameroon from its treatment in CAR.

5.1 The current status of Gbaya in Cameroon

The late Ahmadou Ahidjo, during his tenure as the first president of Camer-oon, formally recognized the cultural diversity and richness of “national” lan-guages, as they were called. Although the constitution of Cameroon in 1961 established a bilingual state with French and English as the languages of gov-ernment and education, local Cameroonian languages were acclaimed for their wealth of oral art and cultural expression. National research units and Cam-eroonian universities have taken significant initiatives toward promoting the study of national languages (Tadadjeu & Sadembouo 1982), and attempts have been made to develop pedagogical materials in mother tongue languages for use in pre-school and primary school education (Tadadjeu 1990).26

In 1974 a recording studio was established in conjunction with the Gbaya Translation Center where Gbaya recordings were made for broadcast through the outlets utilized by the EELC recording studio, Sawtu Linjiila, in Ngaoundéré (Lode 1990:207–208). On a national level, Gbaya, together with a number of other languages, has been broadcast on Cameroon national radio during the past three decades, and more recently programs in Gbaya have also been broadcast on the local Meiganga radio station. The first Gbaya


broadcaster on the national radio station in Bertoua was Zim Kassala Jean, one of the translators from the Gbaya Translation Center.

In 1993 a secular cultural association called Moi-Nam was formed by Gbaya intellectuals and dignitaries in Cameroon. The name means “gather relatives”, to gather the clan, as it were, and the purpose of the organization is to gather strength in drawing the Gbaya community together (Burnham 1996:139–142). Partly through the efforts of this organization, and partly through parallel activities in the Gbaya community, a Gbaya Renaissance is taking place that is based in great part on the Gbaya Bible.27 Both in church liturgies and in ordinary conversation, Gbaya expressions are increasingly heard that are reflective of language decisions taken by the translators of the Gbaya Bible. From traditional forms of blessing and greeting to the Gbaya names of the days of the week and months of the year that had virtually fallen into disuse, the authentic nature of Gbaya expression is being reasserted in the face of heavy sociolinguistic influence from Fulfulde, the dominant trade language of northern Cameroon, and from French and English, the languag-es of instruction in the schools and the predominant international languages of Cameroon.

Gbaya Yaayuwee has been a written language since the 1920s and a pub-lished language since the 1930s. The Bible is a primary corpus and repos-itory of the language. The dictionary stabilizes orthography and spelling, and establishes a standard for vocabulary and lexicon. Both before and after national independence up to the modern day, missions and churches have been the primary organizers and supporters of the Gbaya literary effort in Cameroon. Today Gbaya is a flourishing speech form constituting a focal rallying point in a setting where there is structure and support for its use, not only in the home and locally, but through literature, liturgies, and mass media.

5.2 The current status of Gbaya in the CAR

In the former French Equatorial Africa, now the Central African Republic, early missionaries initiated translation and literacy work in local languages. The linguistic and anthropological writings of the Swedish missionary scholar Jean Hilberth are well-known (1952, 1959, 1962). A New Testament trans-lated under his leadership was published in the Mbéré (Berbérati) dialect of Gbaya by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1951. The Gospels were translated and published in the Gbeya dialect that was the subject of doctoral research conducted by the American linguist, and former missionary, William Samarin (1966).

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When the Central African Republic became an independent nation on August 13, 1960, it retained French as its official language from colonial times. Sango [sag], the lingua franca that had been adopted and was in use by most missions,28 grew in importance until it became the national language. This occurred at the expense of the local languages that were considered to be a threat or at least a handicap to the development of Sango. Thus, until quite recently, missions and churches tended to withhold their efforts from local languages in favor of the unifying national language. Accordingly, the patrons for research and publications such as those of Paulette Roulon-Doko on the Gbaya ‘Bodoe of the Central African Republic have been primarily the academic and publishing facilities of France, the former colonial power.

The resulting difference between the two settings of Cameroon and the Central African Republic is that in Cameroon Yaayuwee Gbaya has developed into a stable language with locally produced written materials, including tech-nical, linguistic, and literary documents, as well as religious texts, whereas, Gbaya expression in the ‘Bodoe setting in CAR, according to the lexicogra-pher Roulon-Doko (2008:9), remains essentially oral without a writing sys-tem. It does, however, possess extensive documentation recorded through external research organizations.

At the same time, the early work of missions and churches has not been forgotten or abandoned. The local church, the Église Évangélique Baptiste, formerly the Swedish Baptist Mission, with the linguistic support of SIL In-ternational, completed a translation of the New Testament in the Gbaya spo-ken around Berbérati (Southwest Gbaya) which was published by the Bible Society of the CAR in 2003. Projects for Scripture translation into several Gbaya dialects are currently underway in CAR through the sponsorship of the Central African Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (ACAT-BA). These include New Testament projects in ‘Bokoto, ‘Bianda, Gbeya, and Mandja, and an Old Testament project to complete the Bible in Berbérati Gbaya.

6. Conclusion

From the perspective of the liturgist at the 1996 dedication ceremony, the Gbaya Bible represented the culmination of a process that was traced back to the arrival of the first missionaries in Gbaya territory. From the founding of the missionary effort among Gbaya speakers, the translation of the Bible was accomplished over a period of seven decades. Ecclesiastically, the launching of this Bible was a momentous event for both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The dedication of the new Bible edition in 2012 containing the


deuterocanonical books in addition to the protocanonical books marked a significant ecclesiastical and liturgical advance in the life and growth of the Christian church among the Gbaya of Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

For Gbaya speakers, the story of their language is still being formulated. In an era when language endangerment and death are topics of increasing in-terest and concern to students of language (e.g., Crystal 2000; Rymer 2012), we are reminded of the exhortation of the Cameroonian philosopher and scholar Bernard Fonlon, “We need to preserve our African linguistic patrimo-ny, not as pieces in a museum, but as living, active realities.” If not, he warns, “We will become a nameless, rootless race” (1969:40).

Of Cameroon’s 236 languages, with three or more already extinct, Gbaya was the ninth language to possess a Bible. The analysis and writing of a lan-guage, the preparation of literacy and other reading materials, and the transla-tion of the Bible are significant factors in language standardization. The daily use of a language at home, in church worship, and in mass media is crucial to language preservation. Possessing none of the trappings of political power or of commercial dominance, Gbaya has become a language of national stature. In Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth’s edited volume, Translators through History, the late Charles Nama of the University of Buea in Cameroon, made this statement, “As in other parts of Africa, national languages in Cameroon began to develop in the late nineteenth century. In a relatively short time, languages such as Ewondo, Douala, Bulu and Gbaya—our particular focus in this section— have evolved quickly, thanks to the crucial role played by missionary translators.” Nama observed that “Rev. Adolphus Gunderson and his team, most of whom were missionary translators, laid a solid foundation for the promotion of Gbaya language through the numerous translation and interpretation activities which had become an integral part of Gbaya life and culture” (2012:50, 49). More recently, Doka Daniel, a Gbaya elder in the Meiganga mayoral office, spoke about the status of Gbaya, and pointed to the Bible and the Gbaya-French dictionary as prime components in the national stature of the Gbaya language in Cameroon today.29

It has been claimed that translation is manipulation, and if that is true, the Gbaya have exploited translation throughout their history to their own benefit both in the secular context and in religious discourse, from the ancient initiation rites to the liturgies of contemporary Christendom. Their linguistic resources have evolved over time, and varying choices have been adopted in different eras according to contextual requirements.

We cannot know what the future of the Gbaya language will be, but we do know that its speakers have successively engaged languages and civilizations,

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adopting, manipulating, and surviving through a history of ancient trade, attacks by foreign forces, the influx of Islam and Christianity, the colonial era, and the neo-colonial forces of today’s global world. However, the history of nearly a century has clearly shown that the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Gbaya has reinforced the process of constructive language adaptation by its speakers to their ever-changing world.

Notes

1. The liturgist was the Rev. Barya Philemon, the late President of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon.

2. The master of ceremonies was Bishop Djouldé Jean Marc of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon.

3. The dialect of this case study, Yaayuwee, also referred to as Kala or Kara, is identified as Northwest Gbaya [gya] by the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014).

4. The implosive bilabial stop is signaled by an apostrophe before the simple “b”. 5. One sheet is missing at the beginning of the Fulfulde section of the manuscript that

is available, and it cannot be determined whether there were any texts on those pages other than the songs listed in the table of contents.

6. Early missionary translators into the Gbaya language included Rev. Adolphus Gun-derson, Rev. Andrew Okland, Rev. Arthur Anderson and Mrs. Bernice Anderson, Rev. Lloyd Sand and Mrs. Beryl Sand, and Miss Madel Nostbakken, together with assis-tants Elie Aguida, Ruben Baoro, Garga Joseph, Mohamadou Salomon, Abel Wah, Paul Sippeson, and the first two Gbaya pastors, Rev. André Garba and Rev. Paul Darman.

7. Wesley Sadler held a workshop in Meiganga in 1962 under the auspices of Lit- Lit (Literature-Literacy Program) for teaching the writing and use of primers, during which Margaret and Lloyd Smith drafted their new Gbaya primer.

8. The official title of the primer was E KÕA TORA MO, “We like to read.” It was published by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon and the Central African Republic in 1963. A revised edition with updated orthography was published by the Gbaya Translation Center in 1981.

9. Later, in 1974, the one church body divided into two according to national bor-ders, the Église Évangélique Luthérienne du Cameroun (EEL of Cameroon) and the Église Évangélique Luthérienne de la République Centrafricaine (EEL of the CAR).

10. The Bible Society of Cameroon (BSC) was founded in 1959 and represented Bible Society activity in both Cameroon and Gabon as indicated in its publications. From 1978, when BSC established a depot in Gabon, publication information referred only to the Bible Society of Cameroon.

11. The Gbaya Translation Center was supported financially by The American Luther-an Church (TALC) that through merger became part of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Extensive local support was provided by the Roman Catholic Church in the form of transportation and logistics for workshops, research, and exegetical review.

12. These included manuscripts of Matthew (1970), Mark and Luke (1971), John (1972), and Acts (1973).


13. Throughout the duration of the project, translators included Ndongué Joseph of the Roman Catholic Church, and from the EELC, Kombo Samuel, Amadou Sarkao, Jean Zim Kassala, Dogobadomo Béloko, Abo Michel, Oumarou Gilbert, and Bekawah Paul from Cameroon, plus Nadali Nicolas and Zangona Philémon from the Central African Republic, together with three clergymen Darman Paul, Yadji André, and Kou-lagna Abel. Philip Noss was the exegetical coordinator, and the French priests, Pierre Bodénès, Yves Blanchard, and Christian Rimaud, together with the American theolo-gian Thomas Christensen, served as exegetical reviewers. Wendell Frerichs, Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, provided language and exegetical expertise in the translation of the Prophets. Translation consultants were Jan de Waard, André Wilson, and Krijn van der Jagt of the United Bible Societies, and Paul Bitjick of the Bible Society of Cameroon.

14. A new orthography was adopted for the Gbaya literature work in conformity with orthographic principles established by the National Council for the Unification and Harmonization of Alphabets of Cameroon languages in 1979 (Tadadjeu & Sadem-bouo 1984; Hartell 1993:75).

15. The new NT title is literally “new drinking blood,” meaning “New Covenant”. This title alludes to the Gbaya rite of drinking blood in the making of a covenant agree-ment. The first NT had been called Mbe Alkawal from the Fulfulde alkawal “promise, covenant,” of Arabic origin.

16. The Gbaya Bible was one of eight first-in-their-language Bibles published in 1995 and is counted among numbers 351–359 in the two millennia history of Bible translation. The Ngbaka Bible in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, was also among the Bibles published in 1995.

17. Touka Daniel is the former Director of the Gbaya Literature Center in Meiganga; he is the current Coordinator of the Department of Communication and Director of Translation and Literacy for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon.

18. The missionaries encountered two words, Sõ and Gbasõ, that were associated with God. In a general sense sõ means “spirit”. In a letter dated 23 October 1931, A. E. Gunderson wrote to his colleague Andrew Okland, asking him to make en-quiries about Gbasõ, literally “Great God/Spirit”. Apparently, because of the role of Gbasõ in folktales as a destructive monster, Sõ was the term that was retained as the name for God (letter in the archives of Luther Seminary Library, St. Paul, Minnesota). F. J. Clozel wrote in 1896 that the Gbaya east of Cameroon in what is now the Central African Republic believed in a supernatural power that they called So (p. 19).

19. Augsburg Confession, Article 1. Of God 1–4. 20. The ideophone is a descriptive feature commonly associated with oral speech and oral

art forms. It has been used in the Gbaya Bible and has been adopted for precision in the translation of the Augsburg Confession as in this example.

21. Linguistic research that has been carried out on various Gbaya dialects includes the work of J. Calloc’h, C.C.Sp. 1911; Jean Hilberth 1952, 1959; William Samarin 1966; Bernard de Montgolfier, O.F.M. Capuchin 1974, 1975; and Virginia Boyd 1997. All these persons were associated with religious organizations, and all were involved with Scripture translation. J. Calloc’h, who used this name for his published linguistic work on Gbanziri, Gbéa, Gmbwaga (Ngbaka Ma’bo), Monjombo, Sango, and Teke, was named Jean René Calloc’h. He served as a Holy Ghost father in Congo and the Central African Republic for over thirty years. As Monsignor Jean Calloc’h he was

Philip A. Noss 71

Apostolic Prefect from 1914–1927 of what is today the Archdiocese of Bangui. He translated the catechism into Gbéa.

22. Interview, Meiganga, Cameroon, August 27, 2007. 23. Moñino (1995:57) describes a population of approximately 160,000 Gbaya-speakers

who identify themselves as Gbaya Kara in CAR and as Gbaya Yaayuwee in Cameroon, whose speech forms are so close as to be virtually identical.

24. Her other works include: Conception de l’espace et du temps chez les Gbaya de Cen trafrique (1996), Parlons Gbaya (1997), Chasse, cueillette et cultures chez les Gbaya (1998), and Cuisine et nourriture chez les Gbaya de Centrafrique (2001).

25. La’bi is related in lexicon to the Sara-Ngambai languages of Nilo-Saharan. To is related to the Mbum cluster of languages of the Adamawa branch of the Adamawa-Eastern phylum of Greenberg’s Niger-Congo family. See Tessmann (1931:70–115), Hilberth (1962:65), and Noss (1977). The French Captain Lenfant writing in 1909 observed that La’bi was spoken by eminent men of various ethnic groups in what was then French Equatorial Africa, serving as an “international language” which he called a “central African Esperanto” (Lenfant 1909:540).

26. There is a long history of debate over the benefits of the mother tongue as the language of instruction in the first years of formal education. In a nation with as many languages as Cameroon, providing mother tongue education to all would be impossible. Nevertheless, some efforts have been made, experimentally perhaps, with some languages. SIL International has provided extensive support of these efforts.

27. Based on statements made during a meeting of Gbaya religious and secular leaders in Yaoundé, Cameroon, November 27, 2005.

28. Mbeti ti Nzapa, the Sango Bible that was used by all Protestant denominations, was published by the United Bible Societies in 1966. A Roman Catholic Sango trans-lation of the Old Testament called Tene ti Nzapa, Kozo Mbouki, published by the Soeurs Missionnaires de St. Pierre Claver, Rome, in 1982 has been withdrawn from circulation. The Roman Catholic New Testament entitled Tene ti Nzapa, Fini Mbuki, published by Verbum Bible in 1989, is in current use.

29. Observation made in conversation in the town hall in Meiganga on June 8, 2012.

References

Blanchard, Yves & Philip A. Noss. 1982. Dictionnaire gbaya-français. Meiganga: Mission Catholique de Meiganga and Église Évangélique Luthérienne du Cameroun.

Boyd, Virginia Lee. 1997. A phonology of Gbaya Mbodomo. Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington Master’s thesis.

Burnham, Philip. 1980. Opportunity and constraint in a savanna society. London: Aca-demic Press.

Burnham, Philip. 1981. Notes on Gbaya history. In Claude Tardits (ed.), Contribution de la recherche ethnologique à l’histoire des civilisations du Cameroun, 121–130. Paris: Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique.

Burnham, Philip. 1996. The politics of cultural difference in northern Cameroon. Washing-ton, DC: Smithsonian.


Burnham, Philip & Philip Noss. 1982. L’éducation gbaya. In Renaud Santerre & Céline Mercier-Tremblay (eds.), La quête du savoir, 208–229. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

Burnham, Philip, Elisabeth Copet-Rougier & Philip Noss. 1986. Gbaya et Mkako: Con-tribution ethno-linguistique à l’histoire de l’Est-Cameroun. Paideuma 32: 87–128.

Calloc’h, J. 1911. Vocabulaire français-gbéa. Paris: Geuthner. Christensen, Thomas G. 1990. An African tree of life. Maryknoll: Orbis.Christiansen, Ruth. 1956. For the heart of Africa. Minneapolis: Augsburg.Clozel, François Joseph 1896. Les Bayas: Notes ethnographiques et linguistiques. Paris:

J. André.Crystal, David. 2000. Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.de Montgolfier, Bernard, O.F.M. 1974. Le Gbaya ‘booro de ‘Bossangoa, Vol. 1, Essai de

description phonologique et grammaticale. Bossangoa: Mission Catholique.de Montgolfier, Bernard, O.F.M.. 1975. Le Gbaya ‘booro de ‘Bossangoa, Vol. 3, Dictionnaire

gbaya-français. Bossangoa: Mission Catholique.Fonlon, Bernard. 1969. The language problem in Cameroon. Abbia 22 (May-August):

5–40.Hartell, Rhonda L. 1993. Alphabets of Africa. Dakar: UNESCO and SIL.Hartmann, Hermann. 1931. Die Sprache der Baja. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 62: 302–310.Hilberth, Jean. 1952. Vocabulaire français-gbaya, gbaya-français, 2 vols. Örebro/Ber-

bérati: Mission Baptiste Suèdoise.Hilberth, Jean. 1959. Note sur la grammaire gbaya. Berbérati: Mission Baptiste. Hilberth, Jean. 1962. Les Gbaya. Studia Ethnographia Uppsaliensia XIX. Uppsala. Le Jollec, Yves. n.d. Au gré des tornades. Unpublished ms. of memoirs. Lenfant, E. 1909. La découverte des grandes sources du centre de l’Afrique. Paris: Librairie

Hachette et Cie.Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2014. Ethnologue: Languages

of the World, 17th edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Lode, Kåre. 1990. Appelés à la liberté. Amstelveen, Netherlands: IMPROCEP. Luther, Martin. 2007. Kõõdoowen me Oksbur in Gedek Kalata Usamo ko Luther. Trans-

lation of the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism by Abou Touka Daniel. Meiganga: Centre de littérature gbaya.

Moñino, Yves. 1995. Le proto-gbaya. Paris: Peeters.Moñino, Yves & Paulette Roulon. 1972. Phonologie du Gbaya Kara ‘Bodoe. Bibliothèque

de la SELAF 31. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Nama, Charles. 2012. The evolution of Gbaya in Cameroon. In Jean Delisle & Judy

Woodsworth (eds.), Translators through history, rev. ed., 46–50. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Philip A. Noss 73

Naumann, N. 1915. Die Bajasprache. Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalishe Sprachen 18: 42–51.

Nida, Eugene A. & Charles R. Taber. 1969. The theory and practice of translation. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Noss, Cecilia A. 1976. Na Ba Sa: Blueprint for a successful literacy school. Unpublished ms. 8 pp.

Noss, Philip A. 1977. Compounding in To: The dynamics of a closed pidgin. In Martin Mould & Thomas J. Hinnebusch (eds.), Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement VII, 185–197.

Noss, Philip A. & Yves Blanchard. 1975. Style oral et traduction. Afrique et Parole 27(1): 110–118.

Roulon, Paulette. 1975. Le verbe en Gbaya. Bibliothèque de la SELAF 51–52. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Roulon-Doko, Paulette. 1996. Conception de l’espace et du temps chez les Gbaya de Centra-frique. Paris: Harmattan.

Roulon-Doko, Paulette. 1997. Parlons Gbaya. Paris: Harmattan.Roulon-Doko, Paulette. 1998. Chasse, cueillette et cultures chez les Gbaya. Paris: Harmattan.Roulon-Doko, Paulette. 2001. Cuisine et nourriture chez les Gbaya de Centrafrique. Paris:

Harmattan.Roulon-Doko, Paulette. 2008. Dictionnaire gbaya-français (République Centrafricaine).

Paris: Éditions Karthala.Rymer, Russ. 2012. Vanishing Voices. National Geographic 222 (1, July): 60–93.Sadler, Wesley. 1962. The primer: Writing it—teaching it. Kitwe, Northern Rhodesia:

Africa Writing Center. Samarin, W. J. 1966. The Gbeya language. University of California Publications in Linguis-

tics 44. Berkeley: University of California Press.Tadadjeu, Maurice. 1990. Le défi de Babel au Cameroun. Collection PROPELCA 53.

Yaoundé: Université de Yaoundé. Tadadjeu, Maurice & Etienne Sadembouo (eds.). 1982. Recherche en langues et linguis-

tique au Cameroun. PROPELCA 1. Yaoundé: Délégation générale à la recherche scientifique et technique.

Tadadjeu, Maurice & Etienne Sadembouo. 1984. General alphabet of Cameroon languag-es. PROPELCA 1. Yaoundé: University of Yaoundé.

Tessmann, Günter. 1931. Die drei Sprachen des Bajastammes: To, Labi, Baja (Kamerun). Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 34(3): 70–115.

Vidal, Pierre. 1962. L’initiation dans l’éducation traditionnelle. Population Gbaya-Kara: Nord-Ouest de la République. Documents pour Servir à l’Histoire de la République Centrafricaine. Vol. 1. Notes préliminaires. Le Havre-Bangui.

Vidal, Pierre. 1976. Garçons et filles. Nanterre: Université de Paris X. White, Paul Hamilton Hume. 1950. The Jungle Doctor series. London: Paternoster Press.

4. Bible translation and the promotion of mother tongues in Africa

DieuDonné p. aroga Bessong

United Bible Societies

1. Introduction1

Promoting human rights is understood to be of paramount importance nowadays. Prominent among these are linguistic rights, both individual and collective. Bible translation organizations, being heavy promoters of mother tongue usage, have woken up to this reality and become key partners with the churches and local communities in pushing for linguistic rights in order to achieve linguistic justice.

Bible translation in the United Bible Societies (UBS) has always gone hand in hand with literacy in the languages in which translation was being done. This has been deemed necessary for preparing potential readers to access the text that is about to be published. Formerly, the responsibility for literacy training fell primarily on collaborating churches, while the Bible Soci-eties prepared reading materials known as New Reader Portions. But over the years, UBS and its affiliates have considered it better to get fully involved in this activity. Therefore, national Bible Societies have felt the need for a liter-acy department or service to take over the literacy training part by preparing trainers, as well as to manifest the new importance given to this activity.

To this end, the Newport Declaration (UBS 2004) resolved: “We will identify the particular groups and communities to be given priority, seek to…determine how best to meet them. This will result in initiatives such as: helping churches to minister to those who cannot read…” Elsewhere (UBS 2000) the UBS documentation affirms: “Our task is to achieve the widest possible, effective and meaningful distribution of the Holy

76 tHe proMotion of MotHer tongues in africa

Scriptures…We are conscious that the context in which we are called to complete this task is a world in which…one half of the population is func-tionally non-literate; a majority of the citizens are classed by the UNO as ‘absolutely poor’…”

The UBS position reflects the UNESCO (2003) remark that “creat-ing literate environments and societies is essential for achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy.” Literacy is seen as a basic human right, and it is stressed that “literacy skills are fundamental to informed decision-making, personal empowerment, active and passive participation in local and global social community” (Stromquist 2005:12).

From the start then, the questions are as follows: What is being done to-ward this end, in particular as regards Bible translation and literacy, and what is the role of mother tongues in this process? How do we evaluate such activ-ity if literacy is seen as not merely the ability to read and write in schools, but also in terms of interaction with everyday literacy activities (such as reading the news, drama, doing shopping, etc.), that is, functional literacy?

Bible translation into local languages has in itself been an important tool for stemming the overwhelming attractiveness of international languages; the power it gives to mother tongues has helped to dispel some of the prejudices surrounding local language use and importance. UBS, as well as other Bible translation organizations, provides reading materials in these languages,2 as well as preparing training materials so that readers may fully appropriate the finished work for themselves.

Unlike the early missionaries, UBS has gradually empowered local pop-ulations in Bible translation: native speakers have been preferred early on as translators, as opposed to foreigners coming and learning the language in order to be translators later. More recently, national Bible Societies have been encouraged to have national Bible translation consultants, rather than foreigners, even other Africans, coming to play that role in these countries, though most of those in charge of training such consultants are usually from the same continent as them.

1.1 The Bible’s position on mother tongues

In the Biblical account, monolingualism prevailed prior to the Tower of Babel. But as it allowed people to challenge the Lord, God confused the languages (Genesis 11:7), giving birth to multilingualism, confirmed at Pentecost for powerful evangelism (Acts 2:8–11).

Dieudonné P. Aroga Bessong 77

Other texts in the Bible confirm that multilingualism should not be seen as merely an annoying obstacle, as tends to be thought in Africa. Rather, it is the disrespect of linguistic human rights that is the true obstacle. The two let-ters sent on behalf of the Persian emperor Ahasuerus to the 127 provinces of his empire bear witness to this. These edicts, one inspired by General Haman and sent to non-Jews, and the other by Queen Esther to Jews, were written to “all the provinces…to every province in its own script and every people in its own language” (Esther 3:12–14; 8:9–10). Although the Persian Empire at its height was more than half as large as Europe, the messages were not hampered by the great distance, despite the limited mechanical engineering and communication technologies available in those days!

As Christian organizations that tend to set some norms of language use, notably through Bible translation, UBS, the churches, and their partner orga-nizations working with the Bible want to follow the command of the Lord as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 28:19–20: “Go therefore and make disci-ples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (NRSV). Scripture also says: “And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Romans 10:14–15, NRSV). The Bible Societies and the Church have tried to heed this call by making the Bible available and promot-ing its use in mother tongues. My contention in this paper is that the present democratic global context that promotes human rights also favors pushing for mother tongue enhancement, and that Bible translation organizations are playing a positive role for better results on this front.

2. Mother tongue policies in Africa: Colonial powers, missions, and churches

Beginning with colonial times, two main factors have determined public lan-guage use in Africa: (1) the aspiration to acquire international languages, associated with socio-economic power; (2) the ‘bottom of the pile’ (Muth-wii 2004) position given to African languages. As a consequence, mother tongues have been virtually excluded from school syllabi and relegated to a less important role in public thinking. The question for Bible translation organizations is: How can we contribute to changing this situation, knowing that positive efforts can yield good results?

A look at African history shows that the missions and later the churches deriving from them generally preceded colonial administrations and the local governments that resulted from colonization. The former (missions and churches) made commendable initiatives to promote local language use.


In Cameroon, for instance, the first Baptist missionary posts were planted in 1841 at Bimbia, in what is now English-speaking Cameroon, and in 1854 at Duala, in what is now French-speaking Cameroon. Baptist missionary Alfred Saker chose Duala [ISO: dua] as the language of the church, laid down its orthographic rules in 1856, and translated the Bible into Duala by 1872. His interest in educating the local populations led him to promote school in-struction in the local language. Such development of local languages became a general hallmark of missionary practice. To the missions, this was the best basis for planting Christian communities in Africa.

Colonial administrations and post-colonial governments, on the other hand, tended to restrict indigenous language use. We will examine some of these restrictive policies and attitudes in greater detail in section 4 below. In general, all of the colonization philosophies contributed to the suppression of mother tongue use, although they were not identical across the board. For example, Great Britain’s policy of Indirect Rule allowed people to organize themselves locally to some extent, while French policies aimed at integrating the colonies into France.

With the coming of the colonial administrations there began the promo-tion of European languages as the medium of instruction. The missions could not ignore the attractive subsidies introduced by the administrations for this purpose. Thus, the large gap between the means for implementing missionary policies and colonial policies led to the dominance of the latter, since the co-lonial administrations possessed the more significant material resources.

2.1 Shifting African church view on language development and Bible translation

Since taking over from the missionaries, some African church leaders have felt that the Church faces so many responsibilities with only limited resour-ces available that mother tongue promotion is not a priority to them. They believe that developing indigenous languages requires colossal resour ces that, if available, the Church would do well to use elsewhere. To them, the funds that would need to be spent in standardizing the numerous African languages (producing teaching aids, etc.) are too scarce (see below on gov-ernment language policy). Some of these leaders feel that mother tongue use in Christian education does not lead to deep Christian growth and may not contribute to quality Christian education. To them, mother tongues do not always have adequate vocabulary to express theological knowledge. Besides, promoting African languages may expose the Church to accusations of fos-tering tribalism.


Some African church leaders argue that since international or other wide-ly used languages are spreading, why bother with Bible translation? People can always read the Bible in these major languages. But this is negated by research: in Nigeria, for instance, only 33% of the population can satisfactorily speak English and may therefore profitably read the Bible in this language. In Kenya, the proportion who can do so is only 15%. If the above argument is accepted, the vast majority would then be left out.

As already mentioned, it is also claimed that the Church lacks resources, both material and human, to implement its core ministries, so why allocate the meager ones available to Bible translation into mother tongues? The same could be said of literacy. Besides, a number of the existing mother tongue translations are too difficult to read and African youth have little knowledge of and little interest in their mother tongues. So the church leaders feel that investing in this area could in the end be merely a waste of resources. And again, there are too many languages in Africa, they say. With the dwindling financial resources of the Church, we cannot expect all these languages to possess a Bible.

Church decisions concerning mother tongue use now tend to mirror government policies: generally, an international language or language of wid-er communication (LWC) is used in cities, while mother tongues are relegat-ed to rural areas. This only reinforces the negative image of mother tongues. And the formerly strong Church promotion of mother tongue use through Bible translation seems to be losing ground in favor of using international languages or LWCs, though on faulty assumptions, as shown above.

Bible translation organizations are now wondering if texts should be published in cases where serious doubts exist about finding a readership. If the youth are not taught to read in their mother tongues, is there any real-istic chance that publications in these languages would ever be read by the intended readership? Is it part of the mandate of Bible translation organiza-tions to promote mother tongue survival by translating the Bible into mother tongues? These nagging questions are coupled with the observation that some mother tongues previously used for training workers in Bible schools are also being gradually replaced by LWCs, and later, by international languages for theological training.

3. How Bible translation organizations contribute to literacy

In spite of the negative stance taken by many in Africa as portrayed above, there are also positive initiatives by Bible translation organizations that are


enhancing mother tongue literacy. Three such initiatives are presented below, from Nigeria, Central African Republic, and Burkina Faso.

3.1 Ebira in Nigeria

The Ebira language [igb] in Nigeria is spoken by over 1.5 million people in four locally governed areas of Kogi State, with over 500,000 speakers in other states. However, relatively few of these people can read their language. Because of ongoing Bible translation into Ebira, some reading and writing of the language was tried in the churches and in schools. This achieved some success in the churches, but collapsed in schools.

In 2004, a translation consultant of the Bible Society of Nigeria made a presentation at the Federal College of Education in Okene on the use of mother tongues in primary and junior secondary schools in Nigeria within the National Policy of Education. Following the presentation, the College of Edu-cation undertook to implement mother tongue education. At the invitation of the technical committee on introducing reading and writing Ebira in schools, the Bible Society had one of its translators translate the prototype curriculum produced by the Federal Ministry of Education. This translation was checked and certified by the Bible Society’s consultant. The consultant was also asked to conduct a writers’ workshop for the technical committee and a short work-shop for those who teach the subject in all levels of school. This is one way Bible translation organizations contribute to wider literacy work.

3.2 Sango in Central African Republic

This is not an experience limited to Nigeria. In the Central African Republic (CAR), the local Bible Society is also shouldering its responsibilities. The lit-eracy class in Boali, a town about 60 miles from Bangui, the capital of CAR, is thriving. Students, all of them women, use writing slates, some of them donated by the Bible Society along with other training materials.

At the launching of the class, the enthusiasm was so high that there were too many students for the tutor to cope with. Indeed, two-thirds of the wom-en between the ages of 25 and 50 in this town were illiterate! A second center for beginners was planned to be opened with the coming of more funds.

The classes are given in Sango [sag], one of the official languages of CAR along with French. They are attended by Christians motivated by the pros-pect of shortly being able to read the Bible, which is soon to be published in contemporary Sango. All churches of all confessions in Boali came together on this project, in a context where Catholics and Protestants had never met and worked together before! The following report mentions the success of


the project: “Only three weeks after the course began, the students were able to read the 22 letters of the Sango alphabet, to write five vowels and three consonants, and they were beginning to make up syllables from the letters they had learned” (UBS 2009b).

3.3 Languages in Burkina Faso

It was likewise reported in 2005 that the national Bible translation organi-zation of Burkina Faso, Association Nationale pour la Traduction de la Bible et l’Alphabétisation (ANTBA), was operating literacy programs in fourteen languages with more than 350 literacy classes and 7,000 people registered to learn their languages.3 ANTBA employs 54 full-time staff, and has over 500 people involved in literacy programs on a part-time volunteer basis.

4. Mother tongue use: Colonial and governmental administrations

Having highlighted some of the positive initiatives taken by Bible transla-tors in African mother tongue literacy development, we now return to the difficulties facing the promotion of linguistic rights in the African setting. As mentioned in section 2, these primarily have to do with the history of European powers imposing their languages on their colonies and the subsequent tendency to prefer international languages in post-colonial governments.

4.1 Colonial policies discouraging local language development in Cameroon

The Portuguese started commercial contacts in 1472 with what would later become Cameroon. Other Europeans followed soon after. Pidgin English resulted from these relations (Stumpf 1979). This language was very attrac-tive locally because it could be rapidly assimilated within the linguistic patch-work that this country offers.

Under the Germans, a language policy conference was held in Berlin in 1914. One of the conference’s goals was to choose a single language for Cam-eroon in order to reduce the population’s attraction to English and Pidgin, and to link the German East African colonies with Cameroon. No consensus was reached based on policy (one language for all colonies), morality (to ensure better success for the youth) or linguistics (to retain the most widely spoken language). The tentative solution arrived at was for Cameroon to be divided


into linguistic areas. But the changes brought about by the First World War stopped this effort in the German colonies.

Meanwhile, the German language introduced to Cameroon shortly before World War I had a free ride. Indeed, though the German adminis-tration tolerated some local languages in education, a 1910 decree, accord-ing to which the State paid premiums for each student who passed exams in German, rather thwarted this toleration and favored the promotion of the colonialists’ language. Clearly, as with missionaries, language use by the colo-nial government in Cameroon was primarily for education purposes.

Given the French colonial philosophy of assimilation, the French admin-istration that followed the German one reinforced such subsidies (Stumpf 1979). Because of the mission civilisatrice of the French policy in the area, they encouraged Cameroonians to progressively lose their barbarous cultural identity by adopting the French civilized culture. And given the important role language plays in the culture that it expresses, its prominence within this policy is obvious. Indeed, this could hardly accommodate the promotion of mother tongues. Thus, the explicit policy of monolingualism prevailing in metropolitan France, with French as the language of administration, educa-tion and politics, was simply applied to its colony (Tadadjeu 1987). There was some lip-service paid to local language teaching at the primary school level, but in reality this was discouraged by grants rewarding good results on official exams in which French played a key role.

In British Cameroon, the colonial administration, guided by the policy of Indirect Rule, had accepted the rather limited teaching of local languages, and had introduced instruction in English in their former colony under pres-sure by parents.

To solve the difficult problem they inherited from their colonial masters, African governments generally continued with the above pattern, largely in favor of foreign European languages. In some places like Cameroon, what little room was allowed in education by the colonialists was finally stopped on the grounds of needing to build strong nation-states. Apparently, this was made simpler by the promotion of one “neutral” language for all, to the dis-advantage of the official use of mother tongues. But this has not succeeded in suppressing the desire for mother tongue learning in schools.

4.2 The dominance of international languages in contemporary African perception

Indigenous languages have generally been dominated by international lan-guages, which produce a positive attitude due to elite interests. Mastering


indigenous languages is not considered a mark of being educated; this priv-ilege is attributed only to international languages. Indigenous languages are seen as not politically neutral for adoption cross-culturally, in contrast to international languages. Because of the attendant politico-socio-economic advantage that an international language enjoys, more and more of the elite strive to make it a family mother tongue to the detriment of their indigenous languages. These languages are pejoratively called vernaculars, and their use is firmly prohibited in school after the time to teach them as a subject is over. The inferior status accorded to them is reflected in school curricula: little is devoted to their study as opposed to that of international languages. They are taught either by unqualified teachers or by qualified mother tongue speakers who are expected to simply transpose their knowledge of teaching interna-tional languages to teaching these languages. As a consequence, children’s interest in them is pretty low.

International languages are protected by misperceptions of mother tongues that are held by some of the educated elite. Nigerian professor Joseph Obemeata (2002) claimed that: (1) mother tongues have a negative effect on intelligence test performance by children in his country; (2) that they interfere negatively with the learning of international languages (in this case English); and (3) that mother tongue learning does not lead to educational development and may not contribute to improving the quality of education. Therefore, according to Obemeata, developing indigenous languages may be a colossal waste of resources. This could appear normal if the above discrepan-cy in allocating resources to teach each type of language is ignored, but if the resources had been equally shared, the picture would be completely different.

Again, negative attitudes towards African languages by the African elite go a long way toward reinforcing such opinions. They claim that there are not enough funds for education to spend even a portion on standardizing the numerous African languages (for the production of teaching aids). Echoing the arguments of Obemeata, they say that African languages are not able to express scientific knowledge, and lack internationality as far as their use is concerned. However, this would be true only if internationality were by definition limited to non-African countries. They also insist that because of these languages’ lack of political neutrality, developing them would encour-age tribalism.

Other factors that strengthen the negative attitudes towards mother tongues include the very varied results of government policies in African countries regarding: (1) status planning (affecting the choice of the official language or the language of instruction), and (2) corpus planning (orthogra-phy formation, standardization and modernization). Likewise, where mother


tongue teaching is allowed, teachers often still favor using an international language for instruction because: (1) teaching materials are available in it, and (2) they were trained in teaching the international language and not their mother tongue. Besides, audiovisual and written media favor international languages to the detriment of mother tongues.

