How do we write this? Grammaticalisation causing trouble
There are many conundrums in writing the Ishɛ language that I’ve been aware of for some years. One is how to write a verb that pops up in natural speech sounding like ‘aguna‘, or ‘ugunu‘ or ‘egune‘, often explained as meaning ‘again’. (In the negative the construction doesn’t mean ‘again’ so much as ‘no longer’ …
Ashɛ Bible App for testing
Get a preview of the Ashɛ Bible translation (currently only Luke’s gospel) by listening along and reading along with the app for Android handsets. Download for free below. The app will expire as it is for test purposes only. Please note that the recorded reading is fairly low quality to keep the test app small, …
Naija Type
In the past it’s been hard to type Nigerian languages correctly on systems, tablets and handsets but no more. Here’s a free keyboard you can install on all your devices to make it really easy to type hooked letters, special vowels, letters with accents, underlines and underdots and more. Naija Type: An Android Keyboard for …
Example of Discourse Improvements in Luke
We certainly haven’t got Luke’s gospel finished yet, but over the last few months Moses and Arams and then just Arams and I have been working through the whole of Luke’s gospel about