ON REDUCING A SPOKEN LANGUAGE TO WRITING

Before leaving for Africa we were students in the SIL (Wycliffe) program during the summer of 1947. Other missionaries, potential missionaries and I were learning about languages. I took copious notes and our study manuals with me to the Sudan in Africa. Unfortunately, when our house burned to the ground in 1951, they were all destroyed.

So as I write this blog, I am, recalling what I did as best I can. Let me attempt to describe what we learned and applied in our work. Languages can be analyzed in four categories: phonetics, phonemics, morphology and syntax.

With respect to phonetics, one needs to identify all the sounds, assign appropriate letter to write those different sound on paper, learn where each sound is made in the mouth and how to reproduce that sound when speaking. Every phonetic sound must be indicated by its own letter when transcribe. However, not all such transcribed sounds are represented in the final alphabet used to write that language.

With respect to phonemics, one must identify the sounds which are conditioned by adjacent sounds and recognize the difference between these conditioned sounds and the unconditioned sounds, These unconditioned phonetic sounds are the phonemes or letters of your final alphabet. Someone described it as being that phonemics cooks the phonetics and what remains are the phonemes, i. e., the true sounds which make up your alphabet.

With respect to morphology, this is where the combination of written sounds, phonemes, have meaning. One identifies morphemes as short two or three letter words or parts of longer words affecting the meaning of that combination of phonemes. These different morphemes are spelled out by phonemes, i. e. letters from the newly arrived at alphabet. That final alphabet represents only the unconditioned sounds, i. e. the phonemes.

Syntax relates to sentence structure, i. e. how the words are properly strung together in sentences with meaning.

Every Bible translator working in an unwritten, spoken language has to cope with this kind of linguistic challenge before he/she can accurately transcribe the translated text so that it can be read meaningfully.

Tomorrow, I hope to share a major concern I had about my writing system and how relieved I was when SIL confirmed that I had made the right decision.

Let us offer strong prayers for all who are engaged in Bible translation. Pray that each completed translation of a New Testament will be both printed and recorded in audio.
As far back as 1982, in the cassette era, I wrote that a Bible translator’s work should not be considered finished until it is made available in audio as well as in print.

Talking Bibles International’s global ministry is to make audio recordings of the Bible available as Talking Bibles Thank you for praying for the Talking Bible ministry and for supporting its important work financially.

If you visit the www.talkingbible.org website, you can learn much more about Talking Bibles and the various ways in which you can make your contribution to this vital ministry.. May the Lord bless and guide each of you to know and to do His will. Thanks be to God!

Because they need to hear,
Harvey Hoekstra – harvey@talkingbibles.org
www.talkingbibles.org

Goal: A TALKING BIBLE SUNDAY WITH A SPECIAL OFFERING IN THOUSANDS OF ADDITIONAL CHURCHES BEFORE YEAR’S TO PROVIDE TALKING BIBLES FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT READ AND THE BLIND.