Parents, too, reinforce government policies by favoring international lan-guages at school and even at home, especially where there has been historical dominance by a Western culture and language. In Africa there is a high rate of school drop-outs who possess a better knowledge of their mother tongues than international languages, but this carries a negative image in society as far as social mobility is concerned. Very often mother tongues are not languages of instruction in school, so drop-outs end up not being able to significantly interact in either the international language or their mother tongue.

The great complexity of the African language situation has not been help-ful either. Due to this complexity, it may not always be possible to implement all linguistic rights at the level of the individual speaker; the enjoyment of absolute linguistic rights could lead to each individual learning his mother tongue, a local LWC, and at least one international language. Linguistic justice may be hampered by the very limited incomes that most African gov-ernments have for funding the development of such multilingualism. But openness towards others as a result of the linguistic diversity in Africa can become an incentive to at least attempt this.

As a consequence of attitudes such as the ones listed above, indigenous African languages are taught in a limited way. They are generally confined to the first three years of primary education; in addition, African languages are taught as subjects and are scarcely used as media of instruction at a high-er level. Instructional aids (e.g., books) are not readily available in African languages, and as already mentioned above, many parents do not favor the instruction of their children in these languages.

5. Reversing the trend

Despite the above hindrances, attempts have been made to reverse this trend by activities aimed at enlightening people at both the elite and the grassroots levels. Such attempts have been encouraged by Bible translation organiza-tions, since respecting linguistic human rights helps not only mother tongue communities, but Bible translation efforts and the Church as well. The igno-rance of these rights has been responsible for the above negative attitudes. Implementing them, on the other hand, has helped to stem the tide, and language users need to know this.


An awareness of legislative and other national pronouncements on lan-guages has offered possibilities that serve as a springboard to language empow-erment. The democratization process being implemented in many countries offers an opportunity that mother tongue activists have taken advantage of. Bible translation organizations have directly or indirectly assumed this role where other activists were absent, or have added their voice to strengthen activism where it was already operating. The orientation to language use should depend not on prejudices, as has been the case where mother tongues are concerned, but on the attitudes and especially the expectations existing in communities and countries. This message seems to have been promoted and heard, and Bible translation organizations can help further in this area.

Among enlightenment activities that have worked, we may mention class-room lectures, seminars, workshops and conferences to help positively re-orient the cognitive experiences and emotive tendencies of people towards their indigenous languages. These activities have insisted that it is a violation of linguistic rights to be denied the opportunity to acquire an education or to communicate in one’s mother tongue and that people should strive to be competent and literate in their mother tongues. The use of mother tongues in educating children enhances cognitive development and intellectual capacity, creativity and manipulative ability (UNESCO 1953; Chumbow 1990).

Enlightenment activities have provided a forum to affirm that, contrary to what some have claimed, competence in mother tongues does facilitate second language learning (Cummins 1981), and that although international language learning and use may be good in certain functional activities (inter-ethnic, official, education and globalization), it hinders effective social mobilization and the effective expression of local nuances, cultural events and feelings and emotions. Such enlightenment activities have helped inform audiences that multilingualism is an asset rather than a liability to a nation if its linguistic resources are planned. It can be positively harnessed for the pro-motion of national unity and progress. The primacy of an individual’s mother tongue is thus affirmed as it needs to be, without denying the important com-plementary role of second languages (European languages).

Among various assertions of linguistic rights in Africa that are help-ing efforts is the Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literatures of 2000. This states that all African children have the inalienable right to attend school and learn their mother tongues, that the effective and rap-id development of science and technology in Africa depends on the use of African languages, that African languages are vital for the development of democracy, and that these languages are essential for the decolonization of African minds.


But even prior to the Asmara Declaration, Article 1(3) of the Cameroo-nian Constitution (Law #96–06 of 18 January 1996) states that “The offi-cial languages of the Republic of Cameroon shall be English and French, both languages having same status. The State…shall endeavor to protect and pro-mote national languages.” Two years later, Law #98/004 of 14 April 1998 (Article 4, sub. 4) encouraged the promotion of national languages within the general education mission. Article 11 of the same law specifies that the State ensures the promotion and teaching of national languages “in its permanent effort to adapt the education system to the economic and socio-cultural reali-ties”. Earlier, Decree #98/003 of 8 January 1998 (Article 25), in reorganizing the Ministry of Culture, created a national languages service “to study strategies for promoting national languages in schools, at universities, and in the media.” This has resulted in the creation of an inspectorate of national languages in the Ministry of Education and the recruitment and training of 37 national language teachers who have recently been posted to schools to teach local languages.

This indicates that language activists have been at least somewhat suc-cessful in using the data at their disposal to further the interests of mother tongues. The erstwhile constitutional silence on Cameroonian languages commented on by Fonlon (1975:198) was corrected in the 1996 Constitu-tion and, sure enough, the local languages continue to assert themselves as vigorous living entities. To be sure, the religious factors that Fonlon men-tioned have been helpful. These include “the head-long drive of the Muslim religion southward, the integration of the Fulani herdsmen into the savannah communities” with the effect of spreading and reinforcing the Fulani lan-guage [fub], and “the bring-the-liturgy-down-to-the-people spirit born of the Second Vatican Council” among speakers of the Ewondo [ewo], Bulu [bum], and Duala [dua] languages, which made obligatory the intensive use of these languages in services by the Catholic Church and other religious denominations. But the attention paid to human rights and therefore to activ-ism to promote linguistic rights has also worked toward this progress, as have scientific studies that paint a positive and advantageous picture of mother tongues in education.

A UNESCO report (2008:12–13) lists five benefits of literacy that are manifest in the examples given above and that reinforce the existing tendency for efforts in mother tongue literacy in Africa.

(1) Human benefits, among them self-esteem and empowerment. In this regard, “[i]mproved self-esteem has been reported in studies of litera-cy programmes in both Africa and Latin America.”


(2) Economic benefits, including economic growth and returns on in-vestments: according to data from 1970 to 1990 for 44 countries in Africa, “literacy was among the variables with a positive effect on GDP per capita growth” (Cf. Naudé 2004).

(3) Political benefits, in particular “political participation, expansion of democracy, ethnic equality and amelioration of post-conflict situa-tions…increased participation in trade unions, community action and national political life, especially when empowerment is at the core of programme design.”

(4) Cultural benefits, “including cultural change and preservation of cul-tural diversity…Many programmes also aim to promote values such as equity, inclusion, respect for cultural diversity, peace and active democ-racy, although with limited success.”

(5) Social benefits affecting health, reproductive behavior, education and gender equality: “Bolivian women who attended literacy and basic education programs displayed gains in health-related knowledge and behavior.”

So it is no wonder that in Cameroon, an initiative of the National Association of Cameroon Language Committees (NACALCO), an organization encour-aging functional literacy, has produced many language committees that are working to promote the use of mother tongues. Its efforts have surely con-tributed to fostering the introduction of local languages into the education system.

6. Conclusion

As can be seen from the above, at the present time when human rights have gained recognition in Africa, and in the light of important pronounce-ments such as the Asmara Declaration, Bible translation organizations are seizing the opportunity to take up their mission of language promotion through promoting literacy. They will need to broaden their efforts to assume a greater role in enhancing the recognition of mother tongues and their effective use in education in Africa. A few suggestions have been proposed in this paper. If they are deemed affordable, they would need to be examined and evaluated for adoption. The examples of the Bible Societies of Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and Burkina Faso may be pointers in this regard.


Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was published as “Bible translation and attitudes to-ward local language policies of the Church and governments in Africa” in Bessong, Dieudonné P. Aroga (ed.). 2010. Sociolinguistics, literacy and Bible translation in Africa, 27–41. Yaoundé: Éditions CLÉ. Unfortunately, Dr. Bessong passed away while the present volume was being prepared for publication.

2. Many such publications can be listed in Cameroon alone, for instance: the first New Testament was published in Duala in 1857–61, the first Bible in the same language in 1872. Then came the Bibles in Bulu (1940), Masana (1960) and Bali/Mungaka (1961). These were followed by the New Testaments in Fulfulde/Fulani (1963), and Mousgoum (1964), the Bibles in Bassa (1969) and Beti (1970), the New Testaments in Mboum (1965), Mofa (1965), Bamileke Medumba (1967), Bamun (1967), and Gbaya Yayiwe (1968). Then came the New Testament in Fali (1975, SIL), the Bibles in Mafa (1978), Fulfulde (1983), Mundang (1983) and Bamun (1988).

The New Testaments in Arab Choa (1981), Guidar (1986), Pere (1985), Peve (1986), Kapsiki (1988), Zulgo (1988, SIL) and Tupuri (1988) followed, as well as the Bi-ble in Mafa (1989), the New Testaments in Matal (1989), Tikar (1989), Koonzime (1990, SIL), Lamso (1990, SIL), Dooyayo (1991 SIL), and Pidgin (2000).

After these came the Bibles in Bamileke Mendumba (1992), Ngambai (1993), Gbaya (1995), and the New Testaments in Podoko (1992), Daba (1992), Yamba (1992, SIL), Babungo (1993, SIL), Nzakambay (1994), Lamnso (1994), Musey (1996), Ejagham (1996, SIL /CABTAL), Guiziga (1996) and Bafia (1996). Then came the Bibles in Masana (2003), Tupuri (2004), the new Bible in Bulu (2009), the New Testaments in Dii (2000), Samba (2001), Pidgin (2001), Bamileke Banjoun (2002), Samba (2002, LBT), Limbum (2003, SIL), Kom (2005, SIL) and Ngyemboon (2005, SIL /CABTAL), Kwanja (2006 LBT), Mofu Nord (2005) and Vute (2008 LBT).

3. This information was obtained from personal communication with Boureima Oue-draogo, the director of ANTBA.

References

Chumbow, Beban Sammy. 1990. The place of the mother tongue in the national policy of education. In E. N. Emenanjo (ed.), Multilingualism, minority languages and lan-guage policy in Nigeria, 61–72. Agbor: Central Books and Linguistic Association of Nigeria.

Cummins, Jim. 1981. Bilingualism and minority-language children. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Fonlon, Bernard Nsokika. 1975. The language problems in Cameroon: A historical per-spective. In D. R. Smock & K. Bentsi-Enchill (eds.), The search for national integra-tion in Africa, 189–205. London: Collier Macmillan.

Muthwii, Margaret Jepkirui. 2004. Language planning and literacy in Kenya: Living with unresolved paradoxes. Current Issues in Language Planning 5(1): 34–50.


Naudé, W. A. 2004. The effects of policy, institutions and geography on economic growth in Africa: An econometric study based on cross-section and panel data. Journal of International Development 16: 821–849.

Obemeata, Joseph O. 2002. Language of instruction. Independent Newspaper. 4 August 2002.

Stromquist, Nelly P. 2005. The political benefits of adult literacy. Background paper for EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/ 001461/146187e.pdf.

Stumpf, Rudolf. 1979. La politique linguistique au Cameroun de 1884 à 1960. Bern: Peter Lang.

Tadadjeu, Maurice. 1987. Le facteur linguistique du project social camerounais. Journal of West African Languages 17: 23–34.

UNESCO. 1953. African languages and English in education. UNESCO Educational Studies and Documents No. II. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO. 2003. United Nations literacy decade 2003–2012. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/education-building-blocks/literacy.

UNESCO. 2008. International literacy statistics: A review of concepts, methodology and current data. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

United Bible Societies. 2000. Directions from Midrand. UBS World Assembly Minutes, Appendix 8.

United Bible Societies. 2004. Newport Declaration. UBS: Reading. United Bible Societies. 2009b. http://intranet.biblesocieties.org/fr/if-i-had-been-

ashamed-come-i-wouldnt-have-learned-read-and-write-%2813-mar-09%29–0.

5. The Nuba Moro literacy program

eDwarD riaK KaJivora

Bible Society in South Sudan

1. Introduction1

The literacy rate in Sudan and South Sudan2 is very low, especially for the African tribes living in rural areas. Pre-secession Sudan had an overall adult literacy rate of about 70% in 2009, while according to one source, the rate of literacy in South Sudan is as low as 13.4%, which means that 86.6% of the population have not seen the blackboard.3 A few educated members of the tribes and the Churches at large have embarked on a literacy campaign, teaching the children and adults to read and write in their languages. Some qualified teachers have left their careers with the government in order to teach their own people. It is a fight against illiteracy. The Nuba, who live in the midst of Arab and Islamic influence, have been struggling to open the eyes of their people, with few resources but successfully. The most important thing they preach to their people is that unless they preserve their language, they will lose their culture, and their children and grandchildren will be slaves to other cultures.

“At last, now I know how to read and write my name like the effendi (official) there in a maktab (office),” commented Kuku Kanyar, a 65-year-old Nuba Moro man, after attending three years of literacy classes in Khar-toum. The Nuba Moro Literacy Program, in collaboration with the Bible Society of Sudan, was established in 2005 after the Moro realized that their language and culture is under threat and would eventually die if nothing is done to preserve it. With the help of the Bible Society of Sudan, the project is progressing steadily and has started to change the lives and attitudes of the people concerned.

92 tHe nuBa Moro literacy prograM

Figure 5.1. Map of Sudan, South Sudan and the Nuba Mts. (used courtesy of WorldShare).

2. Background on the Nuba Moro people

The Nuba Moro [ISO: mor] are the largest group among the 99 Nuba ethnic groups in the Nuba Mountains (south Kordofan region of Sudan). History tells us that the Nuba were pushed from Dongola many centuries ago by the Arabs who had occupied and settled in the area. As the Nuba moved south-wards, some took refuge in what is known today as the Nuba Mountains, while others moved still further southwards. Those who settled in the moun-tains developed their own distinct dialects, though in some cases there are some slight similarities. Each mountain became like an independent state with its own administration, language and culture. Thus, the Moro tribe seized the Moro Hills in the eastern part of Kadugli and settled there; eventually they came to be known as the Nuba Moro.

The population of the Nuba Moro today is estimated to be over 200,000, but they are not keen to accept this guesstimate, believing that their number

Edward Riak Kajivora 93

is actually twice as high. Due to the unstable situation prevalent in the coun-try, no accurate census has taken place for a long time. (The first real census was taken in 1956.) In actual fact, the overall population size of the country has always been merely estimated, and generally all the ethnic groups in the country dispute the estimation of their numbers.

The Moro language orthography was developed in the 1930s by mis-sionaries in the area, paving the way for the translation of the New Testament in 1965 by the Bible Society in Sudan. The educational system in the area lagged behind and people were taught to read just for the sake of reading the Gospel. After independence from colonial rule in 1956, Arabic became the dominant language and pupils using their mother tongue were punished by flogging. In Kadugli and other towns in the Nuba Mountains, those using local languages were considered “ahali”, primitive and undeveloped, so the Nuba languages began to fade away.

During the 21 years of civil conflict, the Nuba Moro and other tribes affected by war were displaced from their ancestral land. Half of the popu-lation fled northwards to big cities such as Khartoum, Medani, Port Sudan, etc., where they lived in abject poverty in camps for displaced persons. Other Moro people moved southwards and joined the rebel movement, the SPLA. The migration northwards created a major problem for this society. Mixing with Arab Muslims who have a strong Islamic culture, many of the Moro, es-pecially the younger generation, were exposed to cultural annihilation. They soon began to forget their culture and language and to lose the roots of their ancestors, since all the schools in the displacement camps are run in the Ar-abic language and students are not supposed to speak any language except Arabic. Moreover, a system was introduced where a small object was passed daily to whoever used another language in the course of that day. At the end of the day, those who had been passed the object were punished by public lashing as a lesson to the whole school, particularly to those who use their dialects in the school.

3. The Moro Language Literacy program

It is under such circumstances that the Moro Language Literacy program was born. The main objectives of the Nuba Moro Literacy project are to:

a) print materials and encourage the community to register in literacy classes;

b) preserve the Moro culture and language by producing literature for them to read and writing down their history and culture;

94 tHe nuBa Moro literacy prograM

c) train Moro people to read and write the Moro language so that they would be able to read the Bible in their language;

d) preserve Christianity in the Moro community from the encroaching Islamic influence;

e) encourage the youth in big cities and towns to read, speak and write in their own language.

The project has already achieved a lot, but more still needs to be accom-plished. So far the project has established 19 literacy classes in the Khartoum area. In the Nuba Mountains, literacy classes are run in primary schools with the full agreement of the local government. Two church schools offer free classrooms for literacy training. One training institute, the Isaac Kuku Acade-my, has been established to train literacy teachers. 23 teachers from the Nuba Mountains and 26 from Khartoum have undergone training in this college. More training is taking place to prepare teachers for literacy in various other centers.

Besides developing teaching staff, much attention has also been paid to developing resources. 40,000 literacy books have been produced and 12,000 Scripture portions have been printed and distributed. The project has also purchased desks, chairs, benches, blackboards and other necessities for the program. These items will be distributed in all the literacy centers in the Nuba Mountains.

It is worth mentioning that many people are joining the literacy classes in Khartoum and the Nuba Mountains. Through the literacy program many people, both old and young, can now write and read as a preparation to re-ceive the forthcoming Bible. Many people are coming to know Christ better through the impact of the literacy program as well. Risala Nooha, a literacy class student and mother of six children, could not believe herself when she read the trial edition of the book of Genesis. Her family moved to Khartoum in the early 1990s when the war reached their area. What struck her most was the story of Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Genesis 28). She confessed that she had never heard this story before even in church sermons. Since she is looking forward to return to her homeland in the Nuba Mountains, the vow that Jacob made to the Lord struck her with particular force, especially verse 21: “[If you]…bring me safely home again, you will be my God” (CEV).

Risala praised the Lord and vowed to buy her own copy of the Bible and read it from Genesis to Revelation in her mother tongue. She wants her chil-dren to speak and write the Moro language too. “My children seem to have gotten lost in the years we have been in Khartoum,” she lamented.

Edward Riak Kajivora 95

Angelo Ali, the director of the Nuba Moro Literacy Program was for-merly Deputy Headmaster of the Senior Secondary School in Khartoum. He revealed to me the reason why he resigned from his post to come and lead this literacy project. His colleagues at the Ministry of Education had always been telling him that in 15 years, all of the local languages, especially those in the Nuba Mountains, will die and be replaced by the Arabic language. “What they said was practically coming true,” he said, “and I felt obliged to take responsibility for reviving our language. I am happy that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Now I am confident that our language will never die till Christ comes!”

Notes

1. An earlier version of this vignette was published in 2010 as “Ambitious literacy proj-ect is changing lives and attitudes of Nuba people” in Bessong, Dieudonné P. Aroga (ed.), Sociolinguistics, literacy and Bible translation in Africa, 147–151. Yaoundé: Éditions CLÉ.

2. Sudan divided into two parts on 9 July 2011. The southern part took the name Re-public of South Sudan while the northern part retains the original name Sudan.

3. The figure for the pre-secession Sudan literacy rate comes from the United Nations Human Development Report—http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/map—while the sig-nificantly lower number for South Sudan was given by the 2008 Global Report, as reported by the Citizen Newspaper of South Sudan (15 October 2011).

Part III. The Americas

6. Bible translation and language preservation: The politics of the nineteenth century Cherokee Bible translation projects

paMela Jean owens

Retired Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha

1. Introduction1

In the common thinking of religious persons, one likely would consider that the purpose of any Bible translation is simply to place the Scriptures into the hands of a community which lacks the written word of God in its own lan-guage or which is in need of a better translation. Persons involved in Bible translation itself, however, know that Bible translations often become much more significant events in the language history of a people than the initial translators might have anticipated. The early nineteenth century translations of the New Testament and parts of the Old into Cherokee proved to be such events: beyond the mere placing of texts in the hands of contemporary believers, the various translation projects and the translations they produced became highly political and politicized acts which would help to ensure the survival of the Cherokee language and, ultimately, the continued sovereignty of the Cherokee people.

For some thousands of years prior to colonization, the Cherokee had occupied a sizeable share of what is now the southeastern quadrant of the United States. Cherokee territory covered the intersection of North Caroli-na, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, and spread across the Smokey Mountains for vast areas into each of those states. To the South were the

100 19tH century cHeroKee BiBle translation

Muskogean peoples of the Creek Confederacy and Seminole; to the west, the Chickasaw; and to the southwest, the Choctaw.

The Cherokees are linked in American history with their four southeast-ern neighbors as the “Five Civilized Tribes,” all forcibly removed to Indian Territory by Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. In reality, however, the Cher-okees’ origin was to the north, among the Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes area. The Cherokee language is related to the Iroquoian languages of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy tribes and is considered lin-guistically to be the only surviving representative of a southern branch of Iroquoian. Whether the branch once had other representatives is no longer known; Cherokee itself exists today in several dialects, but the dialects are mutually intelligible and do not represent distinct languages (Grimes 2003).2 Cherokee is a highly complex language, built on what one may conveniently, if not completely accurately, term “verbal roots,” by analogy to Semitic lan-guages. The analogy was readily apparent to early missionaries among the Cherokee. For example, Baptist missionaries Evan Jones and Thomas Roberts noted to their surprise that “the construction of the language bears a striking resemblance to the Hebrew. Every modification of the verb being made by prefixes and suffixes.”3

Prior to colonization, the Cherokees were already a settled people, agri-cultural, staunchly matrilineal, and clan based (like all Iroquoian peoples), liv-ing in villages with well-constructed dwellings, and having a well-developed ritual and ceremonial life.4 They were hospitable to intermarriage with the Scots-Irish fur traders and trappers who frequented the Smokey Mountains, and Cherokee families took for granted that a woman’s white husband was welcome in their community.

2. The Cherokee and Christianity

The “mountain men” did not as a rule press Christianity on the Chero-kee people and, prior to 1799, Cherokee chiefs rejected all overtures by missionaries to bring the white man’s religion to their people, despite the repeated attempts of English-speaking Anglicans and Presbyterians and Ger-man-speaking Moravians. The missionaries, at least initially, found little sup-port from the white husbands, who had not been especially religious prior to joining the Cherokee and were not inclined to become the representative of religion after the fact.

A typical Cherokee response was that of the respected chief Yâ’nû-gûñ’ski “Drowning-bear,” the acknowledged chief of all the Cherokees living in the old Kituhwa country, location of the ancient council fire of the Cherokee

Pamela Jean Owens 101

people (in English transliteration he became the Chief Junaluska whose name now graces a popular church-related camp and conference grounds in North Carolina). Yâ’nû- gûñ’ski had always counseled peace and friendship with the whites, but he had long rebuffed the missionaries and remained, to his death, extremely suspicious of their intentions. James Mooney and others report that the great chief refused to allow the white man’s Scripture to be read to his people until he had heard it himself. According to Mooney, after the first Bible translations were begun using the Sequoyan syllabary, someone brought a copy of the Gospel of Matthew from New Echota. Al-though Mooney does not report many details of the incident, it seems likely that what arrived was a copy of the new bilingual Cherokee newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, which was being published at New Echota. In 1828, after hearing one or two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew read aloud to him in Cherokee, Yâ’nû-gûñ’ski is said to have responded, “Well, it seems to be a good book; strange that the white people are not better after having had it so long” (Mooney 1992:163).5

The Moravians had visited the Cherokee in 1735, 1753, and 1783, to no avail. Finally in 1798, after experiencing success among some of the north-ern tribes, including the Delaware, the Moravians tried again. This time they made an effort to learn a bit about what the Cherokee people already be-lieved. The Moravians were pleased to find out the Cherokee had a word which seemed to the missionaries to reference a supreme God, “Utajah,” translated roughly (in the missionaries’ understanding) “a great man who dwells above.” The Moravians also discovered that over the years some of the chiefs who had been to Washington to sign peace treaties with the new nation (including Arcowee, the former war chief of the Upper Towns), had become convinced that the whites had a book of great power and secrets, containing the hidden words which made them so strong. The chiefs understood that the whites called this book “God’s Word.” Arcowee and others among the chiefs were interested in learning these secrets of the white man’s power, and they had heard rumors that this was what the missionaries wanted to bring to them. They wanted, in the words of Arcowee, “the great book from which they can learn all things.”6 Arcowee and the other Cherokee chiefs sought in the Bible the source of the white man’s seeming ability always to come out the winner in Indian/White affairs. The missionaries were only too glad to interpret this completely political motive of the Cherokee as a true spiritual awakening.

Though he was not entirely right in his understanding of what the missionaries wanted to bring, Arcowee was not entirely wrong either. The missionaries did want to bring God’s Word, which they did see as being full


of power. From a twenty-first century perspective, one might argue that the nineteenth century Cherokee view of that power was more nearly on target than might appear. Through the entire nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, civilization and Christianity were considered by most adherents of Western Christianity to be synonymous. Therefore, one might well claim (and numerous Indian scholars have made such a claim) that the power of western civilization, i.e., the force behind all the white man could do, did indeed derive from the Bible. Most particularly, the white man himself (male gender intended) took his colonizing mandate from his understanding of the first chapter of Genesis, i.e., the mandate to subdue and dominate all creation and all creatures, most assuredly including the American savage (Deloria 2004; McPherson 1998). When the Cherokee chiefs understood that the white man drew his authority and thus his pow-er to do what he did from the Bible, they were, at least in a certain sense, quite correct.

3. The quest for a Cherokee orthography

To bring God’s Word to the Cherokee required deciding which language to use, and the early missionaries differed widely in their approach to the Chero-kee language. Some, like the Moravians, tried for many years to learn the lan-guage and failed, blaming their lack of success on the presumed deficiencies of the language itself. The Moravians finally decreed that the Cherokee language was incapable of expressing abstract thought. From the Moravian viewpoint, before the Cherokee could be evangelized, they must be civilized; civilization included learning to speak and read English. On the other hand, the Mora-vians were unwilling to invest in building the schools which the Cherokee wanted without a core of native Christians worthy of educating. Ultimately this conflicted vision of their Cherokee mission doomed the Moravian effort to failure.7

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, missionary activity was flourishing around the globe. As part of this work, linguists on both sides of the Atlantic were working on ways to write the many new native languages they were encountering, languages the missionaries called “savage.” One dif-ficulty missionaries encountered was the discovery that the native languages had sounds lacking in the languages of the would-be translators. Moreover, when the linguists in the field tried to write the language as they heard it, they each represented native language sounds with letters as they were used to represent sounds in the linguist’s own language, whether that language was English, German, French, Spanish, or Portuguese.


The linguistic dilemma of matching sound to symbol prompted work in Europe and in America which would lead indirectly toward a Phonetic Alphabet. One very early laborer in this task was John Pickering, a Boston lawyer and linguist. Pickering’s father, Timothy Pickering, was known for his checkered career with the Federalist Party in New England and had served, among other posts, as an ambassador and treaty negotiator with the Six Na-tions of the Iroquois Confederacy. As a young man, John had accompanied his father on diplomatic visits and had learned the basics of the Iroquoian language systems. The younger Pickering became fascinated with philology and is celebrated as the chief founder of American comparative philology and as one of the founders and the first president of the American Oriental Society (Pickering 1887; Wolfe 1921).

Pickering observed that the proliferation of idiosyncratic systems for writ-ing newly “discovered” languages was resulting in complex sets of represen-tations unique to every recorder’s needs but unintelligible to other linguists. Seeking a solution to this growing dilemma for Bible translators and other students of the various indigenous peoples of the world, he determined that the goal of linguistic work must include the adoption of a Uniform Orthog-raphy for the Indian Languages of North America. Pickering published a paper on the subject in 1820; in it he revealed his fear, quoting his colleague, DuPonceau, that “every man, however little qualified, ‘will think himself ad-equate to the task of inventing new characters and will delight to display himself in that way’” (Pickering 1820:38–39).

In those early years of philology, Pickering worked on his Native Or-thography project with the cooperation and encouragement of linguists at the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, although his own private goals were far broader than theirs. Pickering felt it imperative that the Americans develop a uniform way to represent the languages of their own indigenous peoples, since “various nations of Europe have already pub-lished and will continue to publish books respecting the American Indians and their languages, either with a view to the information of the learned or to the propagation of the Christian religion.” For this reason, “it is extremely desirable, that such a common orthography [emphasis in the original] as I have mentioned should be adopted.” Pickering saw the advantage of collabora-tion among missionaries but, as a scholar, he also recognized “the important advantage of being enabled to discover at once by the eye, etymologies and affinities in the Indian dialects, which with our present orthography are only discernible by the ear” (Pickering 1820:10).

In the meantime, the Moravians’ conclusion that the Cherokee language could not express theological concepts was proven wrong. Missionaries from


the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Methodists, and the ABCFM found that mixed-blood Cherokees who were already bilingual were able to translate Christian sermons, lessons, and even Bible readings, delivered in English by the missionaries, into Cherokee for their full-blood, non-English-speaking relatives. These nineteenth century biracial individuals, living between two worlds much as biracial persons do today, effectively and efficiently accom-plished with their bilingual skills what the Moravian missionaries had declared to be impossible.

With the assistance of such “interpreters,”8 the missionaries began by the early 1820s to win full-blood, monolingual Cherokee converts. In this early period of Protestant Missions, the missionaries began sending their brightest students to America to attend college in New England and then return to as-sist in evangelization in their native lands. In the case of the American Indian missions, these were often mixed-blood students who were already bilingual and, at least to some extent, bicultural. The young Native Christians received a classical education at the Cornwall Mission School in Connecticut and the most promising were then admitted to Andover Seminary, where they stud-ied the biblical languages and texts alongside their white brethren in Christ (Perdue 1983:6–10; McLoughlin 1984:139–140).

Seeing the Cherokee as the most dedicated, and the most “civilized” of the American Indians, Pickering decided to make the Cherokee language his test case for developing a uniform orthography. Working with a young mixed-blood Cherokee convert named David Brown, Pickering began his attempt to construct a Cherokee alphabet using English letters. Also working on the project was the missionary Daniel Buttrick. By 1823, the team had the begin-nings of a writing system and were at work compiling a Cherokee grammar (Bass 1936:13–14 and many others, including McLoughlin).

4. Sequoyah’s writing system

Hundreds of miles from the work proceeding in New England, however, and (at least according to legend) with no knowledge of written English and no particular interest in the Bible or Christianity, a Cherokee genius, Sequoyah, was also working on writing his language.9 While other tribes of the western hemisphere including the Maya, the Aztec, the Delaware, and (according to oral tradition) the Chippewa, long ago in a time lost to memory, had developed hieroglyphic writing systems that might be seen as parallels of Egyptian, Sequoyah produced a syllabary, a type of alphabet which worked linguistically something like the ancient Babylonian syllabary.


In Sequoyah’s syllabary, each syllable combination of consonant and vowel in the spoken Cherokee language was represented by a unique symbol in the written system. The Babylonians had borrowed a writing system developed for Sumerian and then used it to represent their much different language, requiring many modifications and complications, so that eventually their syllabary had hundreds of symbols and could be mastered only by persons who devoted their entire life to the study of writing. Sequoyah, on the other hand, was able to represent his entire language with a mere 86 characters. Cherokee is a meticulous, economical language which uses few individual word bases, a contained system of sounds, and a precise system for elabo-rating each word base. Cherokee verbs are short phrases that tell not only what happened, but also specify when and how. Nouns are descriptive: for example, a horse is so gwi li “he carries heavy things.” Cherokee verb forms are complicated, but highly informative. Besides person, number, and time elements, a verb form tells the hearer whether the speaker experienced the event firsthand or is relaying information received from another (Pulte & Feeling 1975).10 Once Sequoyah had developed his syllabary of 86 charac-ters, each representing a different combination of sounds, it very quickly became clear that he had found the most efficient way to represent his native Cherokee language.

As the story goes,11 once Sequoyah had perfected his system, his daughter became his first student. Together they traveled the nation demonstrating the power of what they called the “Talking Leaves.” It did not take long for peo-ple to be convinced of the power of an easily learned written language, and Sequoyah’s system spread rapidly. Unlike written English, which could take years for even a fluent speaker to learn, the system of Sequoyah was so perfect a representation of the language that a native Cherokee speaker required only a few days to learn the syllabary and become a proficient reader and writer of the language.

With the invention of the Sequoyan syllabary, all of the missionary work toward writing Cherokee in an English-based orthography was abandoned. According to Pickering’s daughter, he and other linguists (including DuPon-ceau and von Humboldt) saw the syllabary as a tragedy for linguistic science, since it cut short their attempt to record Cherokee in the adjusted phonetic/alphabetic orthography that would allow them to compare it to other world languages (Pickering 1887). Now that ordinary monolingual Cherokees could read their own language in a symbolic system devised by one of their own scholars, literacy spread rapidly. But readers need books, and no written literature in Cherokee yet existed.


5. Initital Bible translation efforts

Surely pleasing the missionaries beyond their wildest dreams, and confirming all their hopes, one of the first books to be demanded was the Bible. Now as Christian Cherokees heard passages of Scripture translated, they could write them down and pass them around. Men like John Arch who had been serving as regular interpreters for the missionaries furnished copies of favorite pas-sages of Scripture to be copied and shared (Mooney 1992:110; Bass 1936: 36–37). The demand grew quickly for a translation of the whole Bible. Ac-cording to Mooney (1992), the first manuscript portion of the Scripture to circulate in handwritten copies was a portion of the Gospel of John, translated from English by John Arch.

David Brown, already known to his people as a Cherokee student work-ing on writing their language, was commissioned by the Cherokee National Council to make an official translation of the New Testament. As a ministe-rial student, Brown worked not from English, as the interpreters were doing when they translated for the missionaries as they preached, but rather from the Greek and Hebrew he had learned at Andover. To confirm the accuracy of his Cherokee, the missionary-educated multilingual Brown had the help of George Lowrey, an important Cherokee chief and an early convert to Christianity. Within a year they were finished with the New Testament and by 1825 the manuscript began circulating widely.12 Even before Brown’s work was completed, however, John Arch had finished his translation of the New Testament into Cherokee, translated from the English Bibles brought by the missionaries, but with the characteristic Cherokee turns of phras-es and interpretive glosses for which John Arch had become known in his translations of missionary sermons. Both Brown and Arch’s efforts circulat-ed as fast and as widely as they could be recopied and distributed to eager readers.

For the first time in history an evangelized people were reading the New Testament translated by their own kinsmen, into their own language, using a writing system developed, refined, and popularized entirely as their own. As has happened countless times in history, new Christians reading the Bible in their own language and making their own inspired interpretations struck fear into the hearts of church leaders back in New England. Surely such hastily made translations would be “bungled” and full of errors. Quickly the American Board dispatched a missionary trained in linguistics, Samuel Worcester, to minister to the Cherokee and produce an authorized trans-lation. Worcester devoted the rest of his life to the Cherokee people, and


his translation is the only Cherokee language Bible widely available today. Worcester worked with the help of Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee who, like David Brown and John Arch, had been educated at the Cornwall School. Boudinot’s name at birth was Galagi’na, but at Cornwall he adopted the name of his patron, the president of the American Bible Society, Dr Elias Boudinot. The Cherokee Boudinot became the publisher and editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper of an American Indian nation, which he printed using both English and Cherokee stories and columns and in which he published Worcester’s NT translations chapter by chapter, as they were completed.13

In 1820, however, before the ABCFM had sent Worcester, the Baptists already had sent Evan Jones and his family, along with several other families, to work as teachers among the Cherokee. After the election of Andrew Jack-son and the passage of the Indian Removal Act, Jones and his son John (who was born in the Cherokee nation and learned Cherokee as his first language) became closely allied with Chief John Ross, the elected head of the Cherokee nation and the leader of the traditionalists. The Baptists, supporting the tradi-tionalists, are remembered among the Cherokee today as having been strong advocates of abolition and resolute opponents of removal. James Mooney, whose history remains the most accepted version by traditional Cherokee people, records Evan Jones as the first to be known among the Cherokee as a Bible translator, well established already when Worcester first arrived to learn the language. At the beginning, Jones saw Worcester as his brother in Christ and both men made every effort to be collaborative with one another in the translation endeavor. In the end, however, Jones’ translation came to be at odds with that of Worcester, and as a result, it is not the “authorized” one available in print today. In all of the confusion of versions, the David Brown and John Arch translations still circulated, but they were gradually eclipsed by the machine-printed copies of Worcester’s translation, which could be turned out in thousands.14

Even though the later translations were produced on missionary initia-tive, native Cherokee speakers could always read and write their language with more fluency than any missionary could achieve. This linguistic advan-tage meant that, unlike the case of most peoples evangelized after coloni-zation, the Cherokee themselves retained the final authority as to how the biblical translations would be worded in their native language. Ultimately Christianity came to the Cherokee on their own terms, not those of the mis-sionaries, just as receiving the missionaries into their territory had come about only when the Cherokee themselves were interested.


6. The Cherokee Bible as a tool for language presevation

As a result of removal, begun with the old settlers in the 1780s and completed with the Trail of Tears in 1838 and 1839 (when 16,000 remaining Cherokees were forced from their homeland in the southeast to Indian Territory in what would later become Oklahoma and Texas), the Cherokee language split into two main dialects. Those Cherokees who remained in the hills of North Carolina be-came linguistically separated from the larger number of the tribe, and over time their dialect diverged in significant ways. Today their descendants comprise the eastern branch of the Cherokee, recognized as a separate nation, but speakers of the two dialects generally can understand one another with little difficulty. Because of the renewed interest in cultural heritage that paralleled cultural revi-talization across Indian America in the last quarter of the twentieth century, more and more Cherokee people are learning their language, making it one of the few Native American languages that has an increasing number of speakers (Grimes 2003). Currently Cherokee is one of the most widely spoken languages native to North America; it is taught now in many Oklahoma public schools as well as in schools of the Eastern Band in North Carolina.15

One of the chief means of the preservation of the Cherokee language in times when it could not be spoken widely was the popularity of the Bible in Cherokee, as well as a body of hymns which were beloved by the people and which comforted them on the Trail of Tears. Even when they did not speak the language regularly, even when it was illegal to speak in a Native language, Cherokees still sang their beloved hymns as they rocked their babies and read their precious Bibles when they went to church.16

Today Cherokee scholars interpret the decision of the Cherokee Nation to adopt the syllabary, rather than develop an alphabet based on English, as having been ultimately an act of linguistic, cultural, political, and possibly even religious resistance, the long-term results of which we cannot even yet presume to know.17 By using the Sequoyan syllabary to record translations of the Bible, a book no oppressive power would dare to destroy, the nation assured itself of the survival of its language through even the worst of times.

Notes

1. The text of this article is reprinted with the permission of the original publisher from its 2006 publication in The Bible Translator 57(1): 1–10, with only section headings added for ease of reference.

