Saturday, August 7, 2010

Request from a Pastor: What about other languages?

The Numanggang people celebrated the dedication of the New Testament in their language with dancing, dramas, a worship service and many speeches. One of the speakers on that day in January 2006 was the president of the Lutheran church district in the area and he gave a charge to everyone present, saying that the work was not done yet.

To the Numanggang people, he said, “Now you need to use these Bibles. Read them. Study them. Teach others to do the same.”

Then he challenged the SIL members who were present, saying that our job wasn’t done either, although we were working with several language groups in the area. “There are eleven language groups in my church district”, he said. “What are you going to do about the rest of them?”

In March 2006, six languages in the same language family as Numanggang were surveyed. Two of those groups have since started- Saut Manda [skc] (currently listed as Sauk in the Ethnologue) and Nakame [nib] (currently listed as Nakama in the Ethnologue).

The West Erap Multi-Language Project hopes to include two more.

Another, Mungkip is spoken by very few people now, and the residents of Mungkip village are shifting to the Uri language, which has a New Testament, and Tok Pisin, The report on Mungkip has been published online at http://www.sil.org/silesr/abstract.asp?ref=2009-015

This Pastor has been involved with checking of Scripture in his own language, Nek, which is currently in progress.

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