After talking with another linguist here, I discovered that some numbers that I mentioned in my previous blog (and update letter) weren’t quite right. We are working on dictionaries for 14 languages, but this is only about half of the number of mother tongue languages in Mozambique. There are about 17 official languages here, so the dictionaries also serve as a kind of advocacy project for those languages which are not yet recognized by the government. When the Portuguese colonists were here, they taught the Mozambicans that their languages were not ‘real’ languages, but only gibberish. As a result, many groups feel that their speech form is not worthy of any attention. Because people groups here are identified by the language that they speak, when the government ignores a language it also seems to ignore the needs of the people who speak that language. By producing dictionaries, we give these groups confidence in their own languages and they then can show the government that they are a people deserving of listening ear.
I went to another missionary couple’s church this past Sunday, and it was a great experience! It was much bigger than the other one I described, and they meet in a concrete building in the barrio. The service was about 3 hours long, half of it being singing and the second half involving a baby dedication, a sermon, prayer, an alter call, and announcements. The biggest thing I noticed was how joyful everyone was! The singing was filled with passion and praise, and I was imagining what they must have been singing about, just by the sound and expressions on their faces. It was so cool that I could praise God in the midst of a service in a foreign language. We all know the same Maker, and we all praise Him together!!
During the baby dedication, I was very pleased to see how the pastor handled it. He told the mother that from this point on, the only places she can take her baby when he is sick are to the hospital and to the church. She is not allowed to go to the witch doctor. I heard a missionary here say that Africans that have become Christians often keep their old way of life as well. They still worship their ancestors, make sacrifices, and go to the witch doctors and sorcerers. He said that a Mozambican had told him, “Religion is something we do, not part of who we are.” To them, the traditional African spirituality is part of their identity, while religion is just another thing they add to the mix, but it doesn’t take priority over everything else. It was incredible to see how this pastor spoke directly into this woman’s life and gave specific directions for her to follow. This pastor recognizes the problem and is doing what he can in his church to promote change.
On Monday, we got to tour the recording studio here at the center. For every translation of the Bible (or portion of it) that is done here, native speakers of those languages are brought in and we record them reading the scripture. This is an incredible ministry because the majority of people in these cultures cannot read and write, and even if they can, they do not prefer to read. These oral cultures tell stories in order to pass along information, and reading is not necessary here. So, it is great to be able to provide these resources to churches and others who speak these mother tongue languages here. The lab is fairly small, but it is being fixed up at the moment to create an optimal place for audio recording. I got to see a bit of the software they use, and I got to see how some of the concepts I learned in Acoustic Phonetics class would be used! At this point, they are producing cassette tapes because that it was is most used here in Mozambique, but the prediction is that CDs will soon be cheaper to make and that is all that MZB will import. So, within 5 years, they will switch to CDs.
1 comment:
Keep the pictures coming!!
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