2. Cherokee language information available at http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=chr.


3. From one of their “Letters from the Baptists’ missionaries among the Cherokee, 1818–1826,” as printed in the Latter Day Luminary (Philadelphia, 3:214). The apparent sim-ilarity of Cherokee to the word formation structure of Hebrew encouraged missionaries who were already disposed to view the Native American tribes as the descendants of the so-called “Lost Tribes of Israel.” This historically impossible, yet attractive, theory had been suggested by very early Puritan missionaries and preachers in the New England colonies and was believed to be true even by many Native Christians. The possibility, now known as fact, that the ancestors of the Native tribes had been in the Americas for millennia before the fall of Samaria (722 B.C.E.) apparently was not considered by the missionaries in their eagerness to fit the peoples of America into the descendants of the three sons of Noah, which they understood to be the white, yellow, and black races. As McLoughlin notes, it “gave a great incentive to missionary work to believe this, but it did not make Cherokee easier to master.” See his extended discussion of these Baptist missionaries’ comments on Hebrew in McLoughlin (1990: 35).

4. For this and other general information on Cherokee history mentioned in this arti-cle, see any standard history of the Cherokee, such as Woodward (1968). Also, see Mooney (1992), which contains the full texts of Myths of the Cherokee (1900) and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891) as published originally by the Bureau of American Ethnology.

5. One or two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew were printed in each issue of the Phoe-nix, followed by other gospels and parts of the Bible once Matthew was finished.

6. See McLoughlin (1984: 35–39; 1994: 12, 17–18, 20–21). McLoughlin discusses the vision which had come to Arcowee on the night before the Moravians arrived and shows how the meaning of the vision to the chief led to his acceptance of the mission-aries, but not on the terms the Moravians thought he was extending.

7. See McLoughlin’s extensive writings on the efforts of the various denominations in this regard.

8. For stories of Choctaw interpreters on the Trail of Tears, see Noley (1998). 9. The story of Sequoyah became the stuff of legends and, at this point, no certainty

exists about the precise facts of either his life or his linguistic efforts. Susan Kalter (2001) summarizes the arguments for the very real possibility that the true accom-plishment of Sequoyah was not inventing the syllabary but, rather, simplifying, de-mocratizing, and popularizing an extremely ancient writing system known to have been represented in treaties from the earliest time of contact between the Cherokee and the Europeans. Whether the syllabary was a new invention or merely the making of a system previously known only to a few available to the many, is actually, from the point of view of Bible translation, of minimal importance. The rapid spread of literacy among the Cherokee population is a certainty documented by history; the Cherokee demand for a Bible printed in the syllabary followed directly upon their achievement of literacy. Whether the syllabary was new or old, mass literacy was new in the 1820s and 1830s, and the Cherokee Bible was an immediate and enduring outcome.

10. One can hypothesize that this element of the Cherokee language, i.e., distinguishing experience from hearsay, is a prime reason why honesty and utter frankness are seen as prominent Cherokee personality traits even in the modern day. Missionaries or In-dian agents who were duplicitous found themselves quickly unwelcome in Cherokee country, as one discredited Presbyterian missionary learned (see McLoughlin 1984: 78–80 for the story of Gideon Blackburn).


11. See Mooney (1992: 219–220) for an early publication of the commonly accepted version of the Sequoyah story.

12. The degree to which the first translation actually was the work of David Brown, rather than the work of his collaborators in New England, is disputed. David’s sister Cath-erine was also a well-known linguist and was celebrated at the ABCFM as their first Cherokee convert. Her contributions to the volume likely were far more extensive than the public record, then or now, has noted.

13. See Bass (1936: 37–39) for the story of the Worcesters; Perdue (1983) for the writings of Boudinot on many topics.

14. See McLoughlin (1990) for the story of the rift that developed between the denom-inations. The issues were significant, both theologically and politically. For example, the support of slavery by the New Testament, allowed by Worcester and questioned by Jones, was only one of many important differences. Ultimately Worcester’s group is remembered as supporting the discredited “Treaty Party,” and going with them to Indian Territory somewhat voluntarily, while the Baptists stayed with the traditional-ists all the way until removal and accompanied them on the Trail of Tears.

15. James Estes, “How many indigenous American languages are spoken in the United States? By how many speakers?” Table 2, Indigenous Languages Spoken in the United States (by Number of Speakers). Updated Feb., 2002. National Clearing House for En-glish Language Acquisition, formerly the National Clearing House on Bilingual Educa-tion. Available electronically at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/expert/faq/20natlang.htm.

16. Author’s personal note: As a mixed-blood Cherokee, daughter and granddaughter of mixed blood women, I heard my grandmother sing the Cherokee songs she remem-bered from her mother as she was a child growing up in Texas in the 1910s. She recalled that her mother could “talk Indian real good,” but only did so “when our grandmother came to visit from Oklahoma.” Like many speakers of English as a second language, my great-grandmother probably avoided using her first language most of the time because she did not want her children to speak it by accident away from home. I did not learn to sing the songs, but I still recognize them as familiar when I hear them on recordings. I believe that my having grown up understanding myself as fully Indian, even though invisibly so beyond my family, came at least in part from having heard the language sung in my very earliest childhood memories. Neither my brother nor any of my cousins remembers hearing our grandmother singing in Indian, and they all think of themselves merely as “having some Indian blood.” The living reality of language, heard primarily in hymns sung as lullabies, created me, but not them, as fully Cherokee.

17. I thank Prof Susan Kalter, Illinois State University, for verifying to me that this has begun to be a widespread opinion among Cherokee scholars, confirming what I be-lieved was true but might have been reluctant to assert on my own. (Personal corre-spondence of April 28, 2002.)

References

Bass, Althea. 1936. Cherokee messenger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Deloria, Vine. 2004. God is red: A native view of religion. 30th anniversary edn. Golden,

Colo.: Fulcrum.


Grimes, Barbara F. (ed.). 2003. Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 14th edn. Dallas: SIL International.

Kalter, Susan. 2001. ‘America’s histories’ revisited: The case of Tell Them They Lie. American Indian Quarterly 25 (2001): 329–351.

McLoughlin, William G. 1984. Cherokees and missionaries, 1789–1839. New Haven: Yale University Press.

McLoughlin, William G. 1990. Champions of the Cherokees, Evan and John B. Jones. Princ-eton: Princeton University Press.

McLoughlin, William G. 1994. The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794–1870: Essays on acculturation and cultural persistence. (Walter H. Conser, Jr., ed.) Athens: University of Georgia Press.

McPherson, Dennis. 1998. A definition of culture. In Jace Weaver (ed.), Unforgotten gods. Mooney, James. 1992. James Mooney’s history, myths, and sacred formulas of the Cherokees.

Asheville, N.C.: Historical Images.Noley, Homer. 1998. The interpreters. In Jace Weaver (ed.), Unforgotten gods.Perdue, Theda (ed.). 1983. Cherokee editor: The writings of Elias Boudinot. Knoxville: Uni-

versity of Tennessee Press. Pickering, John. 1820. An essay on a uniform orthography for the Indian languages of North

America (Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences). Cambridge, MA: University Press/Hillard & Metcalfe. (Available electronically in page images at http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/mtq?doc=21080).

Pickering, Mary Orne. 1887. Life of John Pickering by his daughter. Boston: John Wilson & Son for private distribution.

Pulte, William & Durbin Feeling. 1975. Outline of Cherokee Grammar. Talequah: Chero-kee Nation of Oklahoma.

Weaver, Jace (ed.). 1998. Native American religious identity—Unforgotten gods. Maryk-noll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Wolfe, Samuel Lee. 1921. John Pickering. In The Cambridge history of English and Amer-ican literature (Vol. XVIII: American, Book III: Later National Literature, Part III, Chap. XXV: Scholars, section 6). New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Woodward, Grace. 1968. The Cherokees. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Additional reading

Carter, Samuel III. 1976. Cherokee sunset: A nation betrayed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.McLoughlin, William G. 1993. After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees’ struggle for sover-

eignty, 1839–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Nowak, Elke (ed.) 1999. Languages different in all their sounds: Descriptive approaches to

indigenous languages of the Americas, 1500–1850. Studium Sprachwissenschaft Behi-heft 31. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

Phillips, Joyce B. & Paul Gary (eds.). 1998. The Brainerd Journal: A mission to the Chero-kees, 1817–1823. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

7. The new Lakota Bible as anti-imperial translation

steve BerneKing

The Seed Company

1. Introduction1

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, I want to provide a synopsis of the new Lakota translation of the Bible, an ongoing Bible translation project based in Rapid City, South Dakota. This translation is one of the indigenous language projects with which I worked for several years as a biblical scholar and a Translation Consultant with the United Bible Societies. I want to share a bit of the history of that project, especially the objectives, as understood and described by the Lakota translators themselves. Second, I want to place this Bible translation project in the broader field of Translation Studies, defining it not only as a translation of the Bible, but more pointedly as a Native Amer-ican translation project, i.e., a translation done by natives, for natives. In that discussion, I will classify this translation as an example of what Arnold Krupat has called “anti-imperial translation” (Krupat 1996). To demonstrate that classification, I will draw three examples from this Lakota Bible.

The Lakota speakers who are currently translating the Bible into Lakota [ISO: lkt] are Christians, unapologetically so. Yet they are Lakota elders, tribal leaders, who also intend to maintain and preserve their primary heritage as La-kota Indians. This intention is clear in their words that describe the objective of the new Lakota Bible. These translators aim “to replace the white man’s Bible” (a Lakota Bible published in 1879) with “a Lakota Bible that draws from both our traditional spirituality and our Christian faith.” This “white man’s Bible,” i.e., the so-called missionary translation of the 19th century, silences their Lakota voice in the Bible by relying on white American-European

114 tHe new laKota BiBle as anti-iMperial translation

language, images, and worldview. It does not take into account the cultural aspects of language and communication, or the social-psychological nature of the Lakota frame or world-view. Like many of the missionary translations of the 19th century, it is formal in style, with a goal of having the King James Version of the Bible in Lakota.

The new Lakota translation, however, is about much more than simple choices of vocabulary taken from their “heart language”; rather, it is about those choices being their choices—choices of concepts, metaphors, images, and vocabulary that are taken directly and intentionally from their Lakota frame. These choices come from a place much deeper than the linguistic level alone. These choices derive from the place of cognition and social-psycholog-ical processing. Bella Brodzki (2007:4) provides a helpful formula with which to categorize the intention of this translation. In her book on translation as a means of cultural survival and cultural memory, she argues that translation at this level is

an intercultural as well as a translingual phenomenon, a transcultural as well as an interlingual process. Both trans, meaning “across” and inter, meaning “be-tween” are crucial to an understanding of [its] breadth [and its power].2

2. “Heart Language” as cultural translation: Bible translation and native writing

Above I used the phrase “heart language”. The role and importance of “heart language” in the field of Bible translation is nothing new. In fact, many Bible agencies that are involved in Bible translation include such a description in their mission statements. Bible translation traces this concept back to John Wyclif, who was criticized in the 1390s because he sought to make “the Bible common and open to the laity, and to women who were able to read, which used to be reserved only for literate and intelligent clergy.” A little over one hundred years after him, William Tyndale vowed to translate the Bible, so that “a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than the [the Pope] doest.” And the translators of the now 400-year-old King James Bible must have had it in mind when they asked in their preface:

How shall men meditate in that which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place.

Steve Berneking 115

More recently, contemporary pioneers who worked in Bible transla-tion—namely, Kenneth Pike, William Cameron Townsend, and Eugene Nida—championed the role of the native speakers and the goal of “heart language”.

Suffice it to say, however, that the phrase “heart language” is primarily restricted to the specific field of Bible Translation. Further, “heart language”, as we normally encounter the phrase in Bible Translation, is something that resides primarily on the lingual level.3 So, I want to propose that the concept behind the phrase “heart language” be considered in the broader field of Translation Studies. There, I believe, “heart language” becomes something much more than linguistic in nature.

To begin, let me state clearly my position: Bible Translation and, more broadly, Sacred Text Translation need to be located as sub-specialties within Translation Studies. The field of Translation Studies has been taking shape over the past several decades, but this paper is not the occasion to review that development or explore it further (see, e.g., Bassnet & Trivedi 1999; Gentzler 2001, 2008; Munday 2001; Venuti 2004; and Pym 2010). I will simply re-peat here Brodzki’s (2007:1–2) own claim in saying that we are “in the midst of a widespread rethinking of translation,” which can no longer be seen, she adds, “to involve only narrowly circumscribed technical procedures.”

In Translation Studies, the concept of “heart language” is sharpened with input from and interactions with other disciplines; some of these in-clude Cognition and Neuroscience Studies, Cultural Studies, and Postcolo-nial Studies. In such conversations, the notion of “heart language” is one that moves along a theoretical continuum of translation methods or theories. That theoretical continuum is described in Translation Studies with different names: Sameness-Otherness, Fidelity-Freedom, Accessibility-Authenticity, Domestication-Foreignness, aesthetics-ethics.

What I believe we as translator consultants working with indigenous language translation projects can bring to that theoretical discussion is field data—lots of it. My claim in this paper is that the Lakota Bible, when explored from within the field of Translation Studies, becomes much more than anoth-er example of the theoretical idea of “heart language” and operates at levels below that of the linguistic level alone. And so I turn to recent thinking in Translation Studies to guide that exploration.

For this exploration, I look at the recent writings of Arnold Krupat, pro-fessor of Global Studies and Comparative Literature at Sarah Lawrence Col-lege in Bronxville, NY. For several years, Krupat has written about Native American literature as a genre and native writing as an activity: its purpose, scope, and definition (for example, in Krupat 1989, 1996, 2002, 2009).


Krupat struggles, most recently, with how to characterize or situate native writing in the field of literature, especially North American literature. It is tempting, Krupat writes, “to think of contemporary Native American litera-ture as among the postcolonial literatures of the world” and, further, to see native writing as postcolonial (1996:30). This must be avoided, he argues, since there is not yet a “post-” to the colonial status of the Native American. They live in and write from a very different cultural place, no matter if we call that place one of “national imperialism” or “internal colonialism” or some other –ism. Native Americans, Krupat reminds us, still exist, by and large, in social and economic conditions that can be labeled “politically sustained subalternity.” He borrows that label from postcolonial and Marxist theories, which define it as marginalization, oppression, and limited accessibility to the social, political, and economic benefits otherwise enjoyed by those within the power structures of dominant society.

If, to follow Krupat’s argument, native writing cannot be categorized as “postcolonial” literature, another category is needed. He moves from his recognition of native Americans as “subaltern” and concludes that contem-porary native writing is “anti-imperial translation.”

Native writing is, by its very nature, anti-imperial translation. At its core, it is writing “against the grain of colonialism”; it is anti-imperial. Native writ-ing springs from a distinct social location, a place of being “the other,” where land-taking, culture-robbing, identity-forming comes at the hand of “the colonizer.” Further, in characterizing anti-imperial translation, Krupat inten-tionally uses the word “translation” in order to recall the historic and specific “acts of translative violence [that] marked the European colonization of the Americas from Columbus to the present.” He is recalling, linguistically, how Columbus “translated” names of places and individuals from known native names to Christian, European names. And more culturally, Krupat is recalling the more violent “translation” of that native culture from one “stranger” into one “civilized,” and from one “wild” to one “manageable.” So, I would ar-gue that Krupat cleverly reappropriates the term “translation” to name those tensions and differences that exist between contemporary Native American writing and writing from “the imperial center” (Krupat 1996:32).

For Krupat, clearly, anti-imperial translation is not translation in the nar-row sense of technical procedures; rather, it is translation understood as “cul-tural translation” or “cultural mediation.” This is translation, he writes, in which natives write from within the dominant culture, borrowing its written forms (e.g., novels, poems, short stories), but from the cultural and cog-nitive place that is powerfully affected by their native-ness. For the native writer, it is natural writing, in the most profound sense of the word. At the

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same time, it forces the reader, especially the non-native reader, to recognize “another form of life.” This dialogue between writer and audience reflects what Krupat suggests is the characteristic mark of anti-imperial translation: it assumes the transformation of both “target” and “source” text, culture, and practice. It is, in the case of native writing, “an adaptation and integration of Western forms into Native practice” (Siemerling 2005:63). In other words, what may seem as only a simple transfer of Native vocabulary into a non- Native, Western form is, at closer consideration, a profound cultural transla-tion or mediation of Western thoughts into a Native frame of reference. And the result is often unfamiliar, even tense and awkward…a sort of cognitive dissonance.4

Winfried Siemerling (2005:60) has described these awkward interactions and transformations as “cultural contact zones,” those intersections where there exists a “revisionary re-articulation of speech, thought, and conscious-ness of Natives [into the] contexts of European/Western language and writ-ing.” This is a phenomenon of consciousness and expression in which “Native cultures make [formerly] non-Native writing and languages their own from different angles and perspectives.”

3. The new Lakota Bible as “anti-imperial translation”

My claim in this paper is that the new, ongoing translation of the Bible into Lakota is an example of what Krupat has called “anti-imperial translation,” and what Siemerling suggests as a phenomenon of making “non-Native writ-ing and languages their own from different angles and perspectives.” Now, that claim must be demonstrated. And Krupat has stated clearly the need for proper methodology. He writes:

Anyone who would make the claim that a particular Native text in English should be read as an instance of cultural translation must offer a specific demonstra-tion of how that text incorporates alternate strategies, indigenous perspectives, or language usage that, literally or figuratively, make its “English” a translation in which traces of the “Indian” can be discerned. (Krupat 1996:38)

I am aware that Krupat had in mind Native writing in English. My claim and methodology comes from a different place. I will use examples from the translation of the Bible into Lakota in order to demonstrate, hopefully, that this translation is one in which “traces of the Indian can be discerned” on a far deeper level than language choice. I recall the aim of the Lakota Bible: this Lakota Bible is one that will perform as both a resistance to imperialism, i.e., the white, non-native Church, and an empowering of Lakota heritage.


There are approximately 20,000 Lakota speakers in South Dakota alone, 6,000 of whom are Lakota-only speakers. There are over 100,000 native Lakota people in the U.S. The audience for the Lakota Bible is significant, especially as the Lakota language is being studied, re-introduced, and taught in schools both on and off the Reservation Land (see Figure 1 for a map of the Great Sioux Reservation). The Lakota Bible Translation team, comprised of five native translators, has as its goal the publication of the New Testament plus Psalms and Proverbs, not only in print but also in an audio format. The team has also published three Scripture portions, theme-based collections of Scripture with devotionals by local pastors and tribal elders.

Figure 7.1. Territory of Great Sioux Reservation (Source: Wikimedia Commons, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Siouxreservationmap.png).

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3.1 The name of the Deity

My first example of the Lakota Bible as “anti-imperial translation” involves the name of the Deity. The Lakota translators have intentionally chosen to use the traditional Lakota name of the Deity instead of the name “God”. Past missionary movements across North America have colonized Indian people to assume that the word “God” is the appropriate gloss for traditional under-standings of the Deity. Even more troubling, the waves of violence—physical, social, and psychological—were more often than not carried out in the name of “God”. In an intentional strike against this violence—an anti-imperial strike—these Lakota translators are using the name Wak̇aƞṫaƞka. Wak̇aƞṫaƞka is the universal spiritual power, sometimes wrongly rendered in English “Creator” or “Great Spirit.” In Lakota spirituality, however, Wak̇aƞṫaƞka is not personified with any name. What Christians would refer to as “God” is understood as a spiritual force or energy that permeates all of creation and is manifest in numerous ways in the world around us at any given moment and in any given place.5 So, to assume that the name “God” is an appropriate gloss to translate Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka fully and culturally not only reflects some latent “imperial” attitude, it also negates and oppresses the deep understanding of Wak̇aƞṫaƞka for the Lakota people. Therefore, the choice of the Lakota trans-lators to bring Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka into the biblical text is an attempt to heal and to reconcile the brokenness in the history of their people.

3.2 The relation to the Deity

My second example also involves the Lakota understanding of Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka and comes from the book of Psalms. The Bible of our Judeo-Christian tradi-tion is filled with examples in which God is described in and granted human attributes. Anthropomorphically, God sees, walks, talks, fights. Further, God is said to demonstrate human emotions: love, hate, jealousy, anger. And, quite remarkably, humans can communicate to God the entire range of human feelings: love, fear, doubt, anger. Humans can argue with, command, remind, negotiate with, and even ignore God in our biblical tradition.

Few places in the biblical canon are as filled with the joy and angst of this human/God encounter as the book of Psalms. Even the traditional genres or categories of the psalms reflect such a range of emotion: praise, lament, complaint, thanksgiving. It is precisely this open and frank dialogue between human and God that troubles the Lakota translators when working with the psalms. Because Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka is not engaged anthropomorphically as the Christian “God” is in the Psalms, the translators have a difficult time getting into Psalms…almost to the point of despair and abandoning the translation of


Psalms. My examples are from two places in the Psalter (both cited according to the NJPS translation):

Psalm 57:1 Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in You I seek refuge.

Psalm 90:13,14 Turn, O Lord! How long? Show mercy to Your servants. Satisfy us at daybreak with your steadfast love that we may sing for joy all our days.

How is it, the Lakota translators ask, that humans can demand anything from God, especially mercy? No Lakota, they noted, would or even could speak to Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka with such boldness. In their translation of the Psalms into Lakota, they needed a transcultural and translingual alternative, so they employed the female deferential command enclitic marker ye in these and other psalms. That positioned the psalmist in these psalms as a female, there-by softening the rhetoric from a blatant command addressed to Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka to an earnest, heartfelt plea of desperation. Here are these examples from the Lakota translation, along with word-for-word renderings plus the enclitic markers.

Psalm 57:1Uƞṡimala ye, Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka, have pity female deferential command Wak ̇aƞṫaƞka

uƞṡimala ye.have pity female deferential command

Inakijiƞyaƞ el ċiu welo.defense in/for I come to you male statement

Psalm 90:13,14 Tohaƞyaƞ niċaƞzekiƞ kta hwo? How long are you angry potential male question

Niṫawowaṡi ki lena uƞṡiuƞlapi ye.Your workers the these be kind to us female deferential command

Ihihaƞni iyohila wouƞṡila uƞk’upi ye. Morning each one mercy show/give female deferential command

Heċel wiyuṡkiƞyaƞ uƞlowaƞpi na So that happily sing and

ċaƞte waṡteya niuƞk’uƞpi ktelo.heart in a good way live potential

Their solution, I would argue, shows a particular theology of their spirituality, interpreting and translating these texts in their own way, thereby “making them their own.”

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3.3 The ritual of consecration

My third and final example of the Lakota Bible as “anti-imperial translation” concerns the translation of the name of the ritual we normally label “anoint-ing,” i.e., the application of oil or some liquid to consecrate something or someone to a special and/or holy purpose. This example involves a story. During one visit with the Lakota team, we were reading texts and discussing key biblical terms and how they are best rendered into Lakota. Reference was made to the ritual we label “anointing.” When the Lakota word that had been glossed as “anoint” was read aloud, I heard giggling among the reviewers. Knowing that this reaction called for some explanation, I asked.

The people there told me that the Lakota verb that was used to translate “anoint” was funny in that context. It is not that the verb is an uncom-mon one; quite the contrary. Lakota uses that verb frequently, but almost exclusively as a verb of food preparation; the verb belongs to the culinary domain. In other words, the Lakota verb used for “anoint” actually referred to rubbing oil on something that was to be cooked or grilled, in this case, the apostles. The Lakota verb ipáṫaƞṫaƞ “to apply oil on something” was used quite innocently by the missionaries. The linguistic transfer was understand-able: the missionaries needed a verb to translate “putting oil on something”; Lakota has a verb; they used that verb. The result was comical. So, during that conversation with the Lakota community, I encouraged the translators to come up with a Lakota verb that is used not simply in “the application of oil,” but more pointedly in the consecration of something or somebody for a special task, or in the appointment of someone for a special purpose. Their response was almost immediate: azilyA or wazílyA “to smudge.” That is how, they told me, warriors and messengers and tribal leaders have always been consecrated (or blessed) before being sent out on a special mission. Sage grass was burned, and the smoke was waved over the person or object. The trans-cultural process of using the traditional Lakota verb azilyA for the biblical notion of “anoint” became, at that moment, part of the Lakota Bible.

4. Conclusion

I am very aware that such theoretical claims and these specific examples risk treading on “holy ground,” possibly giving up foundational images and tra-ditional Christian jargon, in order to satisfy what may seem to be an ideolog-ical exercise du jour. I am equally aware that these examples might also be explained away as simple linguistic choices that reflect “heart language.” Yet, I believe there is more at work here, something more profound for the Lakota


speakers. For them, it is the “transcultural” and “translingual” process that Bella Brodzki writes about, that power of translation as a means to cultural memory and survival, that rediscovery of their own heritage from a place of subalternity to a place of voice, that cultural translation of Western thoughts into a Native frame of reference.

With these things in mind, let me turn, in conclusion, to the words of native writer George Tinker. In his recent book American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty, Tinker writes about the tension between native forms of spirituality and non-native, European forms of religion. He describes the revival of traditional Indian cultures and religious traditions in the past twenty-five years, and the movement of some natives who formerly professed Christianity back to their traditional religious structures and ceremonies. These natives point to the negative impact of Christianity on Indian com-munities—politically, economically, spiritually, and culturally. This cannot be denied. Yet, at the same time, Tinker celebrates that other natives remain in Christian churches, but are “taking control of their Christianity, insisting on interpreting the scriptures and the Christian traditions in the light of their own traditional religious culture” (2008:15).

This is, it seems to me, precisely what Krupat labels “anti-imperial trans-lation.” The problem for many mainline Christians, Tinker warns, is that “in-digenous Christianity among Indians begins to look less and less like mainline European and Amer-European Christianity as Indians determine for them-selves how they will interpret the gospel” (Tinker 2008:15).

Perhaps this final claim is too much for the Lakota Bible and its translators. But, in conclusion, let us at least allow these three brief examples to draw our at-tention to something fresh and dynamic that is happening in Translation Studies and in indigenous Bible Translation. Perhaps we theoreticians and academics are not the only ones who are redefining and rethinking the theory and practice of translation, including even the translation of the Bible and other Sacred Texts.

Notes

1. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at both the 2011 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco, California and the Bible Translation 2011 conference in Dallas, Texas.

2. See also Vizenor (2008) and Rajak (2009) on the issue of translation and survival. “Native survivance,” argues Vizenor, is an active sense of the Native presence, high-lighting the dynamic, inventive, and enduring heart of Native cultures well beyond the colonialist trappings of absence, tragedy, and powerlessness. Similarly, Rajak writes that the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek served as a tool for the preserva-tion of group identity, as well as for the expression of Jewish survival.

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3. More recently, Bible Translation agencies have begun to speak less of “heart lan-guage” and more of “language of preferred choice,” likely to reflect a growing aware-ness that the former term is still too often narrowly understood on the lingual level.

4. Paul Ricoeur categorized this transformative element in translation as “narrative hospi-tality” in which the translator attempts to listen to other people’ customs, fundamental beliefs, deepest convictions. See, especially, Ricoeur (1996) and Ricoeur (2006).

5. See, especially, the discussion in Tinker (2008:61–66).

References

Bassnett, Susan & Harish Trivedi. 1999. Post-colonial translation: Theory and practice. New York: Routledge.

Brodzki, Bella. 2007. Can these bones live? Translation, survival, and cultural memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Gentzler, Edwin. 2001. Contemporary translation theories. Revised 2nd ed. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Gentzler, Edwin. 2008. Translation and identity in the Americas: New directions in trans-lation theory. New York: Routledge.

Krupat, Arnold. 1989. The voice in the margin: Native American literature and the canon. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Krupat, Arnold. 1996. The turn to the native: Studies in criticism & culture. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Krupat, Arnold. 2002. Red matters: Native American studies. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Krupat, Arnold. 2009. All that remains: Varieties of indigenous expression. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Munday, Jeremy. 2001. Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications. 2nd edi-tion. New York: Routledge.

Pym, Anthony. 2010. Exploring translation theories. New York: Routledge.Rajak, Tessa. 2009. Translation and survival: The Greek Bible of the ancient Jewish diaspora.

New York: Oxford University Press.Ricoeur, Paul. 1996. Reflections on a new ethos for Europe. In Robert Kearney (ed.),

Paul Ricoeur: The hermeneutics of action, 3–13. London: SAGE.Ricoeur, Paul. 2006. On translation. New York: Routledge. Siemerling, Winfried. 2005. The new North American studies: Culture, writing and the

politics of re/cognition. New York: Routledge.Tinker, George. 2008. American Indian liberation: A theology of sovereignty. Maryknoll,

NY: Orbis Books.Venuti, Lawrence. 2004. The translation studies reader. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Vizenor, Gerald. 2008. Survivance: Narratives of native presence. Lincoln, NE: University

of Nebraska Press.

8. Endangered languages and Bible translation in Brazil and Papua New Guinea

MicHael caHill SIL International

“The only person I have left to talk to is a linguist and talking to a linguist is no fun.”Amerindian woman’s comment to Joshua Fishman (Fishman 2000:24)

1. Introduction1

In 1976, a professor in London was expounding on why no object-initial lan-guages existed in the world. A student in the class hesitantly raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, but I speak an object-initial language.” The professor was Geoffrey Pullum, and the student was SIL linguist Desmond Derbyshire. Up to that time, an object-initial language had never been documented, but Derbyshire had been living and working among the Hixkaryana [ISO: hix] people of Brazil, and had documented his facts thoroughly. His dissertation was later published as Derbyshire (1985).

As this demonstrates, one of the benefits of investigating small or endan-gered languages is the discovery of previously unknown linguistic phenome-na. However, another motivation for investigating endangered languages is that they may be preserved and maintained, and that there be a new vitality in using the language.

Krauss (1992) and Hale (1992), among others, brought the phenome-non of endangered languages forcefully to the attention of the wider linguis-tic community with their articles in Language. Others in the years since have documented more fully not only the number of languages dying, but the

126 enDangereD languages in Brazil anD png

problems this brings in scientific and human terms, e.g. Grenoble & Whaley (1998, 2005), Nettle & Romaine (2000), Batibo (2005), Harrison (2007), and on a more popular level, Abley (2003), to name but a few. Like the par-allel term “endangered species,” a language is considered endangered if it is in fairly imminent danger of dying out. Krauss, in a widely-quoted figure, estimated that half of the world’s 6000+ languages are in danger of becom-ing extinct in the next century.2 Much of the research and firm statistics on endangered languages has been carried out in a North American context, with Amerindian languages. These languages, along with many others in the world, are on the verge of extinction because parents have chosen for various reasons not to pass on their language to their children. When children do not learn a language, that language is on its way to death, even though there may be a multitude of biological descendants of the speakers.

However, there is another mechanism for a language to become extinct, and that is that the entire people group who speaks that language dies off. When this happens, it is often in more isolated areas. Disease, warfare, and perhaps other factors can kill off an entire people group (see Hong’s paper in this volume for other examples of this). The language dies because the entire people group dies. In this report, I examine several cases in which an entire people was on the verge of extinction; their numbers were dangerously low and declining. Nonetheless, these groups have increased their numbers and are thriving today. These languages are all ones in which SIL members have done substantial field work, but the lessons may be applied to other organi-zations as well.

Size, though important, is not the best measure of language vitality. In this paper, I report on several people groups of Brazil and Papua New Guinea, in which the situation of the people has been much more precarious. My sources for the Brazilian languages are personal and e-mail interviews with the SIL personnel who have had long-term exposure living with the people. For the Papua New Guinea situation, I have a combination of written sources and interviews.

One of SIL’s major contributions to the endangered languages cause has been the ongoing language database known as the Ethnologue. Krauss (1992:4) called it “by far the single best source available” for documenting the number of languages and their speakers. It has been updated every few years and published in book form, the last one-volume print edition being Lewis (2009). An Internet version has been available for some years, and the most recent edition, the 18th, is totally online (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2015), with various print products available soon. A good portion of my population figures, especially in the table in the final section, come from this

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source. ISO language codes are given in brackets for each language men-tioned here.

My goal is to present cases of languages in which the people were in danger of dying out as a people, but the situation has been reversed. For each case, I present the situation that existed when the SIL workers entered the scene, the present situation, factors that led to the decline of the people, and the factors that led to a reversal of the decline. We start with several cases in Brazil.

2. Brazil

The number of languages of Brazil has been decreasing for some time. One particularly common factor in the decline of these people groups has been the diseases the Europeans brought to the country, and to which the Amazo-nian dwellers were particularly susceptible, such as measles. Besides the SIL workers, a significant force in combatting disease has been the governmental agency Fundacão Nacional do Indio (FUNAI).

SIL has done work in over 30 Brazilian languages, many of which are quite small. 24 of these languages are under 1,000 in population today, and 14 are under 500, according to the Ethnologue. Some of these language groups were much smaller yet when SIL first started work in them, and it is four of these I want to concentrate on here. After a fairly brief look at the Hixkaryana, Pirahã, and Mamaindé, I will give a few more details on the Pau-marí. Readers interested in SIL linguistic and anthropological publications on these languages, including those in Portuguese, will find them listed under the corresponding online Ethnologue entry for each individual language.

2.1 Hixkaryana

The Hixkaryana language [hix] belongs to the Carib family and speakers are located on the Nhamundá river. When SIL workers Desmond and Grace Der-byshire arrived in 1959 to begin work with the Hixkaryana, the population was about 100, with very few children. By 1977 there were 237, and they now number about 600. The low population in 1959 was largely due to a very high infant mortality rate, but a contributing factor for many might be termed a very low will to live. For example, a woman would be given medi-cine that normally would have made her recover, but since her psychological resistance was low, the disease overcame her.

The Derbyshires began medical work, and this drastically reduced the in-fant mortality rate. They mention this as the single biggest factor to account


for the population increase. (FUNAI took over this medical work in the 1970s.) The Hixkaryana also started intermarrying with the neighboring Wai Wai group, and both groups have increased in numbers. A third factor which should not be overlooked is the increased self-confidence of the Hixkary-ana since the New Testament was translated into their language. Fourth, five Hixkaryana teachers, trained by Brazilian workers with Missão Novas Tribos, now run a school for children aged 5–14 under the auspices of the Secretary of Education who is in the nearest city downriver. Finally, FUNAI also en-couraged the Hixkaryana to set up their own Brazil nut industry, harvesting the nuts and transporting them downriver to sell to traders in towns on or near the Amazon River. That annual industry continues and has no doubt been another way in which their confidence to deal with outsiders has in-creased.

Des Derbyshire died in 2007. His mentor and linguistic comrade, Geof-frey Pullum, in an obituary, wrote at that time:

“Regardless of one’s position on missionary work, one has to view the Hixkary-ana as lucky that their first extended interaction with the modern world was this gentle missionary couple, Des and Grace. As is well known, many Amerindian groups in South America have been far less fortunate. Des loved the Hixkaryana people; he respected their intelligence, kindness, generosity, and practical skills; he delighted in their language; and he cared about their welfare. They have done well in the fifty years that Des knew them, and their society is far more robust than it was when Des and Grace arrived.” (Pullum 2007)

2.2 Pirahã

The Pirahã [myp] have had a long history of contact with outsiders, since the 1700’s. By the time SIL workers Steve and Linda Sheldon arrived in 1966, the Pirahã had declined to only 80 people. Though some local Brazilians considered them animals (and were not shy in telling them), the Pirahã have always retained a pride in their language, and language use has always been vigorous and still is at the present time. In the 1960s, a vicious cycle existed with respect to childbirth. There was a high rate of infant mortality and also death in childbirth. This led to fewer women of marriageable age, which led to younger marriages, which led to more hazardous childbirth, which again led to more infant and mother mortality. Marriage outside the group was and is forbidden. Also, measles complicated with pneumonia was a problem, and could have wiped out the whole people. By 1978, the population had climbed to 120. Then Daniel and Keren Everett replaced the Sheldons in the project, and now the population is approximately 360. The major factor here in accounting for the increased population has again been access to medicine,

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which the SIL workers supplied over the years that they were there. In recent years, the Pirahã have been under increasing scrutiny with an increasing num-ber of visits from outsiders, as a result of Everett’s (2005) claims of unusual patterns in their language and culture. What effect this will have on the Pirahã themselves remains to be seen.

2.3 Mamaindé

At the turn of the 20th century, there were an estimated 3,000 Mamaindé people [wmd]. By 1965, when SIL workers Peter and Shirley Kingston start-ed to study their language, the population was down to exactly 50 people. There were two main causes. First, there were a number of intertribal wars and massacres in the 1930s and 1940s. Second, and even more devastating, were several sequential outbreaks of measles brought by contacts with en-croaching Brazilians. The inability to cope with Western-carried sickness as well as the power of these outsiders thoroughly demoralized the Mamaindé; they believed they were going to die as a group. At one point in time, they were desperate enough that some went to a nearby highway and were giving their babies away to any Brazilian who would take them, just so the babies would have a chance to survive.

By 1990, however, when Dave and Julie Eberhard replaced the Kings-tons, the trend had reversed. There were now 115 people, and in 1999, 136 people, and the 2007 figure is 330. The population is presently in a steady growth mode. The reversal in population is largely due to the medical work the Kingstons did, as well as aid such as vaccination programs supplied later by the governmental agency FUNAI. The Kingstons and the Eberhards have also helped the Mamaindé learn to cope with pressures from outside cultures. Literacy has given them a new dignity—their language is not just “animal talk,” but can be written. The message of an all-powerful God who loves and cares for the Mamaindé has also been significant in helping them to regain a large measure of self-confidence as a group.

2.4 Paumarí

The same themes that have been briefly alluded to above are present in full force with the Paumarí people [pad], which I will present in slightly more detail than the previous cases. The Paumarí live in the State of Amazonas, mainly on the Purús River. They were and still are to a great extent fishermen. Long before any contact with missionaries, they had numerous contact with river traders. These traders despised the Paumarí and looked at them as inferi-or beings. They said their language was not a real human language, but rather


an animal language. After 40 or more years of this, the Paumarí did not speak their language in front of outsiders; they had become ashamed of it. Most of them knew enough Portuguese to handle talk of trading, fishing, and other simple subjects with outsiders, but the group as a whole felt quite inferior and were not teaching their children that Paumarí had a high value. Alcohol, not a part of traditional Paumarí culture, but brought in by river traders, became a significant social problem. Most men had alcohol problems, and fighting among themselves was a constant feature of life. In 1964, when SIL workers Shirley Chapman and Mary Ann Odmark started living among the Paumarí, there were only 96 people left. Many of them had died of measles and tuber-culosis brought in by outsiders. It was a decimated, demoralized group, with little apparent hope of survival as a people.

