learning to create an alphabet.

When we think about the ministry we are being trained to do, parts of it seem a bit overwhelming.  Or I should say very overwhelming!

Learning an unwritten language (no one else in the world speaks it) and then figuring out how that language works, creating an alphabet and teaching the people how to read and write it are some of those overwhelming tasks.

Phew.  If I think abour it too much, I start to feel stressed and (you guessed it)...overwhelmed!

The training we are receiving here at the mtc is so good though.

We recently finished a Phonemics class.  In a (very small) nutshell, phonemics is basically creating an alphabet.

However, it isn't as easy as it sounds!  In creating an alphabet, we will have to analyze all the sounds that the tribal people make when they speak, and figure out which sounds are significant to them.  And then, figure out which of those sounds need a letter in the alphabet.  This is kind of confusing to explain, so here is an English example:

Check out the English letter /t/.  Here are some English words that contain the letter /t/:

top

stop

letter

kitten

hit

To the average English speaker, in all of these words we are saying the same letter--/t/.  But in reality, we are actually saying FIVE separate sounds.  Try it!  Say the words out loud to see the differences.  The sounds we are making are actually: aspirated t, unaspirated t, flapped r, glottal, and an unreleased t.  But to our minds, we are saying the letter /t/ and we don't hear or notice the difference!  Therefore, most of these sounds are not significant to English speakers--in the alphabet, we just use the letter /t/ for them all.

Another piece of this Phonemics puzzle is the fact that an alphabet should be consistent.  The English language is a terrible example of this.  I will show you why: check out how many ways the [u] sound (as in too) can be spelled in English:

too

to

two

through

you

shoe

blue

flute

suit

new

flu

How confusing is that???  I pity the poor people who have to learn English as a second language.  It would be brutal.  The principle here is: ONE and ONLY ONE symbol for EACH SOUND!  

Hopefully that all makes some sense!  Nathan and I think it is really fascinating.  We are so thankful to get this training, otherwise we wouldn't know what in the world we are doing someday!

We also had a Literacy class, in which we learned how to develop a literacy program for our tribe.  Nathan and I even created our very own Literacy primer!  It was fun--it was great to prove to ourselves that we are capable of this stuff!

There ya have it.  Just a small glimpse into what we are learning.  Thanks for your prayers and support!