However, by 1996 the Paumarí population had increased to about 600 people. The single village had expanded to several villages in the area of the Purús river. The Paumarí are no longer ashamed to be called by that name, and some are quite proud of it. They speak their language in public now, al-though some do combine it with Portuguese.

The turn-around not only in population but in general morale can be attributed to the actions of some remarkable women who had a long-term presence in the area. Besides those mentioned above, Meinke Salzer joined the team in 1978. Factors relevant to the revitalization of the Paumarí people and language may be divided into three broad categories: health work, literacy, and Scripture translation.

Medical work was a major identified factor in the increase of the popu-lation. The Paumarí had enormous health needs. The Brazilian government agency FUNAI vaccinated the Paumarí against measles, and this disease has now been eradicated among the Paumarí. The SIL workers have treated tu-berculosis to the point where it is quite rare now. The SIL team did quite a lot of medical work, but also trained some of the Paumarí to be health workers themselves. These Paumarí learned how to treat simple everyday problems, such as intestinal infections, pneumonia, malaria, and others. This training was done locally in the Paumarí villages, and, following the usual Paumarí teaching practices, was mostly on a one-on-one basis. In recent years, because of higher population and higher demand for training, this has been done with four or five people at a time.

When the Paumarí saw that their language could be written down, they were quite excited. This showed them that Paumarí had the same value as Portuguese, and they kept on asking when the SIL women would teach them,

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long before the necessary foundational linguistic analysis was done. Read-ing was introduced and was immediately popular, for purposes of language prestige and for the fact that now the river traders could no longer cheat them. For this reason, they also wanted to learn some math. When the first books in the Paumarí language were printed, some of the people took them and showed them to the river traders. They asked them if they could read it. Of course they couldn’t, so the Paumarí read it to them! This was the begin-ning of a turnaround in the negative attitude which they had of themselves and their language. They began to speak their language in front of outsiders and sometimes even took advantage of the fact that these outsiders could not understand what they were saying. The Paumarí now say “Our language is just like Portuguese.”

After quite a few of the adults had learned to read and write, Chapman and Salzer began training Paumarí bilingual teachers, who then taught their own people. Like the health training, this started as a one-on-one mentor-ing-style training, but has expanded to teaching four or five at a time due to increased demand and population. In this local-based schooling, a child learns to read and write first in his mother tongue and then in Portuguese. The reading materials for the Paumarí schools are mainly produced by the Paumarí themselves. Some of the materials consist of their own legends and others are a variety of subjects, such as stories about animals and other topics interesting to them. The teachers and older students have written many of these stories. By 1999, the literacy rate in Paumarí for those older than 12 was about 70%.

If literacy began a turnaround in the Paumarí’s attitude toward them-selves and their language, reading the translated Scriptures completed the job. The self-esteem of the Paumarí started to grow visibly when they started reading the Paumarí Scriptures and found a God who cares about them as people (not animals), and is the creator of their language. Drunkenness has lessened significantly among all Paumarí and is non-existent among the Chris-tian segment of the population. Their outlook on life has become decidedly more optimistic, from an outlook of hopelessness 35 years ago.

Paumarí is still a small language group in the midst of encroachment by outside forces. There is increasing bilingualism in Portuguese, and it is reasonable to ask about its future. There is a distinct possibility of language loss in several decades, but for the next few decades at least, it seems secure; children are learning Paumarí, there is a thriving and functional literacy, and people are proud of their language.


3. Papua New Guinea

“The Summer Institute of Linguistics has been very active in both parts of New Guinea, and their work in Bible translation and literacy instruction is in many areas having a beneficial effect”(Dixon 1991:246–247)3

“The most important event in the history of New Guinea research was the estab-lishment in the mid-1950s of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Papua New Guinea branch….The overwhelming majority of descriptive linguistic studies of Papuan languages have been provided by SIL workers. Most of the references in the back of this book are by authors working within SIL. Without their exempla-ry efforts, our knowledge of Papuan languages would be much poorer indeed, and this book would certainly not have been possible” (Foley 1986:13)

Papua New Guinea is home to about 850 of what Dixon (1991:247) calls “the most interesting and least known languages in the world” (the 2015 edition of the Ethnologue lists 839 living languages). While the main enemy of survival in Brazil was disease, in at least some parts of Papua New Guinea it has been warfare. This is particularly the case in the first case study below, of the Binumarien. Again, publications on Binumarien and the other case study, Bahinemo, may be found under the online Ethnologue entries for those lan-guages.

3.1 Binumarien

First I examine the case of the Binumarien [bjr]. Most of the information presented here can be found in Oates (1992).

The Binumarien are an isolated people, “behind the elbow”, as their idi-om puts it. In the early 1900s they numbered approximately 3,000. Revenge killings were common and could escalate quickly. For example, in one case, a man taunted his rivals from a neighboring village. That village attacked and killed him. Then the first man’s village attacked and killed almost everyone in the rival village, even though all of them were Binumariens. There was also frequent warfare between the Binumarien and other groups, such as the Gadsup people. Cannibalism was practiced on enemies; the Binumarien told how they used to cut people in half in order to more easily carry them home to eat. Sorcery was an integral part of the cycle. If a death was thought to be due to sorcery, and the guilty person or village was identified through divina-tion, then that was cause for an attack, and the cycle of killing started again. Since it was thought that sorcery could be performed against you if someone had your bodily excretions, the Binumarien dug quite deep holes for latrines, unusual for the area. One strategy for exacting revenge on someone was to

Michael Cahill 133

pretend to be friends, and once the friendship was firmly established, to kill him.

In the early 1900s, the Binumarien had started to decline and were driven as a group from their traditional lands and settled in a lowland area. Many died of malaria, and eventually moved back to a higher elevation. In 1929, the Australian government outlawed warfare, and arrested violators. This did not stop the fighting altogether, but did drastically reduce it. Over the next few decades, however, the Binumarien continued a steady decline, with few children being born, and many of those dying before they reached their first year. In their depression, many of the women used a local method of contraception to prevent new births. By the time that SIL workers Des and Jenny Oatridge started work among the Binumarien in 1959, their numbers had declined to 111, from the 3,000 of several decades earlier.

The Oatridges’ attempts at medical help were initially accepted with re-luctance and suspicion; altruism was completely foreign to Binumarien cul-ture. They decided the Oatridges were learning their language in order to sell it, and secretly decided “not to give them all the language.” What they did give them was “baby talk”—verbs with no inflectional suffixes. Their paid language helper did the same. Meanwhile, lives were being saved by the Oatridge’s medical help, and the population was steadily starting to climb. One day, a man with a village-wide reputation for not keeping his mouth shut let slip a full verb form to Des, and this started the breakthrough in language fluency for the Oatridges.

One cultural attitude which in particular influenced many aspects of Bi-numarien society was the absolute inferiority of women. In the Binumarien mind, anything having to do with femaleness was dirty, shameful, inferior. Sex was something that degraded a man. Wives were beaten as a matter of course. When a birth was imminent, the woman would go outside of the village to a separate birthing hut to avoid contaminating the village. If smoke from the hut’s fire drifted over the village, people would panic and run, for this smoke was thought to be potentially fatal. This view of women not only had contributed to the low birth rate in the past, but obviously made women’s lives miserable. The Binumarien had some teaching from a German Lutheran mission in years past, but it was considerably distorted through the trade lan-guage, and the Binumarien adapted much of it to conform to their own cul-ture. They were sure women could not go to heaven, for example. Also, they believed that in the beginning, God created two men. One disobeyed God, and as punishment, God made him into a woman. Thus the very existence of women was thought to be due to evil.


Into this setting came the translation of Scripture for the Binumarien. A very talented man named Sisia became Des Oatridge’s regular translation helper. In translating the book of Genesis, they soon encountered the passage which speaks of God creating humans as “male and female.” Sisia flatly reject-ed this as just plain wrong and refused to translate it. The next day they came to chapter two, in which the two humans were “naked and not ashamed.” Des asked Sisia why there was a shame issue if there were two men. Sisia wrestled with it and finally accepted that there were male and female from the beginning. Then he told the whole village, which initially also refused to accept it. But he insisted, and the village finally accepted it. The consequences were enormous. Gradually women have been accorded a higher status.

An incident from several years ago illustrates another change in Binu-marien society. The Gadsups were traditional enemies, and for decades, per-haps centuries, both groups had killed many of the other side. Now, men from a neighboring Gadsup village came close to attacking the Binumarien over land where the Gadsups had planted crops but which was officially Binu-marien land. After the immediate crisis, some Binumarien men realized this group of Gadsups were in serious trouble for lack of food. Astoundingly in light of past offenses, the Binumarien decided to give the Gadsups a contri-bution of food. Though there were still war-like elements among them, the basic pattern of the Binumarien had changed from killing as a first reaction, to helping.

3.2 Bahinemo

The Bahinemo [bjh] are an interesting case in that the SIL workers involved initially had little hope for its survival as a language, but found they had been overpessimistic. Much of the material here is from Dye & Dye (2012), as well as personal communication. These sources trace the history of three languages spoken in the single village of Wagu over several decades.

Wagu was founded in 1950, with three groups of different language speakers: Wagu, Kagiru, and Bahinemo. In the decade before 1964, at least 23 babies were born, all of whom died of malaria. Traditional remedies proved fruitless. The residents of the village began to think of themselves as failures, because of the health situation and also the many derogatory comments from other Sepik River peoples about their poor quality houses and canoes.

The Dyes arrived in 1964, and found 31 people in Wagu. For reasons that are not clear, around that time the villagers all agreed there would be only two “proper” languages to speak in Wagu Village: Bahinemo and Tok Pisin. Kagiru and Wagu speakers began to speak Bahinemo. Sally Dye (B.S. in

Michael Cahill 135

nursing), as well as some government officers, were able to keep most babies from dying.

In 1968 most people in Wagu decided to follow Christianity. This made possible a relocating of the village to a more favorable site which they had previously feared because of foreign spirits. The new village location had bet-ter soil, a better drinking water source, and more space and resources. This move increased the prosperity of Wagu, and allowed for the establishment of a school, which attracted others. By 1982, speakers of ten languages lived in Wagu. Most of these preferred to speak Tok Pisin, both as a common lan-guage and because the local Assemblies of God church used Tok Pisin. The trend toward Tok Pisin continued so that by 1985, the Wagu villagers were telling the Dyes that the Bahinemo New Testament they were working on would not be used because that language was fading out. The Dyes left in 1989 with this evaluation.

18 years later, in 2007, the Dyes returned to attempt a language docu-mentation project for what they expected to be a dying language. Instead, surprisingly, what they found was vigorous use of Bahinemo, being used by most of the people in Wagu village and being taught to most children. The village population grew from 175 in 1989 to 285 in 2007. The Dyes cite several factors in both population growth and continued language vitality.

Increased health has contributed strongly to the population growth. Child mortality is greatly reduced. There is more protein in diets as well as reduced malaria because of the government’s introduction of the Red Bellied Pacu, a fast-growing fish that also eliminated floating grass islands that had harbored millions of mosquitoes. Other factors such as better water supplies and the fact that most villagers have stopped smoking are also contributors.

An increased self-image had consequences in several areas. This was the direct result of Wagu villagers becoming Christians. As they put it, “We are siblings of Jesus, important people.” As mentioned, the freedom from fear of the spirit world led to moving the village to a better location, with attendant benefits. But the change in their belief system also led to their being more innovative in daily life. They could try new customs without fear of the spirits. Not having to deal with the spirits gave more time for better house building and better food preparation. They credit Christianity with bringing peace to the entire area, and are now able to interact with and learn from other peoples.

As the Dyes summarize (2012:34), “a better self image, better health, population growth and new innovations have led Wagu villagers to consider their culture and language worth keeping.”


In many of the cases discussed in this paper, it is difficult to separate the effects of the mere presence of helpful outsiders who give a variety of physical helps from the belief changes accompanying Bible translation. In the case of the Bahinemo, with the outsiders gone for 18 years, the case is clearer. As Wayne Dye (p.c.) points out:

1. Although the Dyes themselves had predicted the demise of Bahine-mo in that village, when they returned 18 years later, its use had weakened very little.

2. When the Dyes arrived, the villagers took them to the village meeting center and gave them several welcoming speeches. ALL of them were about ways the Gospel had transformed them. There had been many practical improvements in their daily lives, and they are clearly much better off. They did not credit this to development projects, but to the way being believers had given them confidence and freedom from fear, enabling them to shake off damaging taboos and to innovate, as well as to have better relationships.

3. Another village even closer to the nearest town had benefitted from all the same development help but had rejected the Gospel. They were mired in misery, with none of the innovations (school, clinic, water system, etc.) now functioning. They had taken on home brew, marijuana, and prostitution from “civilization”, though.

The long-range prospects for Bahinemo are still uncertain. Tok Pisin use has become stronger in the area due to increased interaction with outsiders and their world. This favors a shift to Tok Pisin. On the other hand, Bahinemo is used in two other villages which are isolated from Tok Pisin, the translated Bahinemo New Testament is now being used in churches, and Bahinemo speakers have been trained as teachers. The Dyes expect that the language will continue for another generation, but that the forces for shift will eventually dominate. It appears that the Dyes and the Bible translation they brought definitely slowed the decline of Bahinemo, though perhaps not indefinitely.

4. Concluding remarks

The cases presented here are but a small sample of those in which SIL has been involved. In most languages in which SIL has had a presence, language vitality is strong and is not an issue. Though population figures are not the only measure of a language group’s vitality (some languages continue for a long time with small populations), when the population is both small and

Michael Cahill 137

declining, that language is in danger. Conversely, when the population is on the rise, that group is less endangered. The languages discussed here, as well as some additional languages which have significantly increased their vitality and population since SIL started work among them, are given in the follow-ing table, and these could easily be multiplied.

Table 8.1. Population increase for endangered languages with SIL presence.

Language (country)

Prior date and pop-ulation (if known)

SIL starting date and population

Recent/Lat-est popula-tion

Source (Ethn. = Ethno-logue)

Hixkaryana (Brazil) [hix] 1959: ~100 2009: ~600 Ethn., Der-

byshire p.c.Pirahã

(Brazil) [myp]1966: 80 1978: 120

2000: 250 Ethn., S.

Sheldon p.c.

Mamaindé (Brazil) [wmd]

1900: 3,000 1965: 50 1999: 136 2007: 330

Ethn., D. Eberhard p.c.

Paumari (Brazil) [pad] 1964: 96 1994: 700 Ethn., M.

Salzer p.c.Binumarien

(PNG) [bjr]1910:

~3,000 1959: 111 1990: 360 Ethn., Oates (1992)

Bahinemo (PNG) [bjh] 1968: 308 1998: 550

2007: 700

Dye & Dye (2012), Ethn.

Lacandón (Mexico) [lac] 1876: 67 1955: 51 1990: 500+

2000: 1,000

Ethn., Baer & Merri-field (1971)

Seri (Mexico) [sei]

1951: 215 1992: 7002007: 900

Ethn.

Arabela (Peru) [arl]

1954: 40 1975: 113 Larsen & Davis (1981)

Muinane (Colombia) [bmr]

1964: 125 1983: 175 J. Walton p.c.

Macuna (Colombia) [myy] 1969: 350 1991: 500

2001: 1,010

Ethn., J. Smother-man p.c.

Southern Nambi-kuára (Brazil) [nab]

1940: 10,000 1959: 600 1988: 900

2000: 1,150

Ethn., SIL Brazil


Language (country)

Prior date and pop-ulation (if known)

SIL starting date and population

Recent/Lat-est popula-tion

Source (Ethn. = Ethno-logue)

Tol (Honduras) [jic]

1966: 200 1999: 400+ Lynn Dennis p.c.

Waorani (Ecuador) [auc] 1956: 350 1993: 800

2004: 1,650

Ethn., Dave Under-wood p.c.

Examples of attitudes changing because of Scriptures available in the local language could be multiplied, whether or not the language was as endan-gered as those discussed above.

For example, the Matigsalug people [mbt] in the Philippines used to be embarrassed by their ethnic heritage and refused to speak or sing their lan-guage in public. Because of Bible translation activities, in which Robert Hunt played a major part, these people have increased pride in their language and culture. One example showing this is that they took total ownership of the public celebration of the New Testament in 2012, including vibrant singing (Dick Burke newsletter).

When Dianne Friesen first came to live and work with the Moloko people [mlw] of Cameroon, the people were not proud of their Moloko heritage and culture. On their Cameroon identity cards, people had to list their eth-nicity, and many said that they were Guiziga instead of Moloko. (Guiziga [giz] was a recognized language, a big group with a writing system and a New Testament translated years previously.) At the time, Moloko was unwritten. In fifteen years of Friesen and other SIL linguists working with the Moloko, the Moloko got a written language, literacy groups, and literature. Particu-larly important to them were story booklets, an AIDS brochure, and Bible books. Near the end of Friesen’s time there, people were saying that their ethnicity was Moloko—they seemed more proud of who they were. Having written material in the language was a big part of that change.

SIL is not the only agency involved in this area. Pioneer Bible Translators has a vigorous project of Bible translation and Scripture use in Crimean Tatar [crh]. This is conducted in conjunction with the Turkish Language Depart-ment of a university in Simferopol, Ukraine. It is considered by both the participating language professors and the Crimean Tatar majlis to be a part of a concerted effort to revitalize a language that has been losing ground to Russian with the younger generation.

Michael Cahill 139

Of course, not all endangered languages in which SIL and similar agen-cies have worked have been revitalized in the way that these discussed above have been. For example, the Murik Lakes language [mtf] of Papua New Guinea was in the process of shift when the SIL workers started there, and it has subsequently been totally absorbed into the Tok Pisin language. Also, as seen in a possible Bahinemo future, there are cases where language decline has been temporarily arrested, sometimes for decades, but forces for language shift eventually prove overwhelming.

As seen in the cases discussed here, as well as others in the literature, the biggest factor in reversing the decline of such very small language groups was the long-term presence of committed outsiders, whether SIL or others. The immediate cause of reversing the population decline of the peoples discussed here was the availability of medicines. However, these medicines had to be administered over a number of years; a short-term visit would not have been effective. The medical help took care of many physical needs, and partially compensated for the demoralization issues which were the result of physical needs. However, other factors addressed the issues of demoralization more directly. Literacy in some cases proved the value of their language, that it was as good as any other language, and thus the people who spoke it were not an-imals, as in the common Brazilian scenario. Finally, in most of the cases cited here, the message of the Scriptures in the local language provided a tremen-dous boost in morale to the people. The outlook changed from regarding the universe as a basically hostile and uncertain place to a universe in which the Creator cared for them and valued them and their language.

Language situations vary tremendously in different parts of the world. The situation of many dying Northern Amerindian languages is vastly dif-ferent than the cases I have described here, to take one obvious example. However, I would submit that in cases where the local people themselves are helpless to revitalize the language, and may even themselves be dying as a group, a combination of long-term committed people who are prepared to help not only in physical ways, but in ways which boost the attitudes of the people, are necessary to any revitalization efforts.

Notes

1. This paper originated as a report I gave to the workshop “Language Maintenance and Death: Reports from the Field and Strategies for the New Millennium,” organized by Simon Donnelly in 1999 as part of the LSA Summer Institute, in Urbana, Illinois. It was later posted on SIL’s Electronic Working Papers (http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2004–004). The present paper is a revision and update. Many thanks to the SIL individuals mentioned in this paper for patiently answering queries.


2. This seems to me to be in some ways like the common statement that humans only use 10% of their brain capacity: it points to a real problem, but the percentages are quite open to question. Since then, others have offered other estimates, often lower.

3. Dixon cites the example of the Urat language, at one time “clearly in decline in favor of Tok Pisin” but which has undergone a strong revival, largely as a result of the work of SIL’s Robert and Dawn Barnes.

References

Abley, Mark. 2003. Spoken here: Travels among threatened languages. New York: Hough-ton Mifflin Company.

Baer, Phillip & William R. Merrifield. 1971. Two studies on the Lacondones of Mexico. SIL publications in linguistics and related fields No. 33. Norman: SIL and the Univer-sity of Oklahoma.

Batibo, Herman M. 2005. Language decline and death in Africa: Causes, consequences, and challenges. Clevedon, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters.

Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1985. Hixkaryana and linguistic typology. SIL/UTA publications in linguistics No. 76. Dallas: SIL and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Dixon, R.W. 1991. The endangered languages of Australia, Indonesia, and Oceania. In Robert H. Robins & Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck (eds.), Endangered languages, 229–255. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Dye, T. Wayne & Sally Folger Dye. 2012. A tale of three languages: Language shift in a micro-context. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 214: 27–38.

Everett, Daniel. 2005. Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology 46(4): 621–646.

Fishman, Joshua A. 2000. Reversing language shift: RLS theory and practice revisited. In Gloria Kindell & M. Paul Lewis (eds.), Assessing ethnolinguistic vitality: Theory and practice. Selected papers from the third International Language Assessment Conference, 1–25. Dallas: SIL.

Foley, William A. 1986. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grenoble, Lenore A. & Lindsay J. Whaley. 1998. Endangered languages: Language loss and community response. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grenoble, Lenore A. & Lindsay J. Whaley. 2005. Saving languages: An introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hale, Kenneth. 1992. On endangered languages and the safeguarding of diversity. Lan-guage 68: 1–3.

Harrison, K. David. 2007. When languages die: The extinction of the world’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68: 4–10.Larsen, Mildred L. & Patricia M. Davis. 1981. Bilingual education: An experience in

Peruvian Amazonia. Dallas: SIL.

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Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 16th ed. Dallas: SIL International.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2015. Ethnologue: Languag-es of the World, Eighteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Nettle, Daniel & Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing voices: The extinction of the world’s languages. New York: Oxford University Press.

Oates, Lynnette. 1992. Hidden people. Claremont, CA: Albatross Books.Pullum. Geoffrey K. 2007. Obituary: Desmond Derbyshire (1924–2007). LinguistList 19.1,

January 3, 2008. http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19–1.html.

Part IV. The South Pacific

9. Bible translation as Natqgu language and culture advocacy

BrenDa H. Boerger SIL International and Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics

1. Introduction1

It has already been more than 25 years since the most recent SIL-trained expa-triate Bible translation team,2 of which I was a part, arrived and settled in the Natqgu-speaking3 area of Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands. A quarter of a century provides sufficient time depth to consider the effects that translation activities have had on Natqgu language vitality. The information provided in this pa-per interrelates a number of my previous publications about Natqgu [ntu] to demonstrate how Bible translation program activities in four areas—training, literacy work, church work, and cultural engagement—have combined to in-crease the strength of Natqgu, with potential to increase it even further.

As a preliminary matter, it is important to review differences between de-scriptive, documentary, and conservationist linguistics. Descriptive linguistics is exemplified by the grammars, dictionaries, and conference papers which report about and synthesize primary linguistic data. Documentary linguis-tics is the collecting and archiving of digital audio and video recordings of that primary data and the accompanying annotations which make such data analyzable and describable (Himmelmann 1998, 2012; Woodbury 2003). A third type of linguistics is conservationist linguistics, which utilizes and manipulates primary linguistic data with the explicit goals of language main-tenance, revitalization, or digitization of legacy data (Amery 2009; Boerger 2011). Some conservationist linguists also generate and archive documentary corpora, and those efforts intersect with documentary linguistics. In this

146 BiBle translation as natQgu aDvocacy

paper, I focus on conservationist linguistics as it relates to the undergirding of language vitality, without addressing descriptive or documentary linguistics, except peripherally.

A further distinction to keep in mind is one between activities that inten-tionally promote language vitality and those which have other primary goals but coincidentally promote it. Many conservationist linguists are focused on activities which intentionally and directly promote language vitality. On the other hand, many of the Bible translation activities discussed below were partly motivated by goals other than language vitality, but happily had it as a result.

In the sections below, I discuss the Bible translation project (section 2), and how activities associated with it—training (section 3), literacy work (sec-tion 4), church work (section 5), and cultural engagement (section 6)—each had a role in increasing Natqgu language vitality (Boerger 2007; Boerger et al. 2012) and how outsider advocacy is what energized these activities (sec-tion 7). At least three of these—literacy, cultural engagement, and training—have also been found to play a role in increasing language vitality outside the Solomon Islands (Quakenbush 2011). I conclude the paper with a summary of the findings and discussion of their implications (section 8).

2. The Natqgu language context and the Natqgu language project

2.1 Vitality of Solomon Islands vernaculars

The Solomon Islands has around 500,000 inhabitants, speaking 70 indige-nous and a number of immigrant languages. English is the national language and the language of education, while Solomon Islands Pijin is the language of wider communication (LWC). School textbooks are in English, but teach-ing is often in Pijin. Vernaculars throughout the country are experiencing pressure from Pijin. Between the censuses of 1976 and 1999 (DeBruijn & Beimers 1999) the doubling or tripling of the numbers of vernacular first-lan-guage speakers did not keep pace with the population growth totals in each area. Instead, these vernaculars actually lost ground to Pijin, which showed a 13-fold increase in first-language speakers in the same period. In addition to its use in education, government, business, and church contexts along-side English, Pijin use has grown significantly due to intermarriage between speakers of different vernaculars, for whom Pijin then becomes the default language of the home. Children born to such marriages often do not learn the vernaculars of their parents. Therefore, increases in overall population do not correlate on a one-to-one basis with increases in first-language speakers

Brenda H. Boerger 147

of the country’s vernaculars, as previously noted with regard to Lavukaleve [lvk], another language of the Solomon Islands (Terrill 2002).

2.2 Vitality of Natqgu

This pattern of vernacular weakening in favor of Pijin is being felt in the easternmost Temotu Province, where Natqgu is spoken by about 5,000 peo-ple on the island of Santa Cruz. Natqgu has recently been categorized as an Oceanic language of the Temotu family (Ross & Næss 2007; Næss & Boerger 2008), whose members include the Reefs-Santa Cruz (RSC) group to which Natqgu belongs, along with the languages of Utupua and Vanikoro islands southeast of Santa Cruz. Throughout most of Temotu Province, Pijin has almost completely replaced the passive understanding that speakers formerly had of neighboring languages for the purposes of trade and finding marriage partners (Davenport 1962). Infrastructure improvements in shipping and ed-ucation in Temotu Province have led to increased cross-linguistic contact that in turn gives rise to marriages between speakers of different languages (Emer-ine 2009; Boerger et al. 2012).

Figure 9.1. Map of Santa Cruz Islands and languages.


In 1988, when I took up residence on Santa Cruz (also called Nendö, as in Fig-ure 9.1), vernacular literacy in Natqgu (Natügu in Figure 9.1) was limited to an estimated ten to fifteen men, most of whom served on the Natqgu Translation Committee established by the SIL team there before us. At that time, Natqgu language use was primarily oral and children learned it as their first language, this being the natural state of a healthy, unwritten language. In a short time, however, it became clear that the effects of Pijin were also being felt on Natqgu and that the younger a person was the less Natqgu vocabulary he commanded. In addition, the language community experienced low self-esteem in relation to languages elsewhere in the country, which were easier to write, offering an explanation, in part, for why there were no local initiatives for Natqgu language maintenance. The pressure from Pijin and the feelings of inferiority made us think it was important to be proactive in our support of Natqgu vitality.4

Many similarly healthy, unwritten languages around the world are being abandoned in favor of global languages, like English, with their concomitant economic advantages; and many children are therefore no longer learning the first languages of their parents. Given that so many languages are endangered (Wurm 2003), instruments have been developed in an attempt to quantify vitality levels. The Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, or EGIDS (Lewis & Simons 2010),5 is a recent instrument, which modifies the earlier GIDS by Fishman (1991), and incorporates insights by others. Table 9.1 includes the EGIDS levels most relevant to this paper.

For much of the 20th century, the vitality level of Natqgu stood at a solid 6a rating. But even at the beginning of our time there, a related language on the island, Engdewu [ngr], was already recognized by its speakers to be in serious decline.6 In the twenty-five years between 1988 and the present, the Natqgu Language Project undertook the activities described below, which I claim here have significantly contributed to moving the Natqgu EGIDS rating to its current level 5 “Developing” (Boerger et al. 2012:125), and has potential to move it to level 4 “Educational,” as I discuss in the conclusion.

Level 5 is Natqgu’s current level because the vernacular is used in its written form by some segment of the community. This development is especially significant, in that none of the other Reefs-Santa Cruz (RSC) languages spoken nearby have yet achieved a level 5, even though ortho-graphies have been developed for them. As noted in Boerger et al. (2012), Äiwoo [nfl] and Nalögo [nlz] are both level 6a, but Engdewu [ngr] has a level 7 rating and is labeled as ‘shifting’ because “[t]he child-bearing gener-ation can use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmit-ted to children” (Lewis & Simons 2010). Among these related languages, Äiwoo is the closest to achieving a level 5 vitality and it is also, perhaps not


coincidentally, the only one of them to have had translation work under-taken there for a period of time, from 1986 to 1994, when an expatriate translation team was present. This could, of course, have other explanations, such as that the two largest and most vigorous languages were the ones se-lected for translation work in the first place. At the same time, it could be in-structive to investigate whether or not a correlation holds between language vitality and Bible translation work, especially if comparisons over time are possible. The argument made in this volume, of course, is that translation work promotes language vitality.

Table 9.1. EGIDS numbers relevant to Natqgu situation.

Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (adapted from Fishman 1991)

Level Label Description UNESCO evaluation

3 Wider Com-munication

The language is used in work and mass media without official status to transcend language differences across a region.

Safe

4 Educational The language is in vigorous use, with stan-dardization and literature being sustained through a widespread system of institutional-ly supported education.

Safe

5 Developing The language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustain-able.

Safe

6a Vigorous The language is used for face-to-face commu-nication by all generations and the situation is sustainable.

Safe

6b Threatened The language is used for face-to-face com-munication within all generations, but it is losing users.

Vulnerable

7 Shifting The child-bearing generation can use the lan-guage among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children.

Definitely Endangered

2.3 The Natqgu Language Project

When our family arrived in the Solomon Islands in 1987, about 90% of the population was said to be Christian. The government therefore required that Bible translation work be sponsored by the Solomon Islands Christian As-sociation (SICA), a multi-denominational body in the country. Part of our


designated task was to train the Solomon Islanders who joined the translation project, rather than doing the work ourselves. SICA assigned my husband and me to work with the Natqgu-speaking people of Santa Cruz Island to fill a vacancy left by an earlier team, which had originally responded to a request by the Church of Melanesia (COM), the Anglican organization of the region. So we, too, were there at the invitation of the indigenous church.

It is considered best practice for Bible translation workers to include the community and other stakeholders in all levels of a translation project, espe-cially in already churched areas, such as where we worked. We initially inter-acted with a translation committee identified and trained by our predecessors and later with the Natqgu Language Project (NLP) team. The committee consisted mostly of older, literate men from around the island who were well-respected in their villages and who were members of COM churches. Some of them were clergy.

Later on, the NLP team came to include men and women from both the COM and a Pentecostal denomination in the area. At its largest, the team consisted of about ten people:7 two or three national translators, two scripture-use advocates, three team co-leaders, and my husband and me as advisors. Each of the three team co-leaders was responsible for a different area of the work: literacy/spelling, key Biblical terms, and reviewing. Joseph Ken-nedy Clq worked as the literacy leader, traveling around the island, visiting clusters of villages and holding one- to two-week transition literacy classes. Pastor Sanders Bck, the key terms leader, likewise networked to find the best way of expressing biblical concepts in Natqgu. And catechist Ben Mewz, the reviewing leader, took the translated scriptures into the community to be checked for clarity and naturalness with different groups of people. Over and over, the team received community feedback, resulting in revised and im-proved Bible translations.

Conversations about Natqgu happened on a smaller scale in our weekly team meetings, when the full team met together to discuss any questions that had arisen during the translation efforts that week. But we found that the culture values its elders to such a degree that no one would contradict them once they had spoken. With that in mind, we requested that opinions during team meetings be expressed starting with the youngest, so that everyone would get a hearing. These interactions occasionally stimulated exclamations of surprise when team members discovered differences in pronunciations and understandings of ranges of meanings. Just the activity of thinking about their language in order to help address our questions increased each team member’s awareness of Natqgu language use.


I turn now to the four categories of language development8 performed most often in the context of the Natqgu Bible translation effort: training, literacy work, church work, and cultural engagement, as enacted through the long-term residence of an outsider advocate. It is the activities undertaken within these broader categories that I posit to be primarily and directly responsible for Natqgu’s increasing vitality.

3. Training

3.1 Job-specific training

To accomplish the goals of the NLP, training was necessary for every subdiscipline of the work. So, for example, the translators, Mr. Simon Meabr9 and Pastor Frank Yrpusz, attended translation workshops in the national capital to increase their skills; the key terms leader and other members of the team met with us weekly for a season to study Biblical culture and its similarities and differences to their own culture; and the translation review and literacy leaders honed their skills through an apprenticeship strategy. We also trained in a broader way by leading or facilitating community work-shops in transition literacy, literacy teacher training, and worship—the lat-ter taught clergy, catechists and choirmasters how to use and navigate the vernacular Book of Worship (2000). Both team and community training are assumed background for a number of activities, certain aspects of which are discussed in later sections, where connections with language vitality are drawn more clearly.

3.2 Typing, computers, and email

One training area which has had significant impact on vernacular language use is computer training in typing, file management, and email. One of our goals was for as many team members as possible to become computer liter-ate, and to that end we held computer classes once a week for around six months. Two team members, Clq and Yrpusz, gained some skill in typing and began to keyboard Natqgu materials. Both of them also learned file management skills like saving files, backing them up, copying them on flash drives, and renaming them whenever they worked on them. Other team members had less time to practice on a day-to-day basis and did not gain significant competence.

The younger of these two men, Clq, was then able to contribute his skills at a remote email-via-shortwave-radio station which opened at Kati Primary School, and which later became a distance learning center with six computers


and internet connection via satellite. He sometimes substitutes for the learn-ing center manager when she is away, and, since we left in 2006, he has con-tinued interacting with us remotely, through opening attached files, editing them, and sending them back as attachments. He also teaches others to open email accounts, send and receive emails, and to navigate the web. More re-cently he initiated a Skype video call to me by borrowing a computer from visitors. During that call he requested some files from me, which I was able to make available by giving him access to a folder on my Google drive. These are not trivial skills in a region where such computer technology only became available relatively recently.

Clq also serves as email typist in Natqgu for people wanting to send mes-sages to family and friends in the national capital and beyond. Previously, En-glish had been used exclusively as the language for written communication, and letters written in English had to be orally translated into Natqgu so that the addressees would understand what was said. One disadvantage was that the contents of such letters could become widely known rather quickly. But over the past decade, even Santa Cruz students studying overseas have been sending more Natqgu email messages than in the past.

3.3 National-level training

We were involved in training at the national level in two realms. The first was in our helping teach translation and language discovery workshops sponsored by the SIL translation group in the Solomon Islands. These workshops included our translation peers, Solomon Islanders, and even translation personnel from Vanuatu. The workshop material potentially strengthened the languages involved in the same ways I describe here for Natqgu, especially as regards outsiders taking an interest in the local lan-guages and cultures.

A second national-level teaching opportunity was at Bishop Patteson Theological College (BPTC) on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, which is the training arm for clergy in the COM. During the second half of 1993, my husband and I worked at BPTC to train future clergy in literacy and Bible translation principles. Other expatriate translation personnel succeeded us in that role. The major result has been a greater awareness on the part of BPTC’s graduates of the effectiveness of using the vernacular in the church context. So in addition to strengthening Natqgu, our contribution to train-ing in the Solomon Islands may have also positively affected other Solomon Islands vernaculars.


4. Literacy work

Natqgu Bible translation work also involved vernacular literacy activities that contributed to Natqgu language health, such as orthography redesign, lit-eracy workshops, vernacular literacy materials, and vernacular literacy in the schools. An active use of the written vernacular correlates with the EGIDS progression from a spoken language to one which is also written.

Some have claimed (Rehg 2004; Grenoble & Whaley 2005: 969–970; Handman 2009; Dobrin & Good 2009) that vernacular literacy efforts can actually be detrimental to language vitality. They claim that once people are literate in the vernacular, transition literacy into a national or trade language is facilitated, thereby in fact undermining the vernacular. The situation on Santa Cruz Island, and indeed in much of the Solomon Islands, is the exact opposite. As mentioned previously, English is the national language and the language of school textbooks. Most Santa Cruz students are not literate in their vernacular(s) when they enter the school system, so arguments about vernacular literacy undermining language maintenance are invalid for the Sol-omon Islands context, where transition literacy moves from English to the vernacular.

4.1 Orthography redesign

The original orthography in use on our arrival was one developed by Stephen A. Wurm in the late 1960s and modified in one vowel symbol by our prede-cessors in the Natqgu project in the mid-1970s. As related above, in the late 1980s there were only a handful of men who could read Natqgu, and fewer still who could consistently write the language, due to its plethora of parti-cles. As we observed unsuccessful efforts to write Natqgu, we concluded that orthography revisions might contribute to increases in the vernacular literacy rates.

Since I have discussed the revision process and its effects elsewhere (Boerger 1996, 2007), I only summarize the highlights here. The con-sonant inventory is rather straight forward, but Natqgu’s ten oral vowels and four or five nasalized vowels were targeted for revision after a ten-year period with no significant increase in Natqgu literacy levels using the previous orthography. Working with an ad hoc committee of Natqgu leaders, two main innovations were made in the orthography: 1) to use ‘consonant’ characters from the English alphabet which were not needed elsewhere in Natqgu to represent vowel sounds instead, making c, q, r, x an z all Natqgu vowels; and 2) to mark nasalization with a straight quote


following the nasalized vowel rather than the superimposed tilde used pre-viously. The initial orthography made use of diacritics, primarily umlauts, which are familiar to many Westerners, whether linguists or not, but which the local community found unintuitive with regard to their sound-symbol correspondences.

One potential difficulty introduced by using consonant graphemes to represent vowels was that while they might serve as vowels in Natqgu, they are also consonants in borrowed words which contain any of these five graph-emes. We found, though, that readers had little difficulty reading the correct sound—that is, as a vowel when adjacent to consonants and as a consonant when adjacent to vowels. What little opposition there might have been to the revised orthography was soon put to rest as we explained the new system personally to anyone who asked, and provided them with a half-page handout explaining the changes, which was essentially equivalent to Table 9.2, minus the IPA (Boerger 2007:135).

Table 9.2: Vowel equivalences in the old and new Natqgu orthographies.

Old New IPA Examples English glosses

a a a kalva betel nut

e e e neke who, interrog-ative

i i i mibi rotten

o o o itoto infant

u u u tumu fish species

o̱ c ɔ ncdc carrying stick from which things hang

ü q ʉ nqmq way, tradition, character

ö r ɵ mrbr to forget

ä x æ kxrkx which is spicy

ë z ə zvz always, habit-ually

That half-page handout ended up having a significant role in the increase in literacy rates for two reasons. First, those who could already read English were able to use it to teach themselves how to read Natqgu. And second, having copies of the vowel handout was the starting point for anyone who


decided to informally teach a friend to read. We kept a stack of the handouts ready to give away to those who would periodically come to our door and ask for the vowel pronunciation guide. This self-teaching advantage was so highly valued that the NLP team decided the vowel pronunciation guide should be part of every publication it sponsored; and it is even included in the appendix of the more formally published Natqgu scriptures (2008).

So, the ease of access provided by the vowel handout meant that the NLP team did not carry the burden of literacy teaching alone, but it was shared to a degree by community members already literate in English. The orthography change also seemed to stimulate a new interest in and success in learning to read, as I discuss next.

4.2 Literacy workshops

As noted regarding training, the literacy leader and other teachers were essen-tially trained by an apprenticeship method. Future teachers would first take a workshop as students, then help experienced teachers teach a workshop, and finally teach workshops on their own.

In 1994 I led back-to-back transition literacy workshops, which transi-tioned from reading and writing English, which participants had learned in school, to reading and writing the vernacular. One of these workshops used the former orthography and one used the then newly revised one. I observed that those using the new orthography seemed to learn the sound-letter corre-spondences of the vowels more easily and to have become more fluent readers than the first group by the end of their respective workshops (Boerger 1996, 2007). Subsequent workshops using the revised orthography bore this out, with an increase not just in the numbers of individuals literate in Natqgu, but also in the demographics represented, due to an increase in women and teen-agers. Recall that previously, only the older men had been literate in Natqgu.

These results led to the recruitment of Clq as literacy leader on the NLP team. He made tours around the island for about five years, and along with other teammates during that period reached all of the 15–20 villages that spoke either Natqgu or its most closely related language, Nalögo. He was also invited to teach at one Engdewu-speaking village, because they realized that the same orthography could serve them as well. Over the next five years, the literacy leader was invited back to most of the villages so he could con-duct refresher classes or help them practice reading. Having a local man lead these workshops increased their effectiveness significantly more than anything I might have accomplished myself (Boerger 2007:137).


4.3 Vernacular literacy materials

Clearly, if one wants to encourage vernacular reading, there must also be vernacular materials to read. The production of these was another goal of the NLP. The list in Table 9.3 summarizes the production outcomes for that goal (Boerger 2007). They are listed chronologically in each of three categories: general literacy materials, church-related ones, and scripture trial editions.

Table 9.3. Natqgu Language Project publications by category.

Date Natqgu Title English Title Description

General Literacy Materials

1990 Buk ngö Be Nëyö Më Natügu

Book of Stories Written in Natqgu

17 stories produced in a writers’ workshop by indigenous authors

1996 Neke Aboole Bot?Dakxnzng Nan Trm-

clogoBe Ngr Lrkr’ Ncdr Poi

Inapi x Memwa’ Nz-vzng mz Skul

Kuli kx Yrlqbrtile Poi

Doa Ne Kio

Who Sank the Boat?The Crocodile’s Food

The Story of the Rat and the Pig

Inapi and Memwa’ Go to School

The Dog that Tricked the Pig

The Chicken’s Child

6 “Shell Book” easy readers, illustrated with line drawings

2002 Be Kang Kqlu mz Natqgu

Many Stories in Natqgu

Graded reader with 43 titles: 17 from 1990, 6 stories from 1996, plus 20 more

2004 Buk kc Kai mz Nzrlwx-ngr mz Natqgu

The First Book for Reading in Natqgu

Alphabet primer for beginning readers; lessons authored by NLP team members

2005 (Review edition of Natqgu New Testa-ment)

English-Natqgu, Natqgu-English wordlist

Wordlist requested by teachers and commu-nity

Church Materials

1995 Nëköka’ngö Prayer Morning and Evening Prayer Services

1996 Nzmungrkxtr Holy Communion Service for Anglican church

1997 Nabz Kxtrng Holy Songs (#1) 100 worship songs, mixed local, chorus, and hymn


Church Materials

1999 Nzkrka’ngr Prayer Diglot, new orthog-raphy

2000 Buk ngr Nzangiongr Book of Worship Anglican Book of Common Prayer plus 455 worship songs

2000 Nabz Kxtrng Holy Songs (#2) 455 worship songs, mixed local, cho-rus, and hymn (for non-Anglicans)

Scripture Materials

1991 Nëöyö-köbë Pol Badö Lö Pilipae, ä Lö Kolosia, ä Nëöyöngö Ayönöngö So̱ Jon

Paul’s Writings to the Philippians, and the Colossians, and John’s First Writing

1st trial edition

1995 Nëöyöngökätö më Natügu

Holy writings in Natqgu

2nd trial edition: John, Philippians, Colos-sians, 1 & 2 Thessalo-nians, 11 Psalms

1996 Nzryrngrkxtr Holy writings 3rd trial edition: 1, 2, & 3 John, Revelation, 27 Psalms

1997 Nrpakxmrlz Ngr Jiszs Kraes

The Good News about Jesus Christ

4th trial edition: Luke, John, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus

2001 Jiszs Kraes rngisc zmatq ngr nzarlapxle nigu

Jesus Christ has the power to save us

Illustrated excerpts from Mark

2005 Nzryrngr Kc Ate x Sam Review edition Natqgu New Testament and Psalms with English-Natqgu, Natqgu-English wordlist

5th trial edition: New Testament (minus one book) and Psalms

2008 Nzryrngr Kc Ate, Rut, x Sam

Later Holy Writings, Ruth, and Psalms

Full New Testament, Ruth, and Psalms with a detailed Bible glossary


Several things are worth noting. First, in all three categories of publication, there were times when earlier material was revised and incorporated in a later book in order to make corrections and improvements, to change to the revised orthography, and to make the later publication available to a wid-er number of people. Second, some publications served multiple purposes, such as the illustrated Power to Save booklet (2001) listed under the scrip-ture subheading of the table, because it consists of excerpts from the Gos-pel of Mark. The booklet was used widely in literacy workshops hosted by local churches, because the pictures added interest and context. The 2005 scripture publication also contained a Natqgu-English, English-Natqgu wordlist, giving the book more than one function. Community needs were paramount in the production of the two church publications in 2000—the Book of Worship for the COM churches and an excerpted hymnal for the non-Anglican, Natqgu-speaking churches. It should further be noted that the narratives of the general literacy materials all had Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands, Melanesian or unmarked contexts and did not promote western or Christian values, unlike what has been reported elsewhere (Epps & Ladley 2009:642).

4.4 Vernacular literacy in the schools

The school system in the Solomon Islands follows the British system, with the primary grades being a ‘Pre’ class, then classes one through six. A placement exam in class 6 determines whether a student progresses to form 1 at the be-ginning of secondary school. Many students do not complete primary school, though some reach as far as forms 5 or 6. Other options are community high schools and church-run rural training centers. Post-secondary education, of-ten overseas, is only available to a handful of the very top students across the nation.

At Kati Primary School, the headmaster/teacher of class 6 asked the NLP to provide literacy materials so that he could start including a vernacular lit-eracy component in his lessons after his students had taken the placement exam. The NLP happily complied and the teacher found that this topic held students’ interest, as well as giving them an ability they might otherwise not have acquired. After a couple of years, the headmaster of another nearby pri-mary school incorporated vernacular literacy lessons at his school.

There were two significant results to vernacular literacy in the schools. The first result was that these young people added to the growing number of young men and women who were literate in the vernacular. Secondly, the school vernacular literacy efforts were initiated by the local community, with


no expatriate urging, giving hope that such education might be sustainable. To my knowledge, the Kati school program is on-going.

The NLP did two more things in 2004 in support of local literacy: it held a Natqgu primer training course for those who would teach others to read in Natqgu and it distributed a subset of the books in Table 9.3 to every Natqgu-speaking primary school on the island (Boerger 2007:141–142), thereby providing reading materials appropriate for each grade level. The thinking was that the headmasters at the workshop who were already teach-ing Natqgu could inspire other teachers there and that this locally-led initia-tive would continue. Critical to this effort was the production of the Natqgu primer, The First Book for Reading in Natqgu (Bck et al. 2004), which made it possible to teach literacy classes to non-readers and not focus exclusively on those who could already read in English, as had been the NLP strategy to date.

5. Church work

The COM (Anglican) was a major stakeholder in the Natqgu translation, and the practice in Anglican churches is for there to be daily morning and evening prayer services led by a church catechist, in addition to Sunday Holy Communion services when a priest is present. From 1995–2000 the NLP team invested in translating these liturgical services to produce a prayer book in Natqgu, with the expectation that Natqgu use in the church services would increase literacy and produce readers capable of tackling the more complex sentence structures in the scriptures. The chronology of this work is reflected in the center portion of Table 9.3 above.

5.1 Book of Worship and related activities

Until publication of the Natqgu Book of Worship (Boerger 2000), English was the sole liturgical language10 in the COM’s Temotu Diocese, except on rare special occasions when the vernacular was used. English has the advantage that it makes it easy to include outsiders, but a disadvantage is that com-prehension is minimal and people have memorized but do not understand the words of prayers, services, and songs. Therefore, the status of English was similar to the pre-Vatican II role of Latin in the Roman Catholic mass. Revealingly, when church and community leaders wanted people to under-stand something, they switched to Natqgu, as routinely happened during announcements following each service.


A significant increase in the use of Natqgu liturgically followed a worship workshop held in April 2002. It was attended by representative priests, cat-echists and choirmasters from the 25 COM churches on the island, includ-ing those in areas where the other two Santa Cruz languages—Nalögo and Engdewu—are spoken.11 The workshop helped these church leaders tran-sition from using English to using Natqgu for the liturgy in several ways. The workshop schedule allowed for attendance at daily morning and evening prayer services where the Natqgu liturgy was modeled by catechists Samuel Samwi and Ben Mewz at St. James and St. Thomas churches, respectively. Then, the closing, community-wide Holy Communion service modeled the sung liturgy, which nearly everyone prefers over the spoken liturgy, and which has the further advantage of being easier to memorize. As participants returned home, each one received a practice cassette tape of the Morning and Evening Prayer services and Holy Communion liturgy in Natqgu. In addition, each was given two cases of the Book of Worship for sale and use in their churches.

In the months following the workshop, Clq made further trips to villages where he had taught previously. Eventually, church choirs in some closer vil-lages began inviting the St. Thomas church choir, which included Clq and three other Natqgu team members, to provide extra help during preparation of songs and liturgical responses for their church’s saint’s day. The more literate helped the less literate. Also, during this period the Bishop of Te-motu Diocese was a man from another island who did not speak Natqgu. He showed his support for vernacular church services and his respect for the local people and culture by encouraging congregations to perform their parts in Natqgu while he did his in English. This strengthened people’s commit-ment to using Natqgu in worship, both to please him and to showcase their language.

It can be controversial to decide which language should be used in any given church service. In a discussion of such debates within the church of Burkina Faso, Fast (2007: 69–72) reports about a conflict between church leaders and missionaries. The church leaders advocated for the use of a LWC in church, because of its presumably being inclusive of all members. But the missionaries advocated for the use of the vernacular. Fast seemed to side with the church leaders, but it should be pointed out that although all members of the body of Christ worldwide do not speak the same vernacular, they are still part of the body. So arguing that to be one body only one lan-guage must be spoken is unrealistic. Similarly, in any given linguistic context it is often the case that there are some who do not necessarily have a good command of the LWC, and in those situations, the LWC excludes some


church members. It also seems to me that the source of the tensions stems from valuing inclusiveness on the side of church leaders and valuing com-prehension on the side of the missionaries. In other words, it comes down to where one draws the line in trying to find a balance between blessing the most and excluding the fewest. In that same passage, Fast says that vernacu-lar Bible translation personnel have a view of the first language which assigns it a mystical ‘spiritual authenticity and identity.’ But in fact, the reason Bible translation personnel value the first language is not mystical; rather, it stems from the assumption that one understands one’s first language best and the goal of Bible translation is comprehension on the part of those who hear it or read it.

On Santa Cruz Island, we experienced similar tensions about which lan-guage serves the most people, but the solutions were more amicable than what Fast reports regarding Burkina Faso. In our context, church leaders and missionaries (i.e. my husband and I) were generally of one mind regarding which language was appropriate to use in which situations. For example, En-glish was used for diocesan- or synod-wide events, in order to be inclusive of the church members gathered. But on the local level, church leaders, like the bishop, encouraged the use of the vernacular as being more meaningful to the majority of the people.

Following the worship workshop, momentum for liturgical Natqgu grew, as catechists and churches increasingly moved to using Natqgu. This result-ed in pressure for all relevant churches to make the shift, because the con-gregations were responding enthusiastically. For example, old women, who understood neither English nor Pijin, and who are often not literate in any language, were particularly supportive because they could now participate with understanding through the songs, prayers, and responses they were memorizing in Natqgu.

After a two-year absence, my family and I returned to the island in 2008 for a festive occasion to officially launch the Natqgu scriptures. The launch was spear-headed by a committee comprised of people from both the COM and Pentecostal denominations. In the late 1970s internal conflict in the indige-nous COM church on Santa Cruz caused what became this denominational split. In preparing for the launch, these two Natqgu-speaking denominations worked together towards a church service acceptable to both denominations. They told us that this cooperation had recreated a sense of being one people with one language, an atmosphere which had not been present on the island since the split over 30 years before.

The vernacular translation can thereby be seen to be a marker of ‘the identity and history of the people’ that contributes to the positive self-image


required for language maintenance (Ostler 2003:176). While some have not-ed the potential for missionary involvement in promotion of vernacular lan-guages to create divisions within communities (Fast 2007), our literacy and translation work on Santa Cruz Island instead provided a palpable source of renewed unity.

6. Cultural engagement

Language vitality also increased due to our cultural engagement. As our cul-tural awareness grew, so did our ability to draw parallels and point out con-trasts to biblical culture. Moreover, our continued respect for the culture on Santa Cruz Island in turn increased the value that those living there placed on their own culture and language. UNESCO defines cultural heritage as follows:

Cultural heritage…also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, perform-ing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concern-ing nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. (http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00002)

These are the kinds of expressions we were seeking to undergird. In this sec-tion I show how engagement with vernacular metaphors, unknown terms, traditional musical genres, song lyrics, and Natqgu grammar, either by the expatriate advisors, the NLP team, or the people themselves, contributed to a strengthening of the Natqgu language.

6.1 Vernacular metaphors

My investigation of tree metaphors was coupled with a lexical database study of Santa Cruz trees in general due to their significance in the culture. While trees are not the only basis for metaphors in Natqgu, two trees were found to have associated metaphorical meanings of high cultural importance and can serve to illustrate this aspect of the strengthening of Natqgu. This subsection summarizes portions of Boerger (2009).

Both bushes and trees use nc ‘tree’ as the first part of their compound forms. The nc nqngq or ‘rooster tail’ is a waist-high bush having long, narrow reddish leaves. While translating a battle text from the Psalms, we needed to find a translation equivalent to ‘banner’ or ‘standard’. Mr. Simon told me that, previously, a war leader would cut rooster tail branches and put them in the back waistband of his loincloth to identify himself as the ngrlrvea ‘war


leader’ during battle. The red color of the leaves made it easy for his war-riors to find and follow him during battle. The war leader could also remove the leaves from his waistband and wave them in the air to rally his men to him. Alternatively, he could tie the branches to a stick to be flown as a battle standard. These two latter actions were what gave the secondary meaning of ‘ banner’ or ‘standard’. Therefore, we used this concept to translate Psalm 60:4, which reads: Kxetu, nim ngrlrvea ngrgr. Glalzm nc nqngq bagr. “Big-man, you are our war leader. Lift up the ‘rooster tail banner’ for us.”

As it turns out, even though inter-clan warfare is no longer practiced on Santa Cruz, younger people are still able to understand the practice today be-cause the nc nqngq is integrally related to Santa Cruz’s most culturally signifi-cant dance, the nelc dance (Davenport 1975). Those who lead the dance wear nc nqngq branches just like the war leaders did previously. The senior transla-tor’s testing of the passage in several villages confirmed that the meaning is ac-cessible to younger speakers who can derive the accurate meaning from context based on their knowledge of the use of the leafy branches in the nelc dance.

Turning to another tree metaphor, the sea trumpet or beach cordi is called nc niglq in Natqgu. It grows close to the sea and can become quite tall, with thick, spreading branches. It has light orange trumpet-shaped flowers, which are favored by the small, red-colored mzngra bird. This habitat is significant because the feathers of this bird species are used to make either lrdq red feath-er money coils or nceapu red feather money sticks (Davenport 1962).

To Santa Cruz people, a man who has a niglq tree where the mzngra birds are found has a good chance of acquiring wealth. As a result, the tree name is associated with wealth and prestige and has acquired four metonymic meanings in which the name of the tree is substituted for other nouns. The four meton-ymies are: important person, important person’s house, treasure, and throne. So, someone having this tree near his home is an important person, and he can be said to come and go to the tree, rather than to the house. Further, he has ac-cess to treasure since the tree is a means to wealth. And finally, nc niglq can also mean ‘throne’ or ‘seat of power’, in that an important man who has a niglq tree on his property might sit at its base to converse with others, and by association, the place where the important one sits is his throne.

In addition to the red feather money coils which were previously used for paying bride price, the red feathers also come in a stick form, called nceapu, where they are glued to a stick about 10–12 inches long. The red feath-er money stick itself also has the metaphorical meaning of ‘rich, wise man,’ which was used to describe King Solomon in the Natqgu scriptures.

By using these tree names and associated concepts in the translation, as well as other culturally significant metaphors, some of which are archaic or


uncommon, the Natqgu translation documented waning elements of the lan-guage and culture for posterity. This is another way that translation work contributed to Natqgu language maintenance.

6.2 Biblical key terms, unknown concepts, and generational differences

Another translation activity which supported language vitality was the search for biblical key terms and ways of expressing unknown concepts. In the book of Revelation, the author, John, talks about having visions. Mr. Simon and I discussed what this meant and he invented the compound verb obq-rmwible ‘look-dream’ to express it. Interestingly, during village testing no one ever had to ask what this neologism meant.

The team was also seeking a way to express ‘covenant.’ Mr. Simon had been using nzesz’tikr drtwr ‘oneness of mind’, which is used to express agree-ment; but most others on the team preferred borrowing the English term (written kavanzn in Natqgu), in part because it sounded more weighty to them. So it was agreed to test the English borrowing. However, during village testing of Galatians, which talks about several covenants, it became clear that people were generally unfamiliar with what covenant means and a well-educated younger couple asked, “How will we know what these words mean unless you translate them for us in our own language?” With that input the NLP decided to switch back to the phrase Mr. Simon had been using previously. Such NLP team consensus and confirmation during village testing determined whether it was better to use an English borrowing, to invent a new term, or to re-introduce a nearly archaic Natqgu expression. To further aid in comprehension, explanations of biblical terms were also included in the sixty-six page glossary to the published Natqgu scriptures.

War terminology proved to be a further area in which generational dif-ferences played a role. Mr. Simon spoke the oldest of the three linguistic varieties based on age, while the other translator and another team member spoke the middle-aged variety. The rest of the team members fell into the youngest group, which was also the target age group for the translation. The youngest speakers have never acquired a great number of words and concepts known by the older two groups, demonstrating that Natqgu vital-ity has been declining in this realm, even though the children still learn it as their first language.

There has not been inter-clan warfare on the island since the 1950s, about the time that the middle-aged group was born. So Mr. Simon was the only team member who grew up during a time of warfare. It is not


surprising, then, that the Natqgu spoken by the oldest group has a rich war terminology, including words for war chief, war hero, banner, breastplate, and fortress—all concepts needed for translating the Psalms, as well as other biblical passages.

In the translation, we planned that such less well-known words would intermittently co-occur with a descriptive phrase, giving enough context for the meaning to be clear. The parallel lines of the Psalms were ideal for this function. Thus, for the archaic lrpalvc ‘fortress,’ the translation might read ‘the fortress that I run to for safety.’ Similarly, a large, flat, circular shell served as a breastplate during warfare. This temz ngr lomr ‘moon of the chest,’ was an undecorated version of the more ornate breastplate that dancers wear in the nelc dance (Figure 9.2) discussed next. The youngest group is familiar with the decorated object and its name, but not its earlier function in warfare. So the Natqgu scriptures read, “the moon of my chest which deflects arrows.” An illustration in the Natqgu scriptures (2008:682) superimposes a Santa Cruz breastplate over a Roman breastplate to convey the concept. Similar word choice decisions were made for other warfare terms. Rather than borrowing English words, the NLP decided that if a term had to be introduced, it was generally better to (re-)introduce Natqgu words rather than English ones. Thus, while it is not usually a goal of a Bible translation to preserve archaic vocabulary, a number of Natqgu terms were preserved in this way.

Figure 9.2. “Moon of the chest” breastplate (photo by Tim Hall, used by permission; www.tileawealth.com.au).


6.3 Santa Cruz nelc dance and custom music

Another distinctive element of Santa Cruz culture is the nelc dance, shared by all three indigenous language groups on the island. I have described the dance, dance ring, costuming, timing, and song lyrics elsewhere (Boerger 1998, 2007, 2009; see also Davenport 1975). The aspect most immediately relevant to language vitality is the poetic form of the song lyrics, which have a quatrain form in which the last line is a verbatim repetition of the first lyrically, but not musically. Thus, the form requires that the repeated clause (lines one and four) be able to occur sentence initially and finally, or that it be an independent clause, or some combination of these. Each couplet com-prises around 12–15 syllables, and because the form is so short, it involves a distillation of the message into one or two short sentences. The song leader introduces the song by singing it all the way through once by himself. Then he and half the costumed dancers sing the first two lines, while the rest of the costumed dancers and the community members present sing the final two lines. Singers transition into their parts by singing along with the last few syllables of the other group’s part. Each song is sung repeatedly, up to twenty or thirty times and then one of the lead dancers starts another one.

There are two ways in which engaging with tradition—what Santa Cruz people call “custom” in the music and dance realm—has impacted Natqgu language vitality. The more immediately linguistic impact is directly related to Bible translation, while the more sociological impact is indirect. The direct impact relates to the incorporation of the custom quatrain in the translation of the book of Psalms. Mr. Simon and I found that the parallel lines of the Hebrew poetry of some psalms were quite compatible with this Natqgu form, and therefore a number of full psalms and psalm portions were translated to conform to the indigenous Natqgu pattern, namely all of Psalms 23, 134, 136, and 148, plus portions of Psalms 13, 41, 47, 72, 75, 89, 106, 107, 116, 118, and 141. So a total of 15 of the 150 psalms have a custom component. Any time these psalms are read or sung, they reinforce that linguistic pattern of the culture and thereby strengthen not only the language, but also the song lyric form. New church lyrics were also set to custom tunes and included in the hymnal section of the Book of Worship.

The less direct impact on Natqgu vitality is that the use of custom forms has been affirmed in church worship as a result of our outsider advocacy for this, in spite of initial resistance from the Pentecostal denomination. At St. Thomas church, which we attended, when the choir was partaking of holy communion, it became the practice for several of the older men to lead the singing of Christian custom songs during that time. Previously, custom songs had only been used in special services, but not routinely.


To promote literacy and the acceptability of custom songs in worship, the NPL produced two Natqgu music cassettes with church songs according to the liturgical church year—one for Advent and Christmas and another for Lent and Easter. These cassettes contained custom songs interspersed with popular Western-style hymns and choruses in translation, and were distribut-ed to all Natqgu-speaking clergy on the island.

Some Pentecostal leaders, who had formerly opposed the use of custom songs in church contexts, changed their minds after listening to the cassettes. This made it possible to include custom songs along with the Natqgu hymns and choruses which were used in the church service to launch the Natqgu scriptures. Thankfully, one of the people who had previously opposed the custom songs was the one dancing most enthusiastically in that service when they were sung. His public display came as a result of the proactive stance taken by the NLP. And in fact, our direct support of the culture through the custom songs also supports the language in which the songs are sung, thereby affecting Natqgu vitality.

It has been assumed in the literature (Nettle & Romaine 2000:ix and others) that there is an inherent relationship between language loss and cul-ture loss. However, some recent studies in ethnomusicology (Coulter 2011; Harris 2012:170–194; Saurman 2012) show for cultures as diversely located as Papua New Guinea, Russia, and Cambodia that language can tenaciously hang on, long after cultural identifiers within the expressive arts have been lost. It is therefore especially important to partner language maintenance with cultural maintenance activities, in an effort to preserve unique heritages around the world. As Coulter (2011) writes,

I have instead been struck by the lack of common, obvious connections between language strength and expressive arts traditions. Some communities in which vernacular language use is very strong show little continuity in local artistic tradi-tions. Intergenerational transmission of language in the home may be happening, while local singing traditions have all but given way to more Western-influenced styles.

The use and status of the Santa Cruz custom forms had begun to wane by the time of our arrival on the island. It was the nearly exclusive domain of the oldest group of speakers. At one point I was told by a local man my age that I sang custom better than he did. But my advocacy, my study of the forms, and my efforts to compose lyrics in the custom style contributed to a revival of interest in this highly salient cultural marker, such that young people began to sing them and to write new lyrics in the custom style.


6.4 Written song lyrics

During our time working with the NLP, we saw numerous instances of in-creased ability to read Natqgu as a result of people’s desire to be able to sing all the verses of songs in church. Three of these can serve as examples. The first was a woman who essentially taught herself to read through learning ten scripture choruses in the context of a youth Bible study. The second was a church catechist who transitioned from reading scripture lessons in English to reading trial edition renderings in Natqgu, as a result of gaining reading fluency through his participation in an Easter vigil choir. The third was Ken-nedy Clq, who would later become the NLP literacy leader. He taught others to sing in Natqgu at his church school’s “island service night,” when use of one of the eight vernaculars of Temotu Province was encouraged. Whenever Natqgu’s turn came around, he taught fellow students the Natqgu lyrics to “Amazing Grace” and other songs of the faith. One of the students was his cousin, who also taught himself to read Natqgu through learning the song lyrics (Boerger 2007:139–141).

While attending church services, I had observed that the youngest age group enjoyed singing Christian choruses, while the middle group appreciated hymns, and the oldest group was energized by singing custom tunes. Therefore, the NLP made it a priority to include Natqgu lyrics for all three music styles in the song portion of the Book of Worship (2000), which ultimately contained 80 choruses, 213 hymns, and 162 custom songs. Since people were motivated to read so they could sing all the vers-es of songs, the inclusion of these three song styles in the Book of Worship meant that there were songs of interest to everyone. So this translation activity increased the vitality of Natqgu by providing literacy materials that speakers desired to read.

6.5 Natqgu grammar

A fourth category of cultural engagement was my study of Natqgu. Indeed, from SIL’s inception it has been a priority to learn the vernaculars where we work, in part to validate their cultures (Svelmoe 2009:630). As a result of grammar discussions during team meetings, awareness of grammatical constructions and considerations was raised considerably. The NLP team’s growing appreciation of the structures of their own language was significant because I had observed that speakers of Natqgu, and probably all the Santa Cruz languages, have low cultural self-esteem based on the perceived difficulty of writing their languages. For example, they struggled with how to write the ten oral vowels using just the five vowel graphemes of the English alphabet.


Most other Solomon Islands vernaculars have classical five-vowel systems, so when Natqgu speakers told speakers of other languages that Natqgu could not be written they were not believed. But once they heard its five non-stan-dard vowels, those other-language speakers decided Natqgu could not be written after all. I suspect that the cumulative result of interactions like this over time was a feeling that somehow the Natqgu language, and possibly also the Santa Cruz culture, were inferior to those elsewhere in the country, and by extension, the world.

Such a situation is not conducive to language health, in that self-esteem is critical to the health and survival of endangered languages (Ostler 2003). To address this perceived lack of self-esteem, I took advantage of a primer workshop for school and community literacy teachers to lecture about the grammatical complexities of the Santa Cruz languages (Boerger 2007:142). At the feast to close the workshop, participants shared that the value they placed on Natqgu and the other Santa Cruz languages had increased. They followed with a requested for a Natqgu reference for standardized spellings, which we addressed in 2005 by including a Natqgu-English, English-Natqgu wordlist as part of an already funded scripture publication (Boerger 2007:138).

7. Long-term presence of outsider advocate

I have shown above that activities in the realms of training, literacy work, church work, and cultural engagement which were undertaken by the Natqgu Language Project, and/or by my husband and me in our advisory role, have all led to a strengthening of the vitality of Natqgu. The number and depth of these activities were only possible as a result of our extended residence in the Solomon Islands, primarily on Santa Cruz Island. Since these activities, in-cluding funding for salaries and publications, all depended on the presence of outside advisors, it should be uncontroversial to claim that direct, long-term involvement of an outsider functioning as an advocate for the local culture and language has been a critical factor in increasing Natqgu language vitality.

By extension, it might further be claimed that Bible translation personnel around the world are uniquely positioned to address the four areas of activity discussed above, as well as to have a sustained presence in the community. In other words, due to their interest in language-related concerns and their ex-tended residencies in language communities, Bible translation personnel have significant opportunities to contribute to the worldwide strengthening of vernaculars. While academic fieldworkers might engage in the realms of train-ing, literacy, and cultural engagement, they are unlikely to also contribute to church work activities or to be able to reside in the community for extended


periods. In the Natqgu translation project, our willingness to participate in church work was responsible in part for our ability to be effective in language maintenance activities. And regarding time spent in the field, over a period of 21 years, we were resident in the Solomon Islands for a total of 15 years and 10 months—a duration virtually unheard of for academic fieldworkers outside of Bible translation and missionary circles.

This same conclusion was reached by Cahill (2003, 2004, this volume), who claimed that the long-term presence (measured in decades) of com-mitted outsiders was one of two major factors in reversing the decline of small languages. The other was access to western medicine. Epps & Ladley (2009:645) also report on the success of team-based fieldwork “in promoting the kinds of long-term community-based programs that are much harder to maintain using the traditional one-fieldworker-one-language approach.” So it is unclear whether actual long term residence in a community is essential. But what has clearly proven effective in language development efforts is long-term involvement of outside advocates.

8. Conclusion

In the discussion and examples above, I have shown how activities associ-ated with Bible translation have increased the vitality of Natqgu, moving it from 6a ‘Vigorous’ to 5 ‘Developing’ on the EGIDS scale. This supports research which found that standardized orthographies and vernacular liter-acy contribute to language maintenance (Ostler & Rudes 2000:11; Crow-ley 2001:259). As stated above, even though language vitality was not the underlying goal of many of the Bible translation activities which enhanced Natqgu vitality, it does not mitigate the fact that the activities catalogued here have had positive effects.

There is also potential for such positive effects to continue as I work now from outside the Solomon Islands on a Natqgu reference grammar12 and an expansion of the Natqgu-English/English-Natqgu wordlist to a full bilin-gual dictionary. These pending publications may contribute to Natqgu being used as the language of early education, as proposed by the Solomon Islands government (Solomon Islands Ministry of Education and Human Resourc-es Development 2010). Should that happen, in coming years it might be claimed that activities or personnel associated with a Bible translation project further served to move Natqgu from EGIDS level 5 ‘Developing’ to level 4 ‘Educational.’

These findings have implications with regard to establishing effective strategies for language maintenance and vitality. The on-going presence and/


or involvement of an outsider advocate has been critical in the effectiveness of training, literacy work, church work, and cultural engagement activities, all of which have led to an increase in the vitality of Natqgu.

There has been some recent wariness in the literature, most notably Dobrin et al. (2009), as regards the proper relationship between academic linguists and those affiliated with Bible translation organizations. And while it is understandable that many scholars may not wish to personally participate in and support church work or Bible translation—nor would church workers or Bible translators expect them to—it seems a disservice to the language communities to refuse to work cooperatively in the area of conservationist linguistics in light of our shared language development goals.

I suggest that a better approach would be for all the language develop-ment stakeholders to articulate those shared goals, identify which stakeholder is best positioned to accomplish them, and to distribute conservationist tasks accordingly. That is, academic fieldworkers could multiply their effectiveness by tapping into the infrastructures represented by the long-term residence of translation personnel in the field; language community members could work with the translation personnel to provide data needed by scholars over-seas; and expatriate scholars could provide the language community and the linguist-translator with cutting-edge research results such as grammars, dictionaries, language learning lessons, and could also direct them to other recent scholarship.

Cooperation and facilitation are, in fact, already considered best prac-tice for many of us working in the languages of the Pacific (Quakenbush 2007; Dobrin 2009) and elsewhere. For example, as the linguist assigned to the NLP, I interacted with national government offices multiple times to acquire residence permits on behalf of academic linguists who work elsewhere in Temotu Province; I hosted and fed those colleagues and their students; I continue to collaborate with them on linguistics publications; and generally cooperate in every way possible for the benefit of the vernacular and academic communities. Natqgu speakers from the NLP team have continued to pro-vide logistical help for academic scholars at all levels, connecting them with village elders and speakers in other language communities, especially now that I am no longer resident there. And clearly, speakers of these languages work with linguists, anthropologists, and Bible translators to supply data which is used in the production of the literacy and language materials for the language communities.

Therefore, cooperation appears to be a win-win-win situation where mul-tiple stakeholders—the expatriate scholar, the linguist-translator, and the lo-cal community—each benefits from the contributions of the others. Utilizing


such a strategy for language conservation would mean that more language resources are made available to communities, the output of the academic scholars’ research reaches its intended beneficiaries, and the translation per-sonnel have access to the expertise of scholars for designing more effective language maintenance vehicles. As Olson (2009:652) has already said, “The stakes are high. Languages are dying out at an alarming rate, and we need to work together for the benefit of indigenous cultures around the world.” So I close by asking, can any of us truly afford to disregard the potential contri-butions of other language advocacy stakeholders, whether Bible translators or not? As for me and my colleagues, we will continue to cooperate and collab-orate with all who are interested.

Notes

1. I would like to thank Daniel Boerger, J. Stephen Quakenbush, Stephen Self, and the editors of this volume for comments which have improved this article. As always, any errors or misinterpretations remain my responsibility. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of SIL or GIAL.

2. We were preceded in the Natqgu project by another couple who were there for about six to eight years.

3. The official international spelling for this language is ‘Natügu,’ which is more lin-guist-friendly. In this paper I use Natqgu, which is the spelling in the local orthogra-phy.

4. Some have criticized language documentation and vitality efforts for being paternal-istic and claim that language use should remain in the hands of the speakers them-selves, whether to abandon or to preserve (Ladefoged 1992; DeSwaan 2004). I do not think this is an either-or situation, in that globalization and the economic advantages of knowing a global language are not going to disappear, and commu-nities certainly should be free to pursue such economic benefits. At the same time, the descendants of speakers who abandon their vernacular may come to disagree with that decision, and language documentation now will make future revitalization possible. Likewise, many vernaculars co-exist with global languages, using each in its place. The goal in the Solomon Islands context is not to totally eliminate the use of English, which would be unrealistic and ill-conceived, but to establish community domains outside the home, where the vernacular is strong and can be used in paral-lel with English and Pijin. In Boerger et al. (2012) we report in more detail which languages are used for which domains in the RSC languages. See also Dorian (1993) for a response to Ladefoged.

5. Some of the EGIDS labels and descriptions have been modified by Lewis and Simons since their 2010 publication. The most recent update is available at http://www.ethnologue.com/about/language-status, and is reflected in the table here. In my research, I have found that in measuring language shift on the EGIDS scale, it would be useful to be able to indicate whether a situation is stable or changing, and if chang-ing, the direction of the change. I suggest adding up, down, or no arrows following the assigned numerical level to indicate increasing, decreasing, or stable vitality at that level.


6. Engdewu has previously been called Nagu or Nanggu in the literature. Recent re-search on Santa Cruz has shown that Engdewu is the preferred designation for refer-ring to this language (Boerger et al. 2012). One of the primary causes of language shift in Engdewu regions is intermarriage, which has also been defined as a factor in language loss by Quakenbush (2011).

7. All members of the NLP and other community individuals mentioned by name in this article have notified me that they would like to be referred to by their names, rather than remain anonymous.

8. Other types of training and capacity building such as organizational development, planning, leadership development, and resource-linking were either performed less frequently or are less directly related to Natqgu language vitality, and are therefore not discussed here.

9. Mr., Miss, and Mrs. are titles used for school teachers in the Solomon Islands and the title remains with them even after they are no longer actively teaching. The titles are normally combined with the first or “Christian” name, such that the retired school teacher who worked as the senior Natqgu translator is always referred to as “Mr. Simon.”

10. The Shell Book RTU, PO Box 397, Ukarumpa, EHP, Papua New Guinea. 11. Prior to English, the Mota language of Vanuatu served as the liturgical language for

much of the COM. 12. During both the primer workshop and the worship workshop, speakers of Nalögo

and Engdewu were encouraged to mentally read the Natqgu, but to speak aloud their own vernaculars, as they were able, when using the Natqgu materials, until the time when similar resources were available in their own languages. Some people found they were able to do this fairly easily, but for others the shift was considerably more difficult.

13. I gratefully acknowledge 12 months of fellowship funding from the jointly managed NSF-NEH program Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) during 2010–2011 for work on the Natqgu Grammar (Boerger, in progress), several chapters of which are not yet complete. The collection of linguistic data, its maintenance in data-bases and files, the grammatical analysis, and lexical studies which are the source of the grammar and dictionary work were all collected in my role as advisor to the Natqgu Language Project, and it is in that light that it can be categorized as a Bible translation activity.

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UNESCO. What is Intangible Cultural Heritage? http://unesdoc.unesco.org/imag es/0013/001387/138795e.pdf and http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00002, both accessed 18–19 Jun 2012.

Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003. Defining documentary linguistics. Language Documenta-tion and Description 1: 35–51.

Wurm, Stephen A. 2003. The language situation and language endangerment in the great-er Pacific area. In Mark Janse & Sijmen Tol (eds.), Language death and language maintenance: Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches, 15–47. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

10. Encouraging language revitalization through education and Bible translation among the Ap Ma of Papua New Guinea

Jill riepe

Pioneer Bible Translators

1. Introduction

As a student preparing to serve with Pioneer Bible Translators, I heard about the over 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, many of them in pre-literate societies and separated by harsh terrain.

Martha Wade, the Director of Language Affairs with Pioneer Bible Trans-lators at the time, invited me to consider working with the Ap Ma, a Papuan language group in the East Sepik Province (ISO code: kbx, also called Botin and Kambot). According to the version of the Ethnologue available at that time (Lewis 2009), this language had 7,000 speakers and only a few portions of the Bible had been translated. Several missionaries had been working there over the years starting after World War II. Pioneer Bible Translators began their work with the Ap Ma in the late 1970s when John and Bonita Pryor allocated to the village of Samban. Samban is the central village of the fifteen villages that speak Ap Ma (see Figure 10.1).

The Pryors’ work with the Ap Ma consisted of community development, translation and literacy. They developed an orthography for the language and printed several books, including: a transfer primer to teach those literate in Mel-anesian Pidgin [tpi], the trade language of Papua New Guinea, to read in the vernacular; a song and memory verse book; a story about visiting Ukarumpa,

178 eDucation anD BiBle translation aMong tHe ap Ma

SIL International’s main center in Papua New Guinea, called Ukalampa Dama Man Yadiyen Ala Me (Mukok 1984); two story books written by national writ-ers; the Joseph story from Genesis; and the Gospel of Luke. These books pro-vided a venue for vernacular speakers to practice their new literacy skills. In the early 1980s, Martha Wade assisted the Pryors in their work by conducting a survey of the language group. She was able to share with me about her expe-riences of working with the teenagers and traveling to the fifteen different vil-lages to conduct the survey and linguistic analysis of the language. The Pryors and Martha Wade were among the first to write linguistic papers about the Ap Ma language (e.g., Wade 1981; Pryor 1990; Pryor & Pryor 1995).

Figure 10.1. Ap Ma homeland (map provided courtesy of SIL PNG).

Jill Riepe 179

2. Searching for speakers

When I allocated to Punyaton, a village near Samban, in June of 2009, I was shocked to find everyone speaking Melanesian Pidgin, also known as Tok Pisin.1 As a single woman, I tried to find another young woman in the community to live with me and help me learn the language. Amina Maso, the national translator’s 21-year-old daughter, was selected to live with me; however, she was unable to speak the language. I asked around the village but was told that there were no children who could speak the language. As I searched for language helpers, I found that the fluent speakers of the language were grandparents or older. The Ap Ma language was reserved for ceremonial purposes such as funerals and official meetings. According to the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (Lewis & Simons 2010, see Boerger’s article in this volume), the Ap Ma language is moribund and severely endangered.

This caused some serious challenges in my primary goal of Ap Ma lan-guage learning. I found it very difficult to find anyone willing to talk to me in the vernacular. The children told me, “Don’t speak vernacular to us. We don’t understand it.” Their parents told me that they did not speak the lan-guage well enough to talk with me. They were afraid that I would learn it incorrectly if they spoke to me in the language. One language learning book suggested listening in your house as people spoke the vernacular to learn the intonation of the language. I found that I was unable to do that as I only heard Melanesian Pidgin.

Occasionally, I could hear radio or television programs from other houses, but of course these were in either Pidgin or English. Besides radio and TV, another recent advance in technology in Papua New Guinea is the cell phone. The Samban and Punyaten villages do not have good cell phone reception yet, but there are specific trees you can climb to make phone calls. As I walk along the paths of the village, I frequently overhear people speaking in Pidgin on their phones up in the trees. I have tried to use the vernacular with village people on the phone and in text messages to them, but generally they talk and text in Pidgin.

After learning the vocabulary for purchasing items in the market, I went to the local market held on Saturday mornings in Samban, but I found that the ladies selling their local produce did not understand my questions in Ap Ma. It was only when I switched to Pidgin that they responded. I was told by my language helper that the women in the market do not speak the vernacu-lar. As I tried to speak the vernacular to the people walking around the village, I was told, “Oh, they don’t speak Ap Ma. They are from another language


group.” The use of motor canoes has allowed more travel between these once very isolated villages.

3. Strengthening the vernacular

Fortunately, I had several of the books that the Pryors had translated. The New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles was dedicated during my first village stay in Punyaten. I started reading a section from Acts with Amina each night. One night, I would read, and the next night, she would read. We would read from the Ap Ma and then from an easy English translation of the Bible. Afterwards, we would discuss what we had read. We did this for many months. It helped me to hear the language and to start to understand a little about how it worked. It also helped Amina. She told me that at first she did not know how to read Ap Ma, but now after reading with me for so many months, she felt more comfortable reading in Ap Ma.

Another part of my language and culture learning has been recording and transcribing traditional and historical stories. I would visit with the older people in the community and record their experiences from World War II or the traditional stories. I have been able to document several of the Ap Ma traditional stories about the origin of the Ap Ma group, the creation of the world, and more specific things like descriptions of coconuts and how to do traditional work. I have used these stories to create small picture books. Some of these are already published, and eventually all of them will be available to the community.

In August 2009, Outreach International Papua New Guinea (OIPNG) and I initiated a new bilingual curriculum for the Prep-Grade 2 School. OIPNG is a mission based in Samban that focuses on medical and communi-ty development. I assisted in translating and checking the picture books for the curriculum. We hope that through the use of the vernacular in school, the parents will recognize the value of speaking their language at home as well. Traditionally, education in Papua New Guinea has been in English, which most people do not speak or understand. Several of the parents felt that if they teach their children Tok Pisin instead of Ap Ma, they would do better in school, especially in learning English. However, the knowledge of Melanesian Pidgin tends to interfere with children’s ability to learn English. They are more likely to transfer the Melanesian Pidgin usage into their use of English, since the two languages have the appearance of being closely related.

The National Language Policy endorsed by the Papua New Guinean government in 1989 acknowledged the importance of vernacular education

Jill Riepe 181

and started the shift toward education in the vernacular (NDOE 1992). Unfortunately, very little government assistance has been provided for this vernacular education; however, the government does allow it. Learning to read in their vernacular actually helps children to do better in all areas of school (Clarkson 1992). With all this in mind, the vernacular and English curriculum was put into practice in 2011 in the villages of Samban, Punyaten, Raten, Simbri, and Kambot. One parent mentioned that he felt these students will do much better than the ones who did not have vernacular schooling. The students appear to be doing well, but they still have many challenges. Their teachers have a limited knowledge of the vernacular. In order to be educated as teachers, they went to school in urban areas like Wewak, where Melanesian Pidgin is the primary language.

In 2010, I approached Luke Mukok, the pastor of the Samban church, about introducing the reading of vernacular Scriptures into the regular church service. Luke was very enthusiastic about the idea. Initially, I was asked to read the vernacular Scripture on most Sundays. After a few months, though, the nationals were the ones reading and I was excited to see Amina Maso read before the church as well. Meanwhile, the Ap Ma translation team and I continue translating and checking Scripture to provide more books for the church and community. The translation team has started an Old Testament Panorama (a selection of stories from the Old Testament), and meanwhile the work on the New Testament continues. As books are completed, they are published and made available to the community. These books provide more opportunities for people to use the vernacular and literacy skills which will strengthen vernacular usage.

In 2012, I attended a dictionary workshop in Wewak with one of the teachers, Dike Matram. Dike teaches one of the Prep classes for the Punyat-en school. He indicated that his schooling to become a teacher had pulled him away from the village and the vernacular, so he found it hard to speak in Ap Ma, but he could understand it. Through the workshop, we created a rough draft of a trilingual dictionary and finished a picture dictionary that I had been working on over the last few years. Dike and I struggled to think of words in Ap Ma and found it challenging to define the words found in previously published books. In one section about idioms, Dike was unable to think of any Ap Ma idioms and when I shared a few that I was aware of, he was not aware of their meanings. While the previous generation of Ap Ma speakers is still using this picturesque language, Dike’s generation is in danger of losing the metaphors and idioms of the Ap Ma language. Hopefully, the new trilingual dictionary will provide an additional tool for preserving and restoring their usage.


In the Pryors’ (1995) anthropological study, they indicate that of the three languages used in the Samban area, the vernacular Ap Ma had the low-est status. The vernacular was used in the home, for trade within the language group, and to explain Scriptures in church. Today, no one uses Ap Ma in these three domains. Melanesian Pidgin has taken over. In 1995, transient Ap Ma speakers tended to use Melanesian Pidgin as a way to indicate status. Now individuals in the community use English as a way to indicate status. Until the mid-1990s, the Scriptures were available only in Melanesian Pidgin. Now there are several books available in the vernacular and the reading of vernacular Scriptures has just been introduced into the church service. The Pryors suggested that education had played a role in strengthening Melane-sian Pidgin in the area since the Samban Community School, at that time, taught in Melanesian Pidgin. Hopefully, the new bilingual school curriculum will strengthen the vernacular and motivate a revitalization of the language. They also listed as another language-status factor the fact that missionary chil-dren, who only spoke Melanesian Pidgin, were esteemed playmates. Today, the missionary children in the area still primarily know Melanesian Pidgin and not the vernacular, but hopefully, the new bilingual school will change the language of play. Already, the missionary children are starting to learn some of the vernacular through playing with their national friends.

4. Conclusion

While Melanesian Pidgin appears to be very strong among the Ap Ma in the Samban and Punyaten villages, the bilingual schools, more access to vernacu-lar books, and the trilingual and picture dictionaries will hopefully provide the necessary stimulus toward revitalization. Melanesian Pidgin and English will still control many domains of language use, like the radio and speaking with people from other language groups; however, it is my hope that Ap Ma will regain the domains of speaking in the home, in the school, in the church, and with other Ap Ma speakers. The key is whether or not parents will consider Ap Ma important enough to teach to their children. If they do that, then the resources of the Bible, other literature and dictionaries will be available to assist in the maintenance of the language.

Note

1. The observations found in this paper are based on the villages of Samban and Punyat-en. I have visited several of the other villages within the language group, but not all fifteen. In most cases, the people in those villages spoke to me in Melanesian Pidgin

Jill Riepe 183

and not the vernacular, but I am an obvious outsider and it would require more than just a few hours’ visit to determine if the vernacular is stronger in these villages. I have heard that there is a community of Ap Ma speakers in the capital, Port Moresby, but I have not had an opportunity to visit that community.

References

Clarkson, Philip. 1992. Language and mathematics: A comparison of bilingual and mono-lingual students of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics 23(4): 417–429.

Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 16th edition. Dallas: SIL International.

Lewis, M. Paul & Gary F. Simons. 2010. Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Romanian Review of Linguistics 55(2): 103–120.

Mukok, Balu. 1984. Ukalampa Dama Man Yadiyen Ala Me [A story of visiting Ukarumpa]. Madang, Papua New Guinea: Pioneer Bible Translators.

National Department of Education. 1992. The education reform. Port Moresby: National Department of Education.

Pryor, John. 1990. Deixis and participant tracking in Botin. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 21: 1–29.

Pryor, John & Bonita Pryor. 1995. Anthropological background study of the Ap Ma (Kam-bot/Botin) people. Unpublished manuscript. Madang, Papua New Guinea: Pioneer Bible Translators.

Wade, Martha. 1981. A dialect survey of the Botin language. Unpublished manuscript. Madang, Papua New Guinea: Pioneer Bible Translators.

Part V. North Eurasia

11. Bible translation as witness to a forgotten language: The case of Caucasian Albanian

Marianne Beerle-Moor

Institute for Bible Translation in Russia/CIS

1. Introduction

At the turn of the third millennium AD, it became gradually public that some of the manuscripts discovered in a cellar of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai in 1975 have been identified as Bible texts in Caucasian Albanian, a language until then mentioned only by a few medieval sources in Armenian and witnessed to by several short inscriptions which no one was able to fully understand. The successful deciphering of the discovered manuscripts helped to interpret these inscriptions. And most importantly, a full description of the Caucasian Albanian language became possible because parts of the Bible had been translated into this language.

This article puts the truly ground breaking discovery in its historic frame (sections 2–4) and shows its linguistic and cultural significance for today’s sit-uation (sections 5–7), highlighting the role of Bible translation in preserving an otherwise lost language and in protecting the Christian identity of those whose ancestors once had the written Bible.

2. Early Bible translations

The fact that early Bible translations serve as ancient witnesses to otherwise lost forms of languages and enable diachronic research in these languages is well known and taken advantage of widely by language scholars. Although these witnesses are translated texts and not original documents in these

188 BiBle translation as witness to a forgotten language

languages, they are still of great value. Unfortunately, such witnesses do not exist for the whole area to which Judaism and Christianity spread. If we look at the period starting from the first translation of the Bible in the 3rd century BC (from Hebrew to Greek) until the end of the first millennium AD, we do not learn much about many of the languages spoken during this period. They have died out with hardly any trace.1 In the West, for almost 1500 years there was only one full translation of the Bible, the Latin one, and few attempts were made to translate the Bible or even parts of it into national languages.2 This is one of the reasons why today we have only sparse information about the many languages spoken in the Roman Empire and during the period fol-lowing its fall.

Fortunately the situation in the East was somewhat different. The lan-guages of the ancient empires, like Aramaic and Greek with their long literary traditions, were eventually joined by other more local languages which had no previous literary tradition, but became literary through Bible translation. The first Greek manuscripts were translated into Syriac, a hitherto unwritten Aramaic dialect spoken in Edessa (modern Urfa in Turkey), the center of the Christian Aramaic culture in the Near East and in northwestern Mesopota-mia.3 Inspired by this, other translations followed into several Coptic dia-lects in Egypt and Ge’ez in Ethiopia.4 There were also early translations into Arabic,5 Persian,6 and even Chinese.7 Because the Bible has been translated into these languages they are documented in an ancient form. To this group also belong the early translations into three languages of the Caucasus: the well-researched Old Armenian and Old Georgian, and the newly discovered Caucasian Albanian.

3. Bible translation and the creation of alphabets

In many cases, Bible translation prompted either the creation of a new alpha-bet or the modification of an existing alphabet to fit the language better than already existing writing systems of surrounding languages. I will give just a few examples to illustrate these two approaches.

At the turn of the 5th century, the three indigenous alphabets of the Cau-casus were designed. These were the Armenian and the Georgian with no direct derivation from any known writing system, and the Caucasian Albanian alphabet.

In the latter half of the 9th century, the Greek scholars Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius were the first and only scholars to create a non-Roman alpha-bet in the Roman world: the Glagolitic script, which was used for the trans-lation of the Bible into Slavonic. They encountered great resistance and even

Marianne Beerle-Moor 189

persecution from the Latin church for not using the Roman letters, which together with the Hebrew and Greek letters (and of course the languages they are used for) were exclusively regarded as ‘holy’. Although later another Greek-based script was designed for the Slavic languages (the Cyrillic script that is used to this day), the Glagolitic script laid the basis for the Slavic writ-ten language and the first Slavic literature.

In the 14th century, the Russian missionary Stephen of Perm created the so-called Abur script for the translation of biblical texts into the Finno-Ug-ric Old Zyrian language. He encountered the same problems as Cyril and Methodius some centuries earlier, but in this case Stephen was faulted for not using the Cyrillic script, which had by then gained a sacral status. The Abur script was used for religious literature until the 17th century. It is an interest-ing combination of letters derived from Greek and Cyrillic on one hand and old Zyrian signs on the other. Writing systems created later on for translating the Bible used the available Roman, Arabic or Cyrillic letters. Advancements in the study of phonology and the introduction of the International Phonetic Alphabet in the late 19th century have made it easier to create alphabets for heretofore unwritten languages.

4. Caucasian Albania

Albania is the name of a region that historically existed in the eastern Cau-casus on the coast of the Caspian Sea, on the territory occupied today by northern Azerbaijan and southern Dagestan (Russia). It was called Albania by Greek and Roman authors.8 In Armenian it is known as Aluank, in Parthian as Ardhan, in Syriac as Aran and in Arabic as Al-Ran. To distinguish it from the modern Republic of Albania in the Balkans, it is now called Caucasian Albania. See the map in Figure 11.1. There is no connection between ancient Caucasian Albania and the modern state of Albania.

The ancient kingdom of Albania was well known to classical authors. It was mentioned for the first time in the work of Arrian of Nikomedia (ca. 95–175 AD) about Alexander the Great,9 and in the following cen-turies in the writings of various other historiographers. A more or less complete account of the region was written by the Armenian writer Movses Kaghankatvatsi (also known as Movsēs Dasxuranci) in his 7th century work The History of Albania, preserved in a 10th century manuscript. Like Ar-menia and Georgia, Albania was at times independent, with its own kings, while at other times it was ruled from the East by the Parthians or from the West by the Romans.


Figure 11.1. Map of Ancient Transcaucasia (Source: Wikimedia Commons).

In his description of Albania, its culture and its peoples, Strabo mentions that 26 languages were spoken in that region.10 Whether he meant varieties of the same language or different language groups cannot be reconstructed. It was assumed that some of the Albanian peoples spoke a language related to Udi, which is spoken today in northern Azerbaijan (Nizh and until recently Oguz, formerly Vartashen), eastern Georgia (Zinobiani, formerly Oktomberi) and among the Udi diaspora in Russia and Armenia. This assumption was based on historic accounts in which one of the main groups in the multiethnic Albanian nation was called Utis.

The original population of the Caucasus followed various pagan religions and was also influenced by Zoroastrianism under the Parthian and Sassanid empires. Christianization seems to have taken place in two stages. According to Christian tradition, the first was initiated by James, the brother of Jesus, in the apostolic age. The second was in the 4th century, similarly to the Chris-tianization of the other two Caucasian states, Armenia and Georgia. There are two legends about the beginnings of Christianity (the first stage) with some historic clues in each, but nothing can be said for sure. They both agree that the Illuminator was St. Eliseus, whom James, the brother of the Lord, consecrated in Jerusalem and to whom the first church building was ascribed in Gis.11 In the middle of the 4th century, Urnayr, the king of Albania, arrived in Armenia and was baptized by Gregory the Illuminator, but Christianity spread in Albania only gradually. At the end of the 5th century, an Albanian


church council convened to adopt laws for further strengthening the posi-tion of Christianity in Albania in the settlement of Aluen (Aguen). Albanian Christians were later involved in missionary work in the Caucasus and Pontic regions. The Albanian Church also maintained a number of monasteries in the Holy Land.

There was some evidence that the Albanians had the Bible translated into one of their languages. In The History of Albania Movses Kaghankatvatsi de-scribes how the alphabet for this “guttural, disjointed, barbarous, and harsh” language (Dowsett 1961: 69) was created by Mesrop Mashtots (362–440), the same scholar who had already created the Armenian alphabet. From Kaghankatvatsi’s narrative, we also learn that schools were organized to teach children the art of reading and writing their own language in order to be able to use the translated Bible.

At the beginning of Christianization, the Armenian church played a supportive role for the Albanian church, initiating literacy, but leaving it up to the Albanians to develop it further. The three Caucasian churches convened in 606 to discuss whether to accept or reject the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon.12 For mainly political reasons Georgia accepted the Chalcedonian Dyophysite dogma, while Armenia did not accept it and held to Monophysitism. The Albanians were caught in between and finally had to give in to the Armenian demands. The Armenians became more and more controlling: the church language had to become Armenian, the use of Albanian was no longer promoted, and existing texts were no longer cop-ied. By the 8th century the Armenization of the Albanians living in the west of Azerbaijan (by the Karabakh highlands) was completed. As a result some Albanians left the area in order to maintain their dyophysite convictions and joined the Eastern Udis in the area of Nizh and Vartashen/Oguz (north Azerbaijan), where they kept their language and their identity as Christians to the present day. However, Udi as a written and a church language did not survive even in that region. The fact that there had been an Albanian script was last mentioned in the 13th century by the medieval Armenian historian Hayton. The Arabic conquest resulted in the gradual Islamization of most of the Albanian population.

At the end of the 19th century, an attempt was made to re-establish read-ing in the Udi language in churches. In 1893 an Udi priest from Oguz (for-merly Vartashen) named Semjon Bezhanov, assisted by his brother Mikhail Bezhanov, translated the Four Gospels into Udi using the Cyrillic script. The original is lost, but the text did make it to a printing house in Tbilisi in 1898 and was published in 1902 as a diglot with the Russian Synodal trans-lation (SMOMPK 1902). This unique document has been edited and made


accessible to linguists interested in the study of East Caucasian languages (Schulze 2001).

5. The Caucasian language family

5.1 A short overview

The Caucasian language family is a distinct group of more than 40 langua ges spoken by about 9 million people in the area between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, on both the southern and northern sides of the Caucasus moun-tain range. These languages are not related to other languages in the same region, where we also find representatives of the Indo-European (e.g., Rus-sian, Armenian, Ossetic), Turkic (e.g., Azeri, Kumyk, Nogai) and Mongolian (Kalmyk) language groups. While the latter languages are witnesses of early immigration, the Caucasian languages are regarded as autochthonous. The main distinctions within this family are between the languages of the South (Transcaucasian), the Northwest and the East.13 Georgian is the best known language in the Southern group, with a literary tradition of almost two thou-sand years. The Northwest Caucasian languages are Adyghe, Kabardian, Ab-khaz and Abaza. There was a fifth language in this group, Ubykh, now extinct after its last speaker died in 1982. The East Caucasian group is the largest in terms of the number of languages (29), which are divided into the following subgroups: (1) Nakh (Chechen, Ingush, Bats); (2) Avaro-Andi (with 14 lan-guages); (3) Lak; (4) Dargi; and (5) Lezgian or Lezgic (with 10 languages). In reference to their mountainous territory, the languages in groups 2–5 are also called Dagestanian languages (Dagestan, “land of mountains”).

The Nakh and Northwest Caucasian languages have hardly any histori-cal documentation, since Arabic was used to record events in the region. In Dagestan, however, we do find some early attempts to use the Arabic script for writing in a native tongue (Lak as early as the 14th century,14 Dargi and Avar in the 16th century). While these earlier documents were mainly collec-tions of glosses, a small scale indigenous literature (poems, short narratives, religious teachings) developed in the 19th century in these three languages and in Lezgi. The Arabic script was in use until the early decades of the 20th

century and was then replaced for some years by the Roman script in con-nection with the revolution and Lenin’s international vision. Grammars and primers were produced, and native tongues were taught in the newly founded schools throughout the whole region. Mother-tongue literacy spread rapidly among the people. In 1938 the Roman script was replaced by Cyrillic, which is in use up to the present time.15


5.2 Udi and the Lezgian languages

The Lezgian language subgroup shares many features with the rest of the East Caucasian languages. Phonologically they have a rich inventory of consonants (for example, 53 in Lezgi) with distinctions between the features voiced/unvoiced, glottalized/non-glottalized, spirant/non-spirant, and labialized/non-labialized, just to mention the most frequent ones. Morphologically they are agglutinative-inflectional. Most remarkable is the large number of noun ca-ses (for example, 18 in Lezgi, 48 in Tabassaran). The main reason for this is the rich development of locative cases built in series, but there are also at least five basic cases (Absolutive, Ergative, Genitive, Dative, Instrumental) that are used syntactically to distinguish several sentence types by marking the logical subject.

The following ten languages are conventionally ascribed to the Lezgian subgroup. They are arranged following Klimov (1969:47), with the number of language speakers given according to the latest edition of the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014):

Table 11.1. Lezgian languages with number of speakers.

Languages Russian Federation Speakers in other countries (mainly Azerbaijan)

Total Speakers

Lezgi 402,000 386,720 788,720

Tabassaran 126,000 900 126,900

Agul 29,300 29,300

Rutul 30,400 17,000 47,400

Tsakhur 10,673 13,000 23,673

Budukh 200 200

Kryts 5,000 5,000

Udi 2,790 3,800 6,59016

Archi 970 970

Khinalug 1,000 1,000

Caucasologists of the former Soviet Union and the West included Udi, Archi and Khinalug in this group, but regarded them as more remote from it. For the latter two this is still the case, but not so for Udi, thanks to the language data provided by the recently discovered Caucasian Albanian palimpsests.17 The analysis of this material and the comparison with the modern Lezgian languages not only confirms that Udi is the closest living relative of Caucasian


Albanian, but also presents it as a true member of the Lezgian group. So, for example, in a list of one hundred basic lexical items especially selected for comparison between languages (the Swadesh word list), Caucasian Albanian showed correspondence with 41 words in Udi, 31 in Agul, and 21 in both Lezgi and Tabassaran. The overlap in the list between Caucasian Albanian and the other languages of the Lezgian group, however, was smaller: Kryts – 15, Budukh and Rutul – 14, Tsakhur – 10, Archi and Khinalug – 4 (Gippert et al. 2008: Vol I, 74).

The discovery of a text written one and half millenia ago allowed scholars to describe the internal history of Udi more accurately and gave it the new status of the best historically documented East Caucasian language. The fol-lowing language history has been suggested by Schulze (2005: 65):

Early Udi (assumed for a period from 2000 BC – 300 AD), no written docu-ments, but partly reconstructed thanks to comparative evidence and some old loanwords; Old Udi (300 AD–900 AD), the language of the inscriptions and the palimp-sests; Middle Udi (900 AD–1800 AD), no written documents; suggested as a transi-tional stage from Old Udi to Early Modern and Modern Udi; Early Modern Udi (19th and early 20th century), documented by texts and grammatical descriptions from the first Caucasian researchers, e.g., Schiefner (1863) and Dirr (1904), to name just a few of the publications of that era; Modern Udi (since 1920) is the Udi of the Soviet era, distinguished from Ear-ly Modern Udi by the increasing influence of the Azeri language. It has been described by contemporary Georgian and Western scholars, such as Pančvidze (1974) and Schulze (1982).

In the search for Proto-East-Caucasian, which needs to start from the recon-struction of subgroups, the old manuscripts help us to better understand the process of language change in the related languages, and thus advance the reconstruction of the language group as a whole.18

6 The Caucasian Albanian palimpsests

6.1 The discoveries of ancient Albanian writings

Several discoveries were made in the 20th century that brought the forgotten ancient Albanians to the attention of scholars focusing on the Caucasus re-gion. In 1937 Ilia Abuladze found a copy of the Caucasian Albanian alpha-bet,19 together with the Greek, Hebrew, Georgian, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, and Syrian alphabets, in a 15th century Armenian manuscript (No 7117 in the Matenadaran collection of Erevan). While all the others were illustrated by a


short text in the respective language, the Caucasian Albanian alphabet had no accompanying text.20 It was therefore not possible to get any clues about the language. The Georgian linguist Akaki Shanidze was able to detect a phonetic system close to the Udi language in Abuladze’s document, but still needed a text to progress any further. He desperately wished that inscriptions or larger texts would eventually be discovered. Both of his desires found their fulfill-ment. In 1947, the first authentic sample of the Albanian script was found on a cube-shaped pedestal among the ruins of a medieval church during the construction of a hydroelectric dam at the south-east of Lake Mingachaur in Azerbaijan. A small number of inscriptions on candleholders and potsherds were found soon afterwards in central and northern Azerbaijan.21 These con-firmed the use of the alphabet, but the texts were still too short for any firm conclusion to be made about the language they represented.

6.2 The discovery in St. Catherine’s Monastery

Some contemporary scholars of New Testament textual criticism were aware of a possible Bible translation into Albanian and listed Udi as one of the early Bible versions together with the other known ones. They regretted that noth-ing of this translation was extant and stated that if Albanian Bible texts ever surfaced, this would be of great interest. Bruce Metzger wrote, “How much of the Bible was rendered into Albanian we do not know; in any case, nothing of the version has survived” (Metzger 1977:282). The story of how these texts were discovered at the end of the 20th century is fascinating and, just like the story of Tischendorf’s discovery of the more famous Codex Sinaiticus, “deserves to be told in some detail” (Metzger 1992:42).

The place where this happened, St. Catherine’s Orthodox Monastery in the remote desert of Mt. Sinai, Egypt, is quite distant from the Caucasus. This monastery already had a good tradition for the discovery of old Bible manuscripts. Among many others, a Greek manuscript which contributed greatly to today’s scholarly critical text of the Greek New Testament was dis-covered in the same monastery in the 19th century. This is the Codex Sinait-icus, already mentioned above. This 4th century codex included the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, as well as extensive portions from the Old Testament.22

In 1971, a fire broke out in St. George’s Church of this monastery, reveal-ing a previously unknown cellar. In the clean-up after the fire in 1975, monks discovered 1100 manuscripts in a crypt filled with soil under the sanctuary. The manuscripts, dating between the 4th and 18th centuries, were mainly in Greek, to a lesser extent in Georgian, and some were in Arabic, Syrian,


Slavonic, Latin and Hebrew. Fifteen years later (1990) two manuscripts (Sin.Geo.N 13 and N 55) with legible top writing in Georgian were identified as palimpsests, that is, manuscripts where the original writing had been erased and another text written over it. These reused sheets were from six earlier manuscripts in four languages: 42 folios in Armenian, one in Georgian, one in Syriac and 121 with a barely visible and unidentifiable writing.

6.3 The deciphering

Thanks to advanced ultraviolet and multispectral filming technology, the text became readable where it was not entirely damaged by the fire or for other reasons (e.g. hungry mice). Six years after this discovery, the Georgian scholar Zaza Aleksidze was able to read and identify the unknown writing as Caucasian Albanian. It was written in two columns (22 to 23 lines per page) with 15 to 20 characters per line. The first word of this text to be de-ciphered (in 2001) was the word “Thessaloniki”, found in the epistle of the Apostle Paul directed to the Christians who lived in Thessaloniki, Greece, in the first century.

Figure 11.2. Caucasian Albanian text of 2 Cor 11:26.Source: Aleksidze & Blair (2003a).


The first full verse to be deciphered was 2 Corinthians 11:26 (cited here ac-cording to the ESV translation): “on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers.” The fact that the word meaning “danger” is repeated eight times in this verse helped the process of identifying the letters.23 In the Greek origi-nal it is κινδυνοις (dative plural of κινδυνος, “danger”), while in the Caucasian Albanian manuscript it is marak’esun-ux.

The fully analyzed wording of this verse was the first piece of Caucasian Albanian text published to illustrate the language of the palimpsest (Schulze 2004:87–88):

l’aq’-m-ox avel-om čar marak’esun-ux t’ur-m-oxoc way-PL-DAT2 much-COLL fold danger-PL river-PL-ABL

marak’esun-ux abazak’-uǧ-oxocdanger-PL thief-PL-ABL

‘Often on the roads, in danger of rivers, in danger of thieves,’

marak’esun-ux ć’inux-oc marak’esun-ux het’anos-uǧoxoc danger-PL compatriot-ABL danger-PL gentil-PL-ABL (sic)

marak’esun-ux kalak-adanger-PL town-DAT

‘in danger of the compatriots, in danger of the gentils (sic), in danger in the town.’

marak’esun-ux k’ˤaban-a marak’esun-ux c’ay-ax danger-PL desert-DAT danger-PL sea-DAT2

marak’esun-ux a?dê iše-b-axocdanger-PL false brother-PL-ABL

‘in danger in the desert, in danger in the sea, in danger of false brethren.’

Schulze (2004) presents this verse together with the Old Armenian to show similarities in the syntax. There are good reasons to assume that the palimp-sests were translated from Armenian rather than from Greek or Georgian. However, full clarity about the source text does not exist yet, further research is still needed.


6.4 The alphabet

The 52 signs of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet were finally identified fol-lowing much painstaking work. For each letter in the manuscripts, the corre-sponding phonetic value could be assigned with varying degrees of certainty. A font was designed for the Caucasian Albanian letters and became available in Unicode in June 2014.

Table 11.2. Caucasian Albanian alphabet (following Gippert et al. (2008: Vol II, 4–6)).


While the alphabet list from the 15th century did provide some clues, a full description of the phonetic values of all the characters in the Sinai palimp-sest finally became possible thanks to two important additional factors. The first was that the language of the manuscript was soon confirmed to be similar to modern Udi. The second was that the biblical text of the Alba-nian manuscript was well known in several other languages that possessed a translation of the Bible, such as Old Armenian, Old Georgian, and Syriac. The task of deciphering was also helped by a good number of loan words from Armenian, and to a lesser extent from Iranian, which were adapted to the Albanian writing system. Letters could also be identified as denot-ing numeric units, which allowed scholars to establish an internal order of the first 21 characters of the alphabet. What we have now before us is the alphabet developed in the 4th century for speakers of an indigenous Cauca-sian language. Although 30 letters of the Armenian alphabet were used, 22 other symbols had to be added in order to fully convey the sound system of Caucasian Albanian (Gippert et al. 2008). It is unique as a whole and its de-cipherment is a great achievement. To our knowledge, this is the only case in the history of deciphering ancient writings where the text of the Bible was instrumental.

6.5 The content

The Caucasian Albanian manuscripts N 13 and N 55 contain the Gospel of John and an early form of a lectionary with passages from both the New Tes-tament (the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and the Pauline and Catholic Epistles) and Old Testament (Psalms and Isaiah).24

In this section I give an overview of the Gippert et al. (2008) publica-tion which presents and describes these manuscripts for the first time (editio princeps). Caucasian linguists and biblical scholars with a special interest in the translation and history of the New Testament text in this region had been eagerly awaiting this ground-breaking publication, which was announced sev-eral years before it came out.

It was published in two quarto format volumes in 2008. In Volume I each of the four chapters begins with a quote from the Caucasian Albanian Gospel which fits the subject of the chapter. This epigraph connects the old script of antiquity from a formerly lost language with the digitally produced text of the 21st century. Volume I begins with an introduction presenting the geographic and wider historic context of the palimpsests. Chapter I is headed by a scripture quotation from Matthew 10:26, where Jesus says “…for there is nothing secret which will not be revealed and (nothing) hidden which will


not be recognised.” The chapter gives a detailed description of the manu-scripts, both their upper and lower layers. The upper, more readable layer is in Georgian and contains mainly medieval patristic writings. The lower layer with the Georgian text removed shows the Caucasian Albanian text. The de-scription is illustrated by numerous colored and black and white photographs of selected parchment leaves.

Chapter II is introduced by the response of Pontius Pilate to the Jewish high priests as recorded in John 19:22: “…what I have written is written”. With 102 pages, this is the most extensive chapter and contains a detailed grammar of the Caucasian Albanian language, including the revised linguistic classification based on the new insights (see above).

Chapter III presents the Editio Minor, i.e. a transliteration of the full text with a close English translation.25 It is introduced by a saying of Jesus as reported in Matthew 5:18: “…until heaven and earth will cease to be, one jot which is one tittle, will not cease to be….” As the parchment leaves are partly damaged, reconstructions were needed in order to safely decipher the legible parts of the text that follow the damaged parts. Such reconstructions are clearly marked and not regarded as having any linguistic value.

In Chapter IV we find a complete index of each readable word in the two manuscripts under personal names, place names, ethnonyms, numbers and words with their variant forms found in the text. A reverse index in English makes it easy to find the corresponding Caucasian Albanian word. The scrip-ture quotation that introduces the chapter is a saying of the Jews in Caper-naum as recorded in Luke 4:36: “…what a word is this!”

Volume II contains the diplomatic edition of the manuscripts with photos of each parchment leaf on one page and the corresponding text of the lower layer in digitalized Caucasian Albanian letters on the other page. A synopsis of parallel texts runs below the Albanian script on both pages: the Caucasian Albanian in Latin transcription, the English King James Bible, the Old Arme-nian, two versions of the Old Georgian, the Greek text (Nestle-Aland 1964), the Russian Synodal (for the Gospels), the Udi (for the Gospel of John only),26 and the Syriac Peshitta. The impressive presentation of six ancient versions and three modern translations side by side somewhat echoes the great polyglot Bibles of the 16th and 17th century. Although the text corpus is limited to fragments of mainly New Testament texts, the number of paral-lel versions and translations surpasses even that of the polyglot Bibles. What makes this synopsis even more special as compared to the early polyglot Bibles is the ancient Albanian version, which had never before been printed. Very few polyglot Bibles can boast of such an accomplishment.


The Caucasian Albanian palimpsests, carefully and comprehensively pre-sented and analysed in these two volumes, have not only advanced East Cauca-sian diachronic and comparative studies, but have opened the door for further research in Caucasian linguistics, early Bible translations and New Testament textual criticism.

7. Concluding reflections

My purpose in this article was mainly to show that translating the Bible can become important in a historical perspective. The case of Caucasian Albanian is of course not unique in this respect, since other early translations played a similar role of shedding light on a whole language group (like the Church Slavonic for the Slavic languages or the Coptic for the Afro-Asiatic Egyptian languages). What is special about the Caucasian Albanian manuscripts is the fact that no copies were extant and that they were lost until very recently, with no great hope of ever being found.

Besides the historic significance for Caucasian linguistic studies and tex-tual research of the New Testament, there are at least three other interesting aspects which make this early Bible translation meaningful beyond merely being a witness to a forgotten language.

First, it is remarkable that the Udi people kept their Christian faith in the midst of all those other peoples who once confessed Christianity but in the course of history lost their Christian heritage under the influence of Islam. Could we conclude that Bible translation helped them to keep their Christian identity? The Udis preserved their Albanian church tradition until 1837 when by decree of Tsar Nikolai they were ordered to go under the jurisdiction of the Armenian church. This resulted in alienating them from their traditional Christian practices. Today the Udi people are experiencing a revival of their church; they are strengthened in their self-respect and are eager to develop their language. As Konanchev (2003:58) points out, “The discovery and decipherment of Caucasian Albanian is such an important event for our people. It’s only natural that we would be excited about it. Every group on earth wants to feel connected to their roots. Especially for us Udis, this discovery is very important since there are not many of us left.” Zaza Aleksidze, the Georgian scholar who discovered and deciphered the palimpsests, speaks of reversed language extinction: “The Udi language, a descendent of the Caucasian Albanian language, is currently listed in the Red Book of Languages, signifying that this language is on the path to world extinction. Fewer than 8,000 people are estimated to speak Udi. The Alba-nian translations can facilitate the ability of the Udis to reclaim interest in


their own roots as they reclaim ties back to the 4th–5th centuries. Already, this awareness has bolstered the Udi language and culture. Small literary works and samples of folklore are already being published in a modified Latin script” (Aleksidze 2003:56). Besides indigenous literature, new translations of the Bible are also in progress. Jora Gochari, a well-respected Udi jour-nalist (also known as Georgi Kechaari), was the first to retranslate the four Gospels on his own initiative.27

The second interesting aspect that makes the Caucasian Albanian Bible translation especially meaningful is that the Albanian language had its own al-phabet which fits the phonemic structure of the Lezgian languages well. This fit has led some local Lezgi writers to consider reviving the ancient writing system and applying it to their mother tongue. At the present time, one Lezgi writer is planning to publish some Psalms which he translated into modern Lezgi, printed with Caucasian Albanian letters in one column and with Cyril-lic letters in a second column. He dreams of seeing the Lezgian peoples again using their own writing system and thus regaining the status of a distinct group with its own script, just as the neighboring Armenians and Georgians kept it throughout the ages. These letters are now treasured as powerful sym-bols of their ancient culture and remind the Lezgian peoples of their Christian heritage, of which they are proud even though most of them have been Sunni Muslims for many centuries already.

This brings me to the third and last aspect of the possible significance of early Bible translation for our times. The North Caucasus, especially Dages-tan, suffers greatly from Islamic extremists, who find their recruits mainly among the unemployed youth of the many peoples that live there, but much less so from the Lezgian peoples. These have a tradition of tolerance which is absent in the other groups. Several influential Lezgis (scholars, writers, local governors) even think that it would be time to go back to their roots and become a Christian nation once again. They keep the published Caucasian Albanian palimpsests in their homes or exhibit them in local museums, having purchased several copies in spite of the high price of these books in order to make their people aware of their famous past and to connect this past with a dream for a brighter future.

Notes

1. A good overview is given in Dalby (2002: 39–74). 2. One notable exception is the translation of the Gospel of John by the Venerable

Bede into Old English in the mid-eighth century. Bede wanted to share the Word of God with the illiterate in Latin as generously as the Jews shared it with the Gen-tiles by translating the Septuagint (Aleksidze & Brown 2006: 60).Unfortunately, this


translation did not survive. Later, in the 10th century, the famous Latin Lindisfarne Gospels (written ca. 715) were translated into Old English. This was a word-for-word translation inserted between the lines of the Latin text and is the oldest extant trans-lation of the Gospels into English. There is also an early translation of the Gospel of Matthew in Old German, the so-called Mondseen fragment of the 9th century. The much earlier version of the whole New Testament into Gothic, a Germanic language, was translated from Greek in the 4th century; however, since this was into the East-ern dialect of Gothic, with its center in the region of modern Ukraine, it cannot be regarded as truly representative of the West, although usually classified as a Western translation.

3. Ethnic Assyrian Christians continue to the present day to speak and write Aramaic dialects stemming from Syriac.

4. Ge’ez has remained the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo (“Unified”) Churches to the present day.

5. The probably oldest extant manuscript is the Sinai manuscript, containing the Gos-pels, dated 859. See Aleksidze & Brown (2006: 274).

6. We know of some of the earliest Persian translations through other writings where they are mentioned (e.g. Migne, Patrologia Graeca LIX, col. 32); the first extant Per-sian translation is the Pahlavi Psalter of the 6th century AD.

7. The earliest extant translation into Chinese dates back to the 7th century AD. 8. E.g., Plutarch, Pompey XLV,1 and Pliny, Natural History VII, 98. 9. Lucius Flavius Arrianus, Anabasis of Alexander III: 263. 10. Strabo, Geographica V: 229. 11. The foundation of this church is mentioned in The History of Albania: “[Eliseus]…

who preached and built a church before there was one in Armenia, namely the church of Gis, the first mother church in the east” (Dowsett 1961: 177). It is not clear where exactly this place is found in today’s Azerbaijan. There are two locations with the toponym Gis.

12. The decision at Chalcedon was in favor of the so-called Dyophysite dogma (i.e., that Jesus Christ in his earthly life had two natures, not only one) and opposed to the Monophysite one.

13. How far South, North-West and East Caucasian languages can genetically be called members of one family is being questioned today. The tendency is to look at the three groups as not related to each other. The rough classification presented here is what gradually developed during a long period of research starting from the first collection of language samples at the end of the 18th century up to the detailed description published in 1967 in “Iberijsko-kavkazskie yazyki”, Volume IV of the series “Yazyki narodov SSSR”, and repeated in 2001 with only a few modifications in: Yazyki mira: Kavkazskie yazyki. Moscow: Academia.

14. The first clear date for a Lak text, however, dates only to the 16th century (1542). See Akhmedov (2008).

15. The literacy campaign was a side effect of the Russian Revolution. The use of the Roman script before its replacement by the Cyrillic script was common for all other indigenous languages of the Soviet Union as well.

16. About 200 speakers of Udi live in Oktomberi/Zinobiani in Georgia (2002 Georgian Census).


17. This new insight is not yet commonly accepted, see Voprosy Yazykoznanie (2010), 6:102.

18. Further research in this area is currently in progress at the Ludwig-Maximilian Uni-versity of Munich, with the goal of publishing a comprehensive comparative grammar of East Caucasian, as announced by W. Schulze on his website (www.schulzewolf-gang.de/projects).

19. This discovery made a huge impact on Caucasian scholarship. The Armenian linguist Hrachya Atcharyan wrote in the Herald of the Armenian Academy of Sciences: “The young Georgian scholar Ilia Abuladze, who discovered the Albanian alphabet on Sep-tember 28, 1937 among the manuscripts of Echmiadzin, is worthy of inestimable honor and praise” (Aleksidze 2003a).

20. A. Shanidze, “The newly discovered alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians and its sig-nificance for science” and I. Abuladze, “On the discovery of the alphabet of the Cau-casian Albanians”, both in Georgian in the Bulletin of the Marr Institute, Tiflis 1938, quoted in Gadžiev (2008).

21. For a detailed description see Gippert et al. (2008:Vol I, 85–94). 22. Codex Sinaiticus is now available on the Internet (www.codexsinaiticus.org). 23. Otherwise, “danger” occurs in the New Testament only one other time, in Romans 8:35:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecu-tion, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?”

24. Several suggestions have been made regarding the dating of these manuscripts. Gip-pert et al. (2008) presents evidence for the 7th century.

25. The Gospel citations in this section are taken from this English translation. 26. Bezhanov’s translation edited by Schulze (2001), see section 3. 27. All 4 Gospels have been translated but not published. Gochari died in 2005.

References

Aleksidze, Zaza & Betty Blair. 2003a. Caucasian Albanian alphabet: Ancient script dis-covered in the ashes. Azerbaijan International (11.3): 38–41. Available online at http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_articles/113_zaza_script_ashes.html.

Aleksidze, Zaza & Betty Blair. 2003b. The Albanian script: The process – how its secrets were revealed. Azerbaijan International (11.3): 44–51. Available online at http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_articles/113_zaza_aleksidze_secrets.html.

Aleksidze, Zaza. 2003c. Caucasian Albanian script: The significance of decipherment. Azerbaijan International (11.3): 56. Available online at http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_articles/113_zaza_significance.html.

Aleksidze, Zaza & Michelle P. Brown (eds.). 2006. In the beginning: Bibles before the year 1000. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smith-sonian Institution.

Akhmedov, C.Kh. 2008. Istoriya lakskoy literatury. Tom I: Dorevolutsionnaya literatura. [The history of Lak literature. Volume 1: Pre-revolutionary literature.] Makhachkala.


Dalby, Andrew. 2002. Language in danger. London: Penguin Press. Dirr, Adolf. 1904. Grammatika udinskogo jazyka. [A grammar of the Udi language.]

Sbornik Materialov dlja Opisanija Mestnostej i Plemen Kavkaza [Collected materials describing the places and tribes of the Caucasus.] SMOMPK Vol. XXXIII, 1–101. Tbilisi.

Dowsett, C. J. F. 1961. The history of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranc ̣i. London: Oxford University Press.

Gadžiev, M. S. 2007. K izučeniju pis’mennoj kul’tury kavkazskoj Albanii. [Studies in the written language of Caucasian Albania.] In Derevjanko, A. P. & A.B. Kudelin (eds.), Gorizonty sovremennogo gumanitarnogo znanija. K 80-letiju ak. G.G. Gamzatova. Sbornik statej; Redkollegija, 697–704. Moskva: Nauka (OIFN RAN).

Gippert, Jost, Wolfgang Schulze, Zaza Alekidze & Jean-Pierre Mahé (eds.). 2008. The Caucasian Albanian palimpsests of Mt. Sinai. Vols. 1 & 2. (Monumenta palaeograph-ica Medii Aevi: Series Ibero-Caucasica). Turnhout: Brepols.

Haarmann, Harald. 1990. Universalgeschichte der Schrift. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Haarmann, Harald. 2004. Lexikon der untergegangenen Sprachen. München: C. H. Beck. Klimov, G.V. 1969. Die kaukasischen Sprachen. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Konanchev, Zurab. 2003. Udins today. Azerbaijan International (11.3): 58–59. Avail-

able online at http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_ articles/113_udins_konanchev.html.

Metzger, Bruce. 1977. The early versions of the New Testament: Their origins, transmission, and limitations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Metzger, Bruce. 1992. The text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption and res-toration. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Noss, Philip A. 2007. A history of Bible translation. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Pančvidze, Vladimir. 1974. Udiuri enis gramat’ik’uli analizi. Tbilisi: Mecniereba.Schiefner, Anton. 1863. Versuch über die Sprache der Uden. St. Petersburg.Schulze, Wolfgang. 1982. Die Sprache der Uden. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Schulze, Wolfgang. 2001. The Udi Gospels. Annotated text, etymological index, lemmatized

concordance. Munich: Lincom Europa.Schulze, Wolfgang. 2004. Das Alte im Neuen: Sprachliche Ueberlebensstrategien im Ost-

kaukasus. In Schrijver, Peter & Peter-Arnold Mumm (eds.), Sprachtod und Sprachge-burt, 251–277. Bremen: Hempen.

Schulze, Wolfgang. 2005. Towards a history of Udi. International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction 2(1): 55–99.

SMOMPK 1902. Sbornik Materialov dlja Opisanija Mestnostej i Plemen Kavkaza [Col-lected materials describing the places and tribes of the Caucasus.] Vol. XXX. Tbilisi.

12. The role of Bible translation in preserving the languages of Dagestan

Boris M. ataev

Institute of Language, Literature and ArtsDagestan Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Sciences

1. Introduction: The language situation in Dagestan1

The Republic of Dagestan, “land of mountains”, is situated in Russia’s Cau-casus region, with Chechnya and Georgia to the west, Azerbaijan to the south and the Caspian Sea to the east. The capital city is Makhachkala. From an eth-nolinguistic point of view, multiethnic Dagestan is unique among the regions of Russia because of its large number of languages packed into a small, distinct geographical region. With an area of only 50,300 sq. km. (19,421 sq. mi.), Dagestan is inhabited by almost 3 million people, representing more than 30 different ethnic groups with their own languages and dialects (Caucasian, Turkic and Indo-European language families). The language map in Figure 12.1 shows where many of these languages are spoken (primarily in Dagestan, but also on the Azerbaijani and Georgian sides of the border).

It is well known that most of the ethnic groups of Dagestan were his-torically multilingual, and that even in the distant past, there were several languages that served as regional lingua francas, or languages of wider com-munication (LWC). Linguistically distinct regions, each with its own LWC, were formed in Dagestan during the course of its history. Thus, in southern Dagestan, the LWCs were Azeri [ISO: azj] and Lezgi [lez], while in northern and central Dagestan, the LWC was Kumyk [kum]. Speakers of languages in the Ando-Tsez family, on the contrary, have always used Avar [ava] to com-municate with each other.

208 preserving tHe languages of Dagestan

Figure 12.1. Dagestan language map (designed by Timo Elo, used by permission).

Another feature that distinguishes Dagestan from other ethnic republics in the Russian Federation is that in Dagestan, no native ethnic group or language is officially dominant. According to section 11 of the Republic of Dages-tan’s Constitution, the official language of the government is “the Russian language and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan.” However, it is not elucidated which specific languages count as languages of Dagestan. Apart from Russian, no other language spoken in Dagestan could successfully serve as an official language for the entire population of the republic. No more than

Boris M. Ataev 209

a third of the population speaks any one of these languages, as opposed to about 90% of the population who speak Russian as a second language, so not a single one of these languages could unify the entire population. For reasons of a political nature, the Constitution of Dagestan even declines to explain what exactly is meant by “the peoples of Dagestan”. No official list of these peoples is ever offered in the Constitution.

The fate of the languages of Dagestan and of their unique culture-bearers depends on how well language policy is implemented in the republic. Over the past several decades, the language situation in Dagestan, as well as in several other ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, has gradually deteri-orated. A large portion of the population of Dagestan no longer knows their ancestral/ethnic language. The task of revitalizing these languages therefore seems to us to be of utmost importance at the present time. We can illustrate the urgency of the matter with some sociolinguistic statistics gathered from research conducted in various cities in Dagestan.

In general, about 50–60% of non-Russian schoolchildren in Dages-tanian cities do not know their ancestral language. Of 1000 third- and fourth-graders surveyed, 600 were not able to tell a folktale or sing a song in their ethnic language. More than 75% of 3000 older schoolchildren said that they neither read nor write in their ethnic language, and about 90% do not listen to radio programs in that language. For a more specific example, only about 20% of city children belonging to the Lak people can speak fluently in Lak [lbe].

If one takes into account the fact that about 60% of the overall population of Dagestan lives in cities, one can readily understand how serious the threat looming over the various ethnic groups of Dagestan is. Unless the govern-ment takes adequate measures to prevent this intense leveling of the linguistic map, the outcome will be very serious indeed: the peoples of Dagestan may very well lose their ethnolinguistic identity.

As a concerned reaction to this process of language loss among the mi-nority ethnic groups of Russia, in 1994 the Institute of the Peoples of Rus-sia (sponsored by the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Ethnic Affairs and Regional Politics) published The Red Book of the Languages of the Peoples of Russia (Neroznak 1994). This volume contains information on twenty of the endangered languages of Dagestan: Agul, Akhvakh, Andi, Archi, Bezhta, Botlikh, Chamalal, Ginukh, Godoberi, Gunzib, Kaitag (Khaidak), Karata, Khwarshi, Kubachi, Kwanadi (Bagvali), Rutul, Tat, Tindi, Tsakhur and Tsez. And these, of course, are only the languages that are at great risk of disappear-ing in the near future.


Several sections of the “Law on the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation” guarantee government support to minority ethnic groups, specifically promising “aid in organizing various forms of edu-cation in their mother tongue regardless of their size and in accordance with their needs” (Article 9, Paragraph 5). The Law likewise guarantees that it will create the necessary conditions for maintaining and developing minority languages (Article 6). Furthermore, “Each people…without its own system of writing has the right to create a writing system for its moth-er tongue. The State will provide the necessary resources for this” (Article 10, Paragraph 4).

At the present time, almost all of the republics of the Russian Federa-tion with a titular nationality have passed laws dealing with language. The Republic of Dagestan is the only one in which the lawmakers are still dis-cussing whether or not such a law should be passed. In our opinion, Dages-tan must pass a holistic law dealing with the languages of its peoples, as well as a program to maintain and develop these languages. This law must take into account the unique circumstances of Dagestan and create conditions in which its many languages will thrive, in accordance with the position stated by the federal Law on Languages mentioned above. The Dagestanian lawcode must take responsibility for instituting policies that will preserve the languages of its ethnic groups. This should be done concurrently with a well-planned and financially-supported program for maintaining and de-veloping these languages and allowing them to function in Dagestanian society.

This law should explicitly list all of the languages and dialects spoken in Dagestan and include an explanation of the differences between the terms “state language”, “official language”, “written language”, “unwritten lan-guage”, “language with a newly created writing system”, and so forth. The status of each and every Dagestanian language should be stated plainly in the law, so that there would be no need to speculate about this. If these wordings are left ambiguous with a multitude of potential readings, existing disputes regarding them will continue for a long time and run the risk of developing into ethnic conflicts. Ideally, this law would also unambiguous-ly define what is meant by the terms “language”, “dialect”, “subdialect”, etc., in relation to the languages of Dagestan, and provide a scholarly basis for distinguishing between these. Unfortunately, language scholars have not yet reached a consensus as to how these linguistic understandings objectively differ from each other.

Boris M. Ataev 211

In light of these needs, linguists at the Tsadasa Institute of Language, Lit-erature and Arts in Makhachkala have worked out a programmatic approach for developing and implementing the languages of Dagestan. Part of this approach involves the publication of literature translated into Dagestanian languages, including religious literature and canonical texts of non-Muslim religions (Ataev 1997).

2. Bible translation into the literary languages of Dagestan

For the predominantly Muslim peoples of Dagestan, the translation of the Bible is a completely new phenomenon from both a scholarly point of view and a literary/cultural perspective. Bible translation projects in Dagestan, as well as in other parts of the Caucasus, the Volga and Ural regions, and Sibe-ria, had their inception for the most part in the early 1990s. The Dagestanian project was initiated by the Institute for Bible Translation (at that time based in Stockholm) in coordination with the Tsadasa Institute of Language, Lit-erature and the Arts, a department of the Dagestanian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Gamzatov 1999).

The translation of any literature into a minority language enriches the re-ceptor language and the available modes of thinking in it. This is all the more true when the object being translated is the text of Holy Scripture. This text not only sets before the translators an entire set of linguistic and literary diffi-culties that must be overcome, but also raises the receptor language to a new level of awareness of the translators’ own culture as it relates to other cultures in the world. Since engagement with these cultures is typically interconfes-sional in terms of religion, the receptor language receives a new impetus to further the cultural and spiritual development of its speakers. This is why in the rest of this article we focus our attention on the historical, cultural and linguistic issues involved in translating the Bible into Dagestanian languages, not on the theological or ideological ones.

Bible translations that have already been produced in Dagestanian lan-guages are a tremendous achievement in terms of both scholarship and the cultural growth of the speakers of these languages. They testify to the recep-tor languages’ literary capabilities and serve as tangible proof of their rich lex-ical and grammatical resources. The existence of Bible portions in a language indicates that there are genuine experts in orality among the speakers of this language, and that these speakers as a whole respect cultural expression and are open to forming relationships with the wider world in all of its political, religious, social and cultural diversity.


3. Bible translation into the Ando-Tsez non-literary languages

One of the interesting facets of Bible translation into the Dagestanian lan-guages is that it encompasses not only languages with a literary tradition, such as Avar, Dargi, Lak, Lezgi, Kumyk, and Tabassaran, but also previously unwritten languages, such as Andi, Bezhta, and Kubachi (belonging to the Ando-Tsez subgroup of the East Caucasian languages), which had previously never extended beyond the spoken word and did not yet have any literary norms. The methodology employed to translate Bible texts into languages of the latter sort provides an approach to documentation that can be employed with yet other unwritten minority languages.

Besides adding to language documentation, Bible translation into the Dagestanian languages gives a practical perspective on creating alphabets and official orthographies for hitherto unwritten languages, since Bible portions are often the very first printed materials ever produced in such languages. Bible translations in such cases initiate the formation of a literary tradition in the receptor language, typically using the Cyrillic alphabet as the base orthog-raphy. For example, in 1999 the previously unwritten Bezhta language [kap], spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, saw the publication of 1250 copies of Rokhellis Khabar (“Good News”), the translation of the Gospel of Luke. This edition had an insert with the recently created Bezhta alphabet for helping readers to learn the complex new orthography of their mother tongue. The Gospel of Luke was followed in 2005 by the publication of 1500 copies of Sulayban avarglis ank’lova, the translation of the Proverbs of Solomon. It is hoped that the related Tsez (Dido) language [ddo] will also get its own translation of Bible portions, in light of the fact that there already exists an ex-perimental Tsez alphabet (Alekseev 1993) and highly qualified native speakers of Tsez are available to carry out the translation. The take-away is that when translations such as these are produced, the previously unwritten receptor languages can no longer properly be called “unwritten”.

The fact that the sound systems of the unwritten Ando-Tsez languages are close to that of the Avar language allows speakers of these languages to write their own languages fairly well using Avar orthography. The only major adjustments that need to be made concern particular phonological issues, such as how to indicate nasal vowels (found in both the Andic and the Tsezic languages) or pharyngealized consonants.

Sooner or later, the question will definitely arise for the Ando-Tsezic peo-ples concerning how to practically implement their new orthographies. One cannot deny that they already make use of Avar orthography for this purpose

Boris M. Ataev 213

even though their languages are distinct from Avar. In our opinion, their current position is no worse than was the position of several other Dages-tanian languages that had their first orthographies created in 1990, namely Agul [agx], Rutul [rut], and Tsakhur [tkr]. At the time, there were about 15,000 Rutuls, 13,000 Aguls and 6,500 Tsakhurs in Russia, mostly in Dages-tan (1990 Census of Russia).2

As Gjul’magomedov (2003) points out, “if one looks at the number of speakers of a language as the main criterion, then all thirteen Ando-Tsezic languages of Dagestan can and should have their own writing systems…All of the currently unwritten Dagestanian languages already perform some of the functions associated with written languages and fully possess the legal grounds and opportunities to become written themselves…” We believe that speakers of the Ando-Tsezic languages should not merely wait for people in authority to create an official orthography for them. Rather, they should avail themselves of the opportunity to consult with language experts and begin to record as much of their spoken language as possible using the existing Avar alphabet. Doing this will give them a chance to keep from completely losing their languages. Such a step is fully accomplishable at the present time, inas-much as there are no theoretical linguistic difficulties with creating orthogra-phies for the Ando-Tsezic languages and only everyday obstacles of a practical nature hinder this from being carried out.

The aforementioned Institute of Language, Literature and the Arts at the Dagestanian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is working actively to preserve the unwritten Ando-Tsezic languages. As of today, the Institute has published the following bilingual dictionaries: Bezhta-Russian, Chamalal- Russian, Tsez-Russian, Gunzib-Russian, Karata-Russian, Tindi-Russian, Bagvali-Russian, Ginukh-Russian, Godoberi-Russian, and Akhvakh-Russian. The Botlikh-Russian dictionary is currently being prepared for publication, and there are plans to compile Andi-Russian, Archi-Russian, and Khwarshi- Russian dictionaries. Academician G.G. Gamzatov has rightly pointed out the value of such works in his introduction to this series of Dagestanian dictionar-ies: “the conservation of this unique and still living element of human activity and folk worldview is indisputably of great scholarly and cultural value, and is also in all respects a noble, deeply moral and humanitarian effort” (Gamzatov 2005:85).

The translation of Biblical texts into newly written and previously un-written languages promotes their development in at least the following ways:

– alphabets are created for unwritten languages on the basis of a schol-arly phonological description of these languages


– a specific dialect is selected to serve as the normative basis for the literary language

– extant alphabets in already written languages are improved– orthographic and punctuation rules are developed and codified– the lexico-phraseological system of the language is enriched and ter-

minological issues are dealt with in an orderly fashion.

4. The linguistic and cultural significance of Bible translation

Bible translations are likewise relevant and beneficial for maintaining and de-veloping languages of the Russian Federation that already have a rich literary tradition, inasmuch as in the past several decades, the literary norms of many of these languages have become severely degraded. When the fundamental ability of all of the languages of Russia to fully express the meaning contained in Holy Scripture is asserted via Bible translation, this promotes intercultural rapport and tolerance for the culture, religion and traditions of other peoples. As Alekseev (2008:15) points out, “the culture of every people, even one of a very small size, is part of the culture of the entire world, and the responsibility for maintaining and developing these minority cultures rests on all civilized humankind.” This is exactly why Bible translation into languages without an official orthography can create a strong momentum for cultural revitalization among speakers of these languages.

It is well known that the very idea of translating the sacred text of the Koran is not always welcomed by Islam; it is all the more true that many Muslims have a negative perception of Bible translations appearing in their native languages. Nevertheless, well-educated people in Dagestan are very interested in learning about the relationship and parallels between the sacred books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, without necessarily desiring to es-tablish any hierarchy between the Bible and the Koran or to sort out the historical and literary dependencies between these texts. It is important for people to realize that when a Muslim knows the Bible, this will inevitably lead to a better understanding of the Koran and its moral and ethical prin-ciples. Educated Muslims find it interesting to learn of the many thematic correspondences between the Bible and the Koran, such as some of the main characters in both books: Abraham/Ibrahim, Moses/Musa, and Jesus/Isa (cf. Beerle-Moor et al. 2005).

In translating the Bible into languages spoken by Muslim peoples, it is very important to seek “an open dialogue between representatives of different confessions and to make explicit the goals and aims of the translation. Namely, that this is not a missionary effort intended to convert people, but rather an

Boris M. Ataev 215

educational effort, the goal of which is to allow a people to connect with a tremendously important stratum of culture that is founded on universal human values” (Alekseev 2008:18).

5. Conclusion

The translation of religious literature into Dagestanian languages promotes the further development of their terminological systems, both religious and secular, both concrete and abstract. It makes clearer the powerful linguistic resources possessed by the receptor language, and solidifies the literary norms of the language. Alphabet development, grammatical description and lexicon compi-lation are all supported by the process of Bible translation. The overall result is a strengthening of the position of minority languages, as well as the enrichment of the religious and cultural values of their speakers. We can say with confidence that Bible translation into the languages of Dagestan is helping to bring new words, phrases, and concepts into these languages, which in turn is broadening the linguistic picture of the world available to members of the receptor cultures.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this article was published in 2010 in Russian as “Rol’ perevoda Biblii dlja perspektiv razvitija i sokhranenija jazykov Dagestana” in K.T. Gadilija et al. (eds.), Perevod Biblii kak faktor razvitija i sokhranenija jazykov narodov Rossii i stran SNG, 77–88. Moscow: IBT.

2. In comparison, there were about 40,000 Andis in Dagestan in 2001 (Arutjunov et al. 2002:148).

References

Alekseev, Mikhail E. 1993. Alipbi [An alphabet book for the Tsez language]. Moscow: Institut natsional’nykh problem obrazovanija MO RF.

Alekseev, Mikhail E. 2008. Perevod Biblii kak faktor sokhranenija i razvitija jazykov naro-dov Rossii [Bible translation as a factor in the preservation and development of the languages of the people of Russia]. Proceedings of conference on “Bible translation and language preservation in Russian and the CIS”, held in Moscow on 24–26 Sep-tember 2008. pp. 14–20.

Arutjunov, S. A., A. I. Osmanov & G. A. Sergeeva (eds.). 2002. Narody Dagestana [The peoples of Dagestan]. Moscow: Nauka.

Ataev, Boris M. 1997. Razvitie i funktsionirovanie jazykov narodov Dagestana [The de-velopment and functioning of the Dagestanian languages]. Molodezh’ Dagestana 15, 18 April 1997.


Beerle-Moor, Marianne, Andrei Desnitsky, Konstantin Kazenin & Tatiana Majskaja (eds.). 2005. Biblija i Koran: Parallel’nye mesta [The Bible and the Koran: Parallel texts]. Moscow: IBT.

Gamzatov, Gadzhi G. 1999. O sostojanii i nekotorykh aspektakh perevoda Biblii na dagestanskii jazyki [Aspects of Bible translation into the Dagestanian languages]. Proceedings of conference on “Bible translation in the literatures of the peoples of Russia, the CIS and the Baltic republics” held in Moscow on 2–3 December 1999. pp. 78–81.

Gamzatov, Gadzhi G. 2005. Lingvističeskaja planeta Dagestan: Etnojazykovoj aspekt osvoe-nija [The linguistic planet of Dagestan: The ethnolinguistic aspect of development]. Moscow: Russian Academy of Linguistic Sciences.

Gjul’magomedov, A. G. 2003. Jazykam zakon ne pisan [No law is written for languages]. Dagestanskaja Pravda, 18 February 2003.

Neroznak, V. P. (ed.). 1994. Krasnaja kniga jazykov narodov Rossii [The Red Book of the languages of the peoples of Russia]. Moscow: Academia.

13. The effect of Bible translation on literacy among Nenets Christians

eun suB song

Institute for Bible Translation—Russia/CIS

1. Introduction

The Nenets language [ISO: yrk] belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family, together with the Enets [enh], Nganasan [nio], and Selkup [sel] languages. Even though Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets are considered to be two dialects of the same language, mutual intelligibility is low, since the phonology and lexicon of Forest Nenets have been influenced by eastern Khanty dialects. About 95% of the Nenets people speak the Tundra dialect and about 5% the Forest dialect. Tundra Nenets is spread out over a vast territory and is thus divided into several dialects itself. However, these di-alects exhibit merely minor phonetic and lexical differences and are mutually intelligible with each other.

According to the 2002 census of the Russian Federation, the ethnic population of Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets together in that year was 41,302 people, with 26,435 (66.4%) living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autono-mous Okrug. According to this census, an overall 71% of the Nenets speak their mother tongue—48.7% of those who live in cities and 75.1% of those who live in the tundra. Of the Nenets who live in Yamal, 85.5% speak their language—63.7% of city dwellers and 88.9% of those who live in the tundra (Mukhačëv et al. 2010:5). Nevertheless, according to Khajrullina (2005:161), these figures are much higher than the actual number of mother-tongue Ne-nets speakers. Even though most Nenets speak Russian at home and at work, in 2003 64.8% considered themselves mother tongue speakers of Nenets, and this figure grew to 70% in 2004, probably due to an increasing sense of

218 literacy aMong nenets cHristians

nationalism rather than an actual growth in the number of mother-tongue speakers.

Figure 13.1. Map of Nenets territory in the Russian Federation (Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russia_-_ Yamalo-Nenets_Autonomous_Okrug_(2008–01).svg).

The literary Nenets language is based on the dialects spoken in Bolshaya Zemlya and Yamal, which are located in the eastern part of the Nenets Okrug and the western part of the Yamalo-Nenets Okrug, home to 2/3 of the Tun-dra Nenets population (Khomič 1995:309–311). These two dialects are very similar to each other and are intelligible with other dialects, and are thus in an intermediate position among the dialects (Khomič 1995:306).

In 1932, the first spelling book for Tundra Nenets, Jedej wada (‘New Word’), was published by G. N. Prokof’ev using a Latin-based alphabet (Ku-prijanova et al. 1985:8). 1937 saw the adaptation of this orthography to a Cyrillic base, and since then the alphabet of Tundra Nenets has been similar to that of Russian, but with three extra letters (Khomič 1995:311). Since most speakers of Nenets can already read in Russian, it seems that literacy in Nenets is only a matter of practice rather than learning a new orthography.

2. A stirring in Nenets society

I relocated to the city of Salehard in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug at the end of 2000 to help with the translation of the Bible into Nenets,

Eun Sub Song 219

sponsored by the Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) in Moscow. The initial stage of language learning was not easy since speakers of Nenets were hard to find in the city. Even in the church that I attended, the Nenets language was not heard frequently among ethnic Nenets members. With the help of a native speaker, I devoted myself to learning the Nenets language and culture. Listening to the Nenets radio station and reading the Nenets newspaper was particularly helpful. Both at church and outside of church, some Nenets were challenged by how I loved to speak their language. Some of them wanted show their children how I had learned to speak Nenets. One of the assistant directors of the local teachers’ training institute, Valentina Nyarui, would in-vite me to seminars to encourage Nenets children to learn to read and write in their mother tongue.

The Nenets in the church also began to change little by little in terms of their interest in the language. A young lady named Masha was the first one whose change was noticeable. Once, she had hated her identity as a Nenets and did not speak Nenets, pretending that she had forgotten her mother tongue because she lived in the city for seven years. However, as the Nenets in the church started gathering as a small group to have fellowship with each other, she also started speaking in Nenets, even though a bit hesitantly. This church group was led by a Nenets man named Pjotr (Peter). At the beginning of this fellowship, his Nenets sounded a bit awkward even though he used to work as a reporter at the local radio and TV station. However, as they contin-ued to gather weekly, his Nenets began to flow freely. He said that his Nenets was getting better as he remembered forgotten words.

3. Awakening

It is not too difficult for the Nenets to read their language, since its Cyrillic orthography is very similar to that of Russian, as already mentioned above. Most children take Nenets classes at state boarding schools. However, most adults who are over 40 did not have such Nenets classes when they were in the boarding schools and hardly ever get the chance to read in their language. They assume that they do not know how to read Nenets, and do not even try it. Nevertheless, most of the adults that I’ve met who could read well in Nenets were not necessarily highly educated; they had simply read a local Nenets-language newspaper, Nyaryana ngerm, which is published weekly in Salehard. This was also the case in Bilayarsk, Panaevsk, and Sjoyaha, which are located in the far north of Yamal. Most Nenets schoolchildren who are studying Nenets at state boarding schools, as well as college students who had previously taken such classes, can read quite well.


As we started translating the text of the Bible, we also began reading our translation drafts in small groups. At the beginning, it took a lot of time to read even a few lines of the text, since most of the members of our reading group had never tried to read in Nenets before. However, as time went by, their reading skill improved remarkably. The more frequently they read the translated text, the more confidence they got to begin writing in Nenets as well. Some of them started helping to translate the Bible text; others began writing stories on Biblical themes, and yet others wrote down traditional Ne-nets stories.

One day, a woman named Nadezhda Padrovna Laptander came to ask me about writing down her daughter’s song in Nenets, her daughter being a well-known Nenets singer. Even though Nadezhda was a fluent speaker of Nenets, she had never tried to read or write in Nenets before. Since then, she has joined our Bible reading group. It was much harder for her to read the text at the beginning, since she was over 50 and probably did not read much in Russian either. But her reading skill developed day by day. At present, she is no longer satisfied with merely reading our texts, but is also actively giv-ing advice on editing them, and lavishly supports the publication of books translated into Nenets. She became one of the most devoted supporters of our project. The biggest impetus for her was that the Bible text which was translated into Nenets was much clearer and easier to understand than the Russian version. Nadezhda is impatiently waiting to read any and all writing in Nenets because she enjoys reading it so much. She now wants to write stories for children in Nenets. Reading and writing in Nenets has become an inseparable part of her life.

4. Life changing

In my field testing of the translated Bible text, I met a young nomadic couple, Herman and Sveta, who were herding reindeers in the Yamal tundra, and they were willing to help test our translations for comprehension. Since they were not only fluent in spoken Nenets but could also read very well, I asked them to also try their hand at translating some easy-to-read materials after they finished field testing. They accepted my offer, but the translation of this book was actually completed by Herman’s sister, Olya.

Olya had grown up in the tundra and spent some time there after com-pleting school as well. However, she was married to a Russian man and was well settled in the city of Salehard. Like most Nenets her age, she had never learned to read and write in Nenets. But as she chanced to look at the text her brother was translating, she started reading part of it. Olya found it not only

Eun Sub Song 221

understandable, but also very interesting. She liked it and read to the end of what they had translated. Olya felt a sudden urge to try translating the rest of the book herself, and asked her brother to allow her to finish the job, since he was leaving for the tundra.

As Olya started translating the book, long-forgotten Nenets vocabulary items, phrases, and idioms came back to her. By merely reading that portion of the translated Bible story, she was filled with confidence to read and write in Nenets. In a recent interview on Tyumen TV, she mentioned that her life was changed by reading that Bible story, and that translating the rest of the book into Nenets made her feel that she has become a real Nenets, who can now read and write in her mother tongue freely.

5. A cry for more Nenets literature

What our Nenets translation team translated was based on the Yamal dialect and the publications were not actively distributed in either the Bolshoi Zem-lya region or the Tazov region. Therefore, I did not at all expect to receive requests for more Nenets literature from Vorkuta and Norilsk in those re-gions. The majority of the Nenets who lead a nomadic lifestyle in the Vorkuta tundra are different from the Nenets who live in Yamal in that the Vorkuta Nenets are not bilingual; most only speak Nenets and are illiterate in Russian. Their children, however, are bilingual, as they are educated in state boarding schools.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Vorkuta asked IBT to send some Ne-nets literature for the children and has been very active in distributing this literature. The conservative Baptist Church in Vorkuta has also been work-ing among the Nenets (mostly with reindeer herders) and has been leading Russian literacy classes. However, since the Nenets from the Vorkuta tundra did not know Russian, the literacy classes were meaningless. Finally, the Bap-tist Church asked me to bring some Nenets literature, namely Moya Pervaya Bibliya (‘My First Bible,’ published by Operation Mobilization), which was written in two languages, Russian and Nenets, on the same page. It seems that this book was considered ideal for helping the Vorkuta Nenets learn to read both languages at the same time.

One evangelical church from Norilsk asked IBT to send them the Nenets translation of a Bible story book, Stories about Jesus, which we distributed about 10 years ago in the Bolshoi Zemlya region and the Yamalo-Nenets re-gion, but not in Norilsk. Since this town is in the far north-east of the Tazov area, we had not even considered distributing our books there. However, since the nomadic Nenets migrate over vast territories, some of them received


this book elsewhere and wanted more copies. To honor the church’s request, IBT reprinted this book particularly for the Nenets in Norilsk. It is used not only in the church, but outside of church as well. One school teacher gave an interview on local radio, in which she expressed appreciation to IBT for Stories about Jesus. It was certainly a precious gift for Nenets believers, but as a teacher, she was also excited about having one more Nenets book for her students to read.

6. Finding a new identity

Since there are many cross-cultural marriages among the minority people groups of Russia’s Far North, it is hard for them to maintain their identity and keep their own mother tongue. Nastya is a child of a cross-cultural marriage. Her father is Nenets and her mother is Komi. Nastya herself is married to a Mari man. Even though her mother tongue is Komi, she used to speak only in Russian and was too shy to speak in Komi. When I visited her church, in which there are many Nenets and Khanty believers, I gave her a Bible story audio-tape in Nenets. Even though she did not speak Nenets, she played it for her father, who was almost blind. The elderly man was overjoyed when he heard this. It was such a joy for him to listen to something in his own na-tive tongue, and he listened to it daily. Hearing the Word of God in his own mother tongue was a comfort for him as he lay confined to his sick bed. As Nastya saw how her father responded to his language and got his joy back again, she was also challenged to read the Bible in her own mother tongue, Komi. Since then, she has also started taking part in the Nenets translation project, having seen the importance of possessing God’s Word in one’s moth-er tongue. Even though Nastya does not read or speak Nenets herself, she has become a key supporter of the Nenets project. She and her church have been actively taking part in field-testing and giving financial support to print Nenets literature.

The Nenets generally have a strong sense of identity, and as they start reading and writing in their own mother tongue, it becomes even stron-ger. Tanya Lar is a well-known Nenets folk singer and works at a cultural center in Salehard. Eleven years ago, she was invited to help with editing our translation, which was originally written in the Bolshoi Zemlya dia-lect. Even though Tanya used to compose music and write lyrics in Nenets, reading was not so easy for her at the beginning. However, as she started working on the translation of the Bible text, her reading skill developed and her translation skills flourished. As an employee of a cultural cen-ter, she writes dramas and songs, and documents her father’s songs which

Eun Sub Song 223

she recorded long ago. She felt an increasing burden to pass the Nenets cul-tural heritage on to the next generation. If she had not gotten confidence in writing her language, she could not have had acted on her burden for her people. For Tanya, reading and writing in Nenets was not simply a matter of obtaining a skill; it was a matter of finding a new identity as one of the leaders of the Nenets people.

7. Conclusion

Although the population of ethnic Nenets is growing, the rate of mother tongue speakers of the Nenets language is in fact decreasing among them, due to cross-cultural marriages, a change in their way of life, and sociolinguistic pressure. Most young people who are born in the city hardly speak any Ne-nets, even when both of their parents are Nenets. However, Nenets is still used daily by all age groups in the tundra, where the nomadic way of life has been maintained. The Biblical literature that is translated into Nenets and printed by IBT is not only for a small number of select individuals and for libraries; it is primarily intended for the ordinary Nenets who use the Nenets language daily.

The Nenets language is relatively well documented, including textbooks, dictionaries, storybooks, poems and newspapers. However, the quantity of secular literature published in Nenets is limited to restricted circles, such as schoolchildren, university students and teachers. Most of the Nenets rarely have any books at home that are written in Nenets. IBT’s translation work provides more chances for the Nenets to read in their mother tongue. We hope that the excitement to read and write in Nenets among Nenets Chris-tians will likewise be transferred to other Nenets as they read the well trans-lated Bible and Biblical stories in the language of their heart.

References

Khajrullina, N. G. 2005. Nentsy Jamala: kočevniki i khraniteli traditsij [The Yamal Nenets: Nomads and custodians of tradition]. Tyumen/Salehard: Feliks.

Khomič, L. V. 1995. Nentsy: očerki traditsionnoj kul’tury [The Nenets: Studies in tradi-tional culture]. St. Petersburg: Russkij dvor.

Kuprijanova, Z. N., M. Ja. Barmič & L. V. Khomič. 1985. Nenetskij jazyk [The Nenets language]. Leningrad: Prosveščenie.

Mukhačev, A. D., G. P. Kharjuči & A. A. Južakov. 2010. Kočujuščie čerez veka: olenev-odčeskaja kul’tura i etnoekologija tundrovykh nentsev [Nomads through the ages: The reindeer-herding culture and ethnoecology of the Tundra Nenets]. Salehard/Ekater-inburg: Kreativnaja komanda Kipjatok.

14. Can Bible translation revitalize the dying Shor language?

gennaDy v. KostocHaKov

Novokuznetsk State Institute of Pedagogy

1. Introduction: A brief historical sketch of the Sayan-Altai superethnos and the Shor language1

The Shor language today [ISO: cjs] is spoken by a minority Turkic people residing in south-central Siberia, earlier known as the Northern Altai region. However, the Shor people have never considered themselves to be a separate ethnic group, nor their language to be a distinct language. What happened historically is that the Shors started to be separated out as a distinct ethnos following the annexation of Northern Altai by Russia in 1618. The same is also largely true of other Turkic peoples in the Sayan-Altai region of Siberia. Many factors played a part in the process of their becoming separate ethnic groups (or rather, in the process of a formerly unified ethnic group being de-stroyed). The most important of these were the shifting geographical bound-aries of Russia’s administrative districts and the history of the Sayan-Altai region in general.

Almost immediately following the annexation of Northern Altai by Rus-sia in 1618–1622, it became known as Kuznetsky District because of its main town, Kuznetsk, which is located centrally along an ancient route that connects the Sagai and Iyus steppes with the Altai steppe. (More broadly, Kuznetsk divides western Siberia from eastern Siberia.) Two centuries later, in 1804, Northern Altai was divided yet again due to Russia’s expansion into the southern part of the Sayan-Altai region, and Kuznetsky District was separated from the newly formed Biysk District. Thus, for administrative reasons the Shors were separated from the Kumandins, Chelkans, and Tubalars, as well as

226 can BiBle translation revitalize tHe Dying sHor language?

from the Teleuts, Telengits and Teleses, three tribes who today comprise the Altai people. Soon afterwards, in 1822, the Yenisei River valley saw the for-mation of Minusinsk District, as well as a larger administrative region called Yenisei Province, whose central city was Krasnoyarsk. This division separated the Shors from the Sagai, Kachin, Beltir, and Koybal tribes, who are today known as the Khakas people. In the same year, the Shors themselves were divided into two unequally-sized groups due to the splitting of Tomsk Prov-ince from Yenisei Province. A bit earlier, in the 18th century, the southern part of the Sayan-Altai region (the part where the Altai and Tuvan peoples live) became part of Chinese territory. The area inhabited by the Altais returned to Russian control in the 19th century, and the land of the Tuvans only in the 20th century.

Figure 14.1. Location of Shor community in Russia.

In this manner, the previously unified Sayan-Altai Turkic people found itself carved up into several distinct parts. Once the divisions occurred, each part began its own separate existence and development apart from the other parts. For the Shors, the end point of this process of administrative division oc-curred in 1925, when the Soviet Union formed the Gorno-Shorsky (“Moun-tain Shor”) ethnic district. This resulted in their becoming a full-fledged

Gennady V. Kostochakov 227

separate ethnic group. We can see how artificial and absurd it was to separate the Shors out as a distinct people, since it is obvious that they never were a distinct ethnic group and are not such at the present day. Rather, the Shors are an integral part of the complex but single Turkic superethnos of the Say-an-Altai region.

The Sayan-Altai Turkic superethnos is spread out across a fairly large ter-ritory, from the Altai and Tuvan areas on the Mongolian border in the south to the city of Novokuznetsk and the Republic of Khakassia in the north. The areas that are actually inhabited by this people are somewhat discontiguous, being limited to lowland forested steppe and mountain taiga ecozones. The Sayan-Altai superethnos formed in the old Turkic era (mid- to late-first mille-nium A.D.) and eventually drew together remnants of the Turkic superethnos that had formerly inhabited the entire central Eurasian steppe. The first schol-ar to convincingly demonstrate that the Altai peoples are an ethnic remnant of the old Turkic superethnos was Lev Gumilev ([1967] 1993:21–25, 75–85). Prior to Gumilev, it was generally accepted that there were simply many dif-ferent ethnic groups inhabiting the Sayan-Altai region, and that although they had Turkic roots, they really were separate peoples.

This entire area of lowland forested steppes and river valleys in Siberia was settled already in ancient times by Russians, Mordvins, Chuvash, and other ethnic groups. In some places these ethnic groups greatly overlapped with each other. This is why both the Russian authorities and the settlers had rea-son to doubt that there really was a single Turkic superethnos living all around them. Sometimes they showed signs of realizing that this was the case, but pre-tended that there was no underlying ethnic unity among their Turkic neigh-bors. By the 1920s and 1930s, this ancient superethnos had been successfully dissected into Khakas, Altai, Shor, Teleut, Tuvan, etc., against the will of these groups themselves. The very ethnonyms used to designate these peoples are themselves an artificial construct that appeared only in the late 19th to early 20th century, although it is true that representatives of the ethnic intelligentsias played a part in coming up with these names. The only exception to this is the ethnonym teleut, which already existed in ancient times in the forms teleŋet/teleŋit. Another ethnonym that survived and currently enjoys wide usage is ta-dar/tader. But this latter case is a separate story unto itself, in which the flow of events was directed by a strange mingling of the interests of the Russian Empire, the Altai Orthodox Mission, the Communists, the Soviet authorities of the 1920s and 1930s, Siberian functionaries, and the ethnic intelligentsia.

According to Gumilev’s theory of passionarity, the ancient Sayan-Altai superethnos is currently at the stage of decrepit old age, when it disintegrates into mere relics of its former ethnic unity. This is why the administrative


divisions imposed from above by the Russian authorities can be seen as playing a decisive role in liquidating the Sayan-Altai superethnos. Its parts were separated from each other and the superethnos ceased to exist as a unified whole. At first glance, it might seem that the Soviet Union acted for the good of the Sayan-Altai peoples by giving each a separate territory. The Khakas and Altai each received their own autonomous region, while the Shors got an ethnic district in the years of reshuffling (1925–1939). But in fact, by dividing the Sayan-Altai superethnos into distinct pieces, the Sovi-ets destroyed something that was holistically intertwined in terms of ethnic unity. There is no doubt that this was done specifically for the purpose of asserting Soviet authority in the region (“divide and conquer”). The ancient superethnos resisted, but only weakly. The Russian superethnos turned out to be stronger because it is younger. Thus, the young superethnos defeated the old one.

The reason for this interest in controlling the area lies in the rich min-eral resources of the Sayan-Altai region, especially Shoria and its surround-ings, where the mineral wealth lies close to the surface of the earth. The abundance of iron and other metals has since ancient times allowed met-allurgy and blacksmithing to thrive in the Northern Altai region. Many of the powers that controlled the Eurasian steppe were dependent on the iron weapons produced in our area (Javorskij 1973: 14–16). Thus, it is no mere coincidence that the first Russian city built in the Sayan-Altai region was called Kuznetsk (‘blacksmithing place’).

The 1920s through 1970s saw the active development of industries such as metallurgy and coal mining in Shoria. New cities—Tashtagol, Mezhdure-chensk, Osinniki, Myski—appeared during these years thanks to these indus-tries. Novokuznetsk, the modern-day descendant of Kuznetsk, opened two metallurgy plants, a factory for assembling railroad cars, an aluminum plant, and a ferroalloy plant. Job prospects in these industries attract people from all over Russia, and these settled in the newly built cities, quickly intermingling with each other and becoming your typical Russian-speaking people of mixed ethnic background. In the same fashion, industry is making inroads into the lands of the Khakas, the Altai, and the Tuvans. In fact, industry is conquering the entire Sayan-Altai region. But Shoria with its Shor people it has already swallowed whole.

2. The contemporary state of the Shor language

Thus it is that Shor was turned into a separate language and began to die soon after. As a language dies, it begins to decompose, i.e., its structure


becomes less complex. To put it in other words, the language becomes foreign to its own self in its attempt to represent the world. It becomes disfigured and starts to resemble another, more powerful language, which differs in its perception of the world. This is the relationship that Shor has with Russian today. Two facets of the language suffer most: its syntax and its lexicon.

2.1 Syntax

Even the syntax of simple sentences becomes distorted as the usual word order is forgotten and the syntax resembles Russian syntax more and more, as though the Shor sentence is merely calquing its Russian counterpart. The natural word order of the Shor sentence is in some respects a mirror image of the Russian word order. The verb is at the end of the sentence, while the subject is either at the very beginning or is omitted altogether. Shor adjec-tives invariably precede the word they are modifying, while the object and adjuncts precede the verb. Natural Russian word order, on the other hand, typically presumes that the subject comes first, is followed by the verb, and then by all other parts of the sentence. Complex modifiers follow their head, and adjuncts and adverbial modifiers (with a few exceptions) also follow the verb.

But contemporary Shor is calquing Russian word order more and more as it disintegrates, with a typical word order such as the following:

(1) Subject – Verb – Object – Adjunct

This unnatural word order of a sentence meaning ‘That person went to the store for bread’ can be seen in example (2a), with a more natural Shor equiv-alent provided in (2b) for contrastive purposes.2

SUBJECT VERB GOAL PURPOSE(2) a. Ol kiži pardï lapkege qalašqa that person go-PST store-DAT bread-DAT

SUBJECT GOAL PURPOSE VERB b. Ol kiži lapkege qalaš alarga pardï that person store-DAT bread take-DAT go-PST

Moreover, Russian borrowings are being used more and more frequently to serve as interclausal linkers, shown in examples (3a), (4a), and (5a) below, with the Russian word indicated in bold. Once again the natural Shor equiv-alents are provided in the (b) examples.


(3) a. Ol keldi maγa, čtobï palïktap pararγa piske 3s come-PST 1s.DAT so.that fish-CV go-FUT-DAT 1p-DAT

taŋda erten tomorrow morning

‘He came to me so that we would go fishing tomorrow morning’

b. taŋda erten palïktap pararγa ol maγa keldi tomorrow morning fish-CV go-FUT-DAT 3s 1s.DAT come-PST

(4) a. Men čattïm Taštagolda, anda tože toostïm školdï, 1s live-PST-1s T.-LOC there also finish-PST-1s school-ACC

am čatčam Mïskada now live-PRS-1s M.-LOC

‘I used to live in Tashtagol, that is where I finished school, now I live in Myska’

b. Men Taštagolda čattïm, andoq škol toostïm, 1s T.-LOC live-PST-1s there school finish-PST-1s

am teze Mïskada čatčam now TOP M.-LOC live-PRS-1s

(5) a. Katya azïrab-aldï pisti erten, K. feed-CV-AUX-PST 1p-ACC morning

i anaŋ pis pardïïs aalap and then 1p go-PST-1p visit-CV

‘Katya fed us in the morning, then we went visiting’

b. Pisti erten Katya azïrab-aldï, 1p-ACC morning K. feed-CV-AUX-PST

anaŋ pis aalap pardïbïs then 1p visit-CV go-PST-1p

From these examples, we can see that the natural word order of a Shor sen-tence (Subject – Adjunct – Object – Verb) has been changed to the order of a Russian sentence (Subject – Verb – Object – Adjunct). At first glance, the difference does not seem to be that great, but in fact, the sentence’s syntax now reflects a fundamentally different (non-Shor) way of thinking.

The process of syntactic disintegration is especially noticeable in complex (multiclausal) sentences. To put it bluntly, complex sentences have complete-ly disappeared from the Shor language, having been replaced by a string of simple, deformed clauses joined together by linking conjunctions or other


linguistic items borrowed from Russian. Truly Shor syntactic devices for subordinating clauses in a complex sentence have fallen by the wayside. For example, contrast the following complex sentences, with the (a) sentences reflecting modern usage (with Russian borrowings again in bold) and the (b) sentences reflecting natural Shor constructions:

(6) a. Men keldim saγa, potomu čto men seni köölenčam 1s come-PST-1s 2s.DAT because 1s 2s.ACC love-PRS-1s

‘I came to you because I love you’

b. Seni köölengenimneŋ aara saγa keldim 2s.ACC love-PST2–1s-ABL AUX-CV 2s.DAT come-PST-1s

(7) a. Men parčam Aba-Turaγa, čtobï poezdpa pararγa 1s go-PRS-1s Novokuznetzk-DAT so.that train-INST go-PRPS

ottuda Tom-Turarγa from.there Tomsk-DAT

‘I am going to Novokuznetsk in order to go to Tomsk from there by train’

b. Tom-Turarγa poezdpe parïbïzarγa, Aba-Turaγa Tomsk-DAT train-INST go-RSLT-PRPS Novokuznetzk-DAT

parčam go-PRS-1s

(8) a. Ol poluštï, potomu čto čaqšï kiži 3s help-PST because good person

‘He helped out because he is a good person’

b. čaqšï kiži polčïγanaŋ aara, ol maγa poluštĭ good person being AUX-CV 3s 1s.DAT help-PST

(9) a. Sen kel aalap piske, a to men tarïnmïzarïm 2s come visit-CV 1p-DAT otherwise 1s be.offended-FUT-1s

‘Come visit us, otherwise I’ll be offended’

b. Sen piske aalap kel kelbezeŋ, tarïnmïzarïm 2s 1p-DAT visit-CV come come-NEG.FUT-CND-2s be.offended-FUT-1s

Syntactic devices for indicating direct and indirect speech are also being dra-matically altered:

(10) a. Tajana ajttï, čto taŋda keler piske (Russian syntax) T. say-PST that tomorrow come-FUT 1s-DAT


‘Tayana said that you would come to our place tomorrow’

b. Taŋda silerge kelerim tep, Tajana ajttï (natural Shor syntax) tomorrow 2p-DAT come-FUT-1s CMPL T. say-PST

(11) a. Arslan ajtča, čto čaqšï kiži tï (Russian syntax) A. say-PRS that good person you

‘Arslan says that you are a good person’

b. čaqšï kižiziŋ tep, Arslan ajtča (natural Shor syntax) good person-2s CMPL Arslan say-PRS

As Shor assimilates more and more to Russian, its general word order be-comes merely a calque of Russian word order. Complex structures natural to Shor are replaced by simplified monoclausal sentences in a vast majority of utterances. Even simple sentences are losing their natural structure.

2.2 Lexicon

A similar process is occurring with truly Shor words, which are being replaced by borrowings from Russian (in bold):

(12) Tsvetok-tï köölenčam, ol meeŋ pod okoškom ösča Flower-ACC love-PRS-1s 3s 1s.GEN under window grow-PRS

‘I love that flower, it is growing right under my window’

In example (12), the Russian word tsvetok has replaced the Shor word čačïk/čajak/čaqqieq ‘flower’, while the Russian prepositional phrase pod okoškom ‘under the window’ has replaced the Shor postpositional phrase köznek alïnda.

(13) Men anï ljubitj etčam, osobenno kanče-kanče čïl ranjše 1s 3s.ACC love AUX-PRS-1s especially many year earlier

‘I love her, especially earlier, many years ago’

In (13), the Russian word osobenno ‘especially’ replaces the Shor expression ponaŋ da tïŋ, Russian ranjše ‘earlier’ replaces Shor alïnda, and Russian ljubitj

‘love’ replaces Shor köölenčam. The latter expression is formed along the lines of a widespread construc-

tion in the contemporary Shor language: the borrowed Russian verb occurs in the infinitive and is followed by the conjugated personal form of the Shor auxiliary verb et- ‘do, to accomplish’. For example:


Russian infinitive Shor auxiliary verb (14) a. rešatj etčam ‘I am deciding’ decide AUX-PRS-1s

b. prïgatj ettim ‘I was jumping’ jump AUX-PST-1s

The following example demonstrates how this hybrid construction is used:

(15) Terpetj ettim, terpetj ettim, potom anï kak endure AUX-PST-1s endure AUX-PST-1s then 3s.ACC suddenly

šabïstïm, ol padatj etti hit-PST-1s 3s fall AUX-PST

‘I endured it, I endured it, then suddenly I hit him, he fell down’

Here, the hybrid Russian-Shor phrase terpetj ettim ‘I endured’ has replaced the natural Shor phrase šĭdap čördim; the Russian conjunction potom ‘then’ has replaced Shor anaŋ; and the hybrid Russian-Shor phrase padatj etti ‘he fell’ has replaced Shor čïγïlïbïza-berdi.

2.3 Morphology

Shor case affixes (underlined) have remained fairly stable when added onto borrowed Russian words (in bold).

Accusative case

(16) Mama-m-nï ne tronj, mama-m-nï ja köölenčam mother-1s-ACC not touch mother-1s-ACC I love-PRS-1s

‘Don’t touch my mother, I love my mother’

(17) Men canančam, čto men-i ol kiži albas, 1s think-PRS-1s that 1s-ACC that person take-NEG.FUT

men-i smotretj ne možet 1s-ACC look.at not can

‘I think that person won’t take me (as his wife), he can’t bear to see me’

Dative/Directional case

(18) Ja zašol Toltajev-qa Grigorij Mixajlovič-ke, arγïžïm-γa, I went-in T.-DAT G. M.-DAT friend-1s-DAT


armiya-γa pirge parγabïs army-DAT together go-PST-1p

‘I stopped by to see my friend Grigory Mikhailovich Toltayev, we served in the army together.’

Locative/Temporal case

(19) Ja bïl Novokuznetskij-de, Meždureči-de I was N.-LOC M.-LOC

‘I was in Novokuznetsk and Mezhdurechensk’

Instrumental/Comitative case

(20) Ortonγa mašina-ba pardïïs Orton-DAT car-INST go-PST-1p

‘We went to Orton by car’

To summarize what has been said above, we may conclude that the Shor lan-guage is gradually disintegrating:

a) Shor is losing its syntactic distinctiveness and word order, which is equivalent to losing its own natural way of seeing and contemplating the world. This loss of the ability to process the world with natural Shor thought patterns is also confirmed by the great amount of lexi-cal borrowing from Russian.

b) Shor morphological affixes are more resistant to change than are lex-ical items. However, when these affixes (as well as other function words such as helping verbs and postpositions) also become so weak as to disappear, this will mean that the disintegration of the Shor lan-guage is complete.

An issue of the Shor newspaper Kïzïl Shor (“Red Shor”) that I read at the Lenin State Library in Moscow in 1990 comes to mind. This issue was pub-lished in 1939, the year that the Gorno-Shorsky ethnic district was liqui-dated as an official administrative region. The entire newspaper consisted of stereotypical Soviet-brand articles and editorials written in mostly Russian syn-tax. The lexical items, too, were mostly Russian borrowings, but the affixes, helping verbs (such as etti), and postpositions still gave the paper the feel of belonging to the Shor language. One example from this newspaper should suffice (Russian borrowings are again in bold, and Shor elements underlined):


(21) Kommunističeskaja partija boljševikterdiŋ trotskisttar üčün rešatj etti ‘The Bolshevik Communist Party has made a decision concerning the

Trotskyites’

3. The Shor language and Bible translation

As a counterpoint to everything said above, translating the Bible into Shor is a means of discovering and implementing beautiful, rich, developed, natural Shor language usage that is not merely calqued from Russian and that may create powerful momentum for language revitalization efforts. In the first place, we must keep in mind natural Shor syntax, which is responsible for the logical flow of genuine Shor thoughts through language. At the same time, we must not forget about natural Shor lexical items, without which there can be no Shor language.

During a period of eight years, the Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) in Moscow translated and published the Shor version of the Gospel of Mark (2004) and a book of Bible stories (2006), as well as the Christmas narrative from the Gospel of Luke and the first seventeen verses of the Gospel of John. In an attempt to stop the loss of the Shor language, we added a fair-sized Shor-Russian dictionary as an appendix to our translation of Mark’s Gospel. As far as I am aware, this type of appendix had not previously been added to any other IBT publications. We also created an audio recording of the text to accompany the published Gospel of Mark. We then added a similar dictionary and audio recording (both on cassette and CD) to the Shor Bible stories publication. This was due to the fact that most Shor people had not read or written in their native tongue for almost 50 years, or almost two generations. An audio version of these texts was absolutely necessary to produce for our people, who had lost their ability to read Shor.

We have also recently published the Shor translation of the Gospel of John in parallel with the Russian text. The two languages are on facing pages: the Russian Synodal version on the left page, and the Shor text on the right as the principal part of the book. This formatting applies to both the Gospel text and the book introduction, and the Shor-Russian dictionary is also included as an appendix. Books with parallel Shor and Russian texts have been published in this fashion for quite some time, especially works of Shor literature and folklore. What exactly do we gain by using the parallel text format? This type of publica-tion allows readers to exist in the conceptual realm of two languages at the same time. They can bask in the exquisiteness of both languages simultaneously and enjoy comparing and contrasting the two. Parallel texts cultivate in their readers a love for these languages, for the print quality of the book, the beauty of its


letters, the evenness of its columns. Readers also learn to appreciate the specific idioms, fine shades of meaning, and differing ways of conveying the sense of the text. A monolingual publication cannot do this for you if you have difficulty understanding the language, but parallel texts in two languages make the lesser known language more intelligible, if you apply some effort. In this respect, par-allel text publications offer the Shor people another means of revitalizing their dying language. And as we revitalize it, we develop its capacity further, to the best of our ability and understanding of how to make the language stronger.

In working on translation, it is mandatory that the translated information be rendered using natural Shor word order. As already shown above, Shor word order presumes that modifiers (adjectives, objects, adjuncts, etc.) precede their syntactic heads. In other words, the less important information comes first and the most important information comes last. Remember that this is the reverse of typical Russian word order. A few examples of this natural Shor sentence structuring are provided from the Shor translation of the Gospel of John.

(22) Meeŋ teze pergen suγdï ižib-alïp, 1s.GEN TOP give-PST2 water-ACC drink-CV-AUX-CV

kiži paza po čašqa suqsabas. person again ever thirst-NEG.FUT

Aaŋ ištinde suγum, puluq dep polparïp, 3s.GEN inside-LOC water-1s spring CMPL become-CV

toozïlbas-möŋü čadïγa tebe aγar eternal life flow-FUT

‘Having drunk the water that I give him, a person will not thirst again. My water inside of him will turn into a spring and will flow to eternal life’ (4:14)

(23) Seeŋ köölenčiγan kižiŋ aγrïpča tep, ajdarγa ajttïlar 2s.GEN beloved person-2s be.sick-PRS CMPL say-FUT-DAT say-PST-PL

‘They told (them) to say, “The person whom You love is sick”’ (11:3)

(24) Silerdi ödürüp, men Qudajγa čaqšĭ nebe etčam tep, 2p-ACC kill-CV 1s God-DAT good thing do-PRS-1s CMPL

kiži eede sanapčĭγan tem kelča person thus thinking time come-PRS

‘The time is coming when people will think “I am doing good in God’s eyes” when they kill you’ (16:2)

(25) Anï uluγ toolapčïγan, Aaŋ köŋnünče etčiγan kižilerdi 3s.ACC great reverencing 3s.GEN will doing person-PL-ACC


teze Qudaj uqča TOP God hear-PRS

‘God listens to people who greatly reverence Him and do His will’ (9:31)

Every language has set phrases that are used to link clauses. In our translation efforts, we strove to consciously make use of and develop such linkers in Shor. For example:

(26) a. andïγ / polγanda, andïγda ‘then’ b. andïγ da polza / eede da polza ‘nevertheless, however’ c. parčïn nebelerdi / parčïn nebeni ‘all’ d. parčïn kiži ‘everyone’ e. teze ‘but (topicalizer)’ f. anaŋ / aaŋ soonda ‘afterwards’ g. mïnaŋ ala ‘since then, now’

These expressions integrate well into the fabric of the translated text, as shown in the following example from the Gospel of John:

(27) Parčïn qalïq ölgenče, pir le kiži öl-parzïn entire nation die-PST2-CMPR one EMPH person die-AUX-JUS

‘It is better for one person to die than for the entire people to die’ (18:14)

In carefully selecting the appropriate terminology for the translation of the Bible, we revived and expanded the semantics of a fair number of lexical items, including some taken from the language used by Shor shamans. For example:

(28) a. qaan / qaŋïm / uluγ-qaan ‘king, emperor, Caesar / my lord / lord (great-king)’

b. Qudaj / Qudajga čabalaγanï ‘God / blasphemy (reviling God)’ c. qïjal / qïjallïγ kiži / qïjalγa tüžerge ‘sin / sinner / to commit sin (fall

into sin)’ d. toozïlbas-möŋü čadïγ ‘eternal (unending) life’ e. ajna / ajnaγa tutturγan kiži ‘demon / demon-possessed person’ f. tïn / Aq-Arïγ Tïn ‘breath, spirit / Holy Spirit (white-

clean spirit)’

It turns out that most concepts contained in the Bible can be conveyed well with Shor words. A few exceptions to this rule were technical terms such as ‘prophet’, ‘angel’, ‘cross’, ‘apostle’, ‘Pharisee’, ‘synagogue’ et al. For these, we made use of Russian borrowings, although in some cases, these words had already been borrowed from Russian into Shor a long time ago. For example, the term kres ‘cross’, from Russian krest. This word has already become pro-ductive in forming other Shor expressions, such as:


(29) a. kresterge ‘to baptize someone/make the sign of the cross over someone’

b. kreske tüžerge ‘to be baptized/make the sign of the cross over oneself ’ c. kres ene ‘godmother’ d. kres pala ‘godchild’

Another similar old Russian borrowing is the word angel ‘angel’, which is nowadays also used with the Shor 1st person singular possessive suffix:

(30) angelïm ‘my guardian angel’

Shor also has its own Christian vocabulary that has come down to our day from the beginning of Christian missions among the Shor in the early 19th century:

(31) a. tegreem ‘church (lit. heavenly house)’ b. čarlarγa ‘to preach (lit. to explain, to expound)’ c. taštarγa ‘to forgive (lit. to leave behind)’ d. qajralarγa ‘to be merciful (lit. to take care of, to value)’ e. čaqšïzï ‘grace (lit. something good)’

4. Conclusion

I am convinced that our texts and words will be acceptable not only to the Shor people, but also to Qudaj (God), who will help re-establish communi-cation between Shors in schools and in their everyday lives. This communi-cation should not be monolingual, but should rather be in both Russian and Shor, so that these two languages do not fear each other, do not hide from each other, and are not ashamed of each other. Rather, these languages must be like fresh air to each other and love each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ. Unfortunately, at the present time, there is love and respect for only one of these languages—Russian.

Even though my concern for my dying mother tongue has not abated and the pain I feel has not lessened, my hope is growing, my faith is being strengthened, and my soul is being encompassed by light and warmth. Our Bible translations are being read. Something has budged and is changing for the better among our people.

Sometimes objective, collective processes in life depend directly on you as an individual, the state of your soul, the presence or absence of faith, hope, and love in your heart. This includes love for your native language, as well as for the many centuries of your people’s history and for your parents and ancestors. It is impossible to truly love your present if you have no love for your past. In the modern world, so much depends on the choices made


by every individual person; we humans create our history as we live out every day.

The language that you speak ties you intimately to the heart of your peo-ple, with its past and present, and with every other speaker of the language. Separating one’s language from one’s people is difficult to do without causing harm to both of them. I have seen Shor people who, even though they do not know their ancestral tongue, still enjoy hearing Shor folk songs and Shor words and seeing other Shor people. But at the same time that they experi-ence this enjoyment, they look as though they are ashamed of it because the feeling is so powerful, like a sudden explosion of light and love and longing in their soul. These very people, and their ancestors, are the ones for whom we are attempting to bring our mother tongue back to life.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this article was originally published in 2010 in Russian as “Perev-od Biblii: Vernjot li on ukhodjashchij jazyk?” [Bible translation: Can it restore a dis-appearing language?] in K.T. Gadilija et al. (eds.), Perevod Biblii kak faktor razvitija i sokhranenija jazykov narodov Rossii i stran SNG, 167–186. Moscow: IBT.

2. The example sentences in this article are taken from live conversation and also from the conversation of characters in Kostochakov (1995).

References

Gumilev, Lev N. 1993. Drevnie tjurki [The Old Turkic peoples]. Moscow: Nauka. [Orig-inally published in 1967.]

Javorskij, V. I. 1973. Zemlja Kuznetskaja ot drevnikh vremjon do našikh dnej [The Kuznetsk territory from ancient times to the modern day]. Moscow: Nedra.

Kostochakov, Gennady V. 1995. Ülger. Kïïrčaŋ nom [The Pleaides. A Shor reader]. Kem-erovo: Kemerovo Publishing House.

Language index

The languages mentioned and commented on in the articles, even if only mini-mally, are given below for ease of reference. Major world languages such as Chi-nese, English, French and Portuguese are not included in this list. Languages marked with [+] are no longer spoken today. If a language was merely listed without any additional comment in an article, it is not included in this list.

Language Linguistic groupCountry/

Place Spoken Page

Agta family Austronesian Philippines 36

Agul [agx] North Caucasian Russia 193, 194, 209, 213

Agutaynen [agn] Austronesian Philippines 6, 7, 33–50

Äiwoo [nfl] Austronesian Solomon Islands 148

Andi [ani] North Caucasian Russia 192, 209, 212, 213

Ap Ma [kbx] Ramu—Lower Sepik

Papua New Guinea 11, 177–183

Arabela [arl] Zaparoan Peru 137

Arabic [arb] Semitic Near East 8, 63, 64, 70, 93, 95, 188, 189, 192, 194, 195

Archi [aqc] North Caucasian Russia 193, 194, 209, 213

242 language inDex

Language Linguistic groupCountry/Place

Spoken Page

Armenian, Old [hye] Indo-European Armenia 187–189, 191, 194, 196, 197, 200, 201

Avar [ava] North Caucasian Russia, Azerbaijan 11, 192, 207, 212, 213

Azeri, Northern [azj] Turkic Azerbaijan 192, 194, 207

Bahasa Indonesia [ind] Austronesian Indonesia 24, 25

Bahinemo [bjh] Sepik Papua New Guinea 10, 132, 134–137, 139

Bezhta [kap] North Caucasian Russia 209, 212, 213

Binumarien [bjr] Trans-New Guinea

Papua New Guinea 10, 132, 137

Budukh [bdk] North Caucasian Azerbaijan 193, 194

Bislama [bis] English-based Creole

Vanuatu 24, 26

Bulu [bum] Bantu Cameroon 68, 86, 88

Butuanon [btw] Austronesian Philippines 36, 44

Caucasian Albanian [+] North Caucasian Azerbaijan, Russia 4, 11, 187–206

Cebuano [ceb] Austronesian Philippines 36, 37, 44

Cherokee [chr] Iroquoian USA 9, 14, 99–111

Cho Chin [mwq] Sino-Tibetan Myanmar 26, 27, 30

Cook Islands Maori [rar]

Austronesian Cook Islands 26

Coptic [cop] Afro-Asiatic Egypt 188, 194, 202

Cornish [cor, +] Celtic Cornwall 28

Crimean Tatar [crh] Turkic Ukraine, Russia 138

Cuyonon [cyo] Austronesian Philippines 33, 34, 37, 42, 43, 46

Dargi [dar] North Caucasian Russia 192, 212

Language index 243


Spoken Page

Duala [dua] Bantu Cameroon 78, 86, 88

Ebira [igb] Niger-Congo Nigeria 80

Engdewu [ngr] Austronesian Solomon Islands 148, 155, 160, 173

English, Old [ang, +] Germanic England, Scotland 203, 204

Ewondo [ewo] Bantu Cameroon 68, 86

Filipino [fil] Austronesian Philippines 36, 40

Fulani (Fulfulde) [fub] Niger-Congo Cameroon 63, 86, 88

Gaulish [+] Celtic Gaul 30

Gbaya [gba] Niger-Congo Central African Republic, Congo, Cameroon

7, 53–73, 88

Ge’ez [gez, +] Semitic Ethiopia 188, 204

Georgian, Old [kat] Kartvelian Georgia 4, 188, 194–197, 200, 201

Gothic, Eastern [got, +] Germanic Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania

204

Guiziga [giz] Chadic Cameroon 88, 138

Hausa [hau] Chadic West Africa 56, 63, 64

Hebrew, Ancient [heb] Semitic Israel 29, 100, 106, 109, 122, 166, 188, 189, 194, 196

Hixkaryana [hix] Carib Brazil 10, 125, 127, 137

Houailou [aji] Austronesian New Caledonia 26

Irish Gaelic [gle] Celtic Ireland 28

Kagiru [bit] Sepik Papua New Guinea 134

Kanuri [kau] Nilo-Saharan Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger

63, 64

Kapampangan [pam] Austronesian Philippines 36, 37, 48

Khinalug [kjj] North Caucasian Azerbaijan 193, 194

Kryts [kry] North Caucasian Azerbaijan 193,194

244 language inDex


Spoken Page

Kumyk [kum] Turkic Russia 192, 207, 212

Lacandón [lac] Yucatecan Mexico 137

Lak [lbe] North Caucasian Russia 192, 204, 209, 212

Lakota [lkt] Siouan USA, Canada 9, 14, 113–123

Lavukaleve [lvk] Central Solomons (Papuan)

Solomon Islands 147

Lezgi [lez] North Caucasian Russia, Azerbaijan 14, 192, 193, 194, 203, 207, 212

Macuna [myy] Tucanoan Colombia 137

Mamaindé [wmd] Nambiquaran Brazil 10, 127, 129, 137

Manchu [mnc] Tungusic China 23

Manx [glv, +] Celtic Isle of Man (UK) 28

Marquesan [mrq,mqm]

Austronesian French Polynesia 26, 28

Matigsalug [mbt] Austronesian Philippines 138

Mbonga [xmb] Bantu Cameroon 63

Mbum [mdd] Niger-Congo Cameroon 56, 63, 71

Mien [ium] Hmong-Mien China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos

22

Mokilese [mkj] Austronesian Micronesia viii

Moloko [mlw] Chadic Cameroon 138

Muinane [bmr] Witotoan Colombia 137

Murik [mtf] Sepik Papua New Guinea 139

Nalögo [nlz] Austronesian Solomon Islands 148, 155, 160, 173

Nambikuára, Southern [nab]

Nambiquaran Brazil 137

Natqgu / Natügu [ntu]

Austronesian Solomon Islands 10, 145–176

Language index 245


Spoken Page

Nauruan [nau] Austronesian Nauru (South Pacific)

22

Nenets [yrk] Samoyed Russia 12, 217–223

Niuean [niu] Austronesian Niue (South Pacific)

22

Nuba Moro [mor] Kordofanian Sudan 8, 9, 91–95

Pangasinan [pag] Austronesian Philippines 36, 37

Paumari [pad] Arauan Brazil 10, 129–131, 137

Persian, Middle [fas] Indo-Iranian Persian Empire 188, 204

Pingelapese [pif] Austronesian Micronesia viii

Pirahã [myp] Muran Brazil 10, 128, 129, 137

Pohnpeian [pon] Austronesian Micronesia viii

Punic [xpu, +] Semitic Carthage (North Africa)

30

Rutul [rut] North Caucasian Russia/ Azerbaijan 193, 194, 209, 213

Sango [sag] Ngbandi-based creole

Central African Republic

8, 64, 67, 70, 71, 80, 81

Scottish Gaelic [gla] Celtic Scotland 28

Seri [sei] Isolate Mexico 137

Shor [cjs] Turkic Russia 12, 13, 225–239

Slavonic, Church [chu, +]

Slavic Russia 11, 188, 196, 202

Syriac [syc, +] Semitic Edessa 188, 189, 196, 200, 201, 204

Tabassaran [tab] North Caucasian Russia 193, 194, 212

Tagalog [tgl] Austronesian Philippines 7, 33, 35–40, 42, 43, 44, 46

246 language inDex


Spoken Page

Tagbanwa, Central [tgt]

Austronesian Philippines 36

Tangut (Xixia) [+] Tibeto-Burman China 23

Thai [tha] Tai-Kadai Thailand 22

Tok Pisin [tpi] English-based Creole

Papua New Guinea 134–136, 139, 140, 179, 180

Tol [jic] Jicaquean Honduras 138

Tsakhur [tkr] North Caucasian Azerbaijan, Russia 193, 194, 209, 213

Tsez [ddo] North Caucasian Russia 207, 209, 212, 213

Tsou [tsu] Austronesian Taiwan 22

Tuvaluan [tvl] Austronesian Tuvalu (South Pacific)

22

Udi [udi] North Caucasian Azerbaijan 11, 190, 191, 193–195, 200–204

Wagu [bjh] Sepik Papua New Guinea 134, 135

Waorani [auc] Isolate Ecuador 138

Welsh [cym] Celtic Wales 28

Zhuang family [zha] Tai-Kadai China 21

Zyrian, Old [+] Finno-Ugric North Russia 11, 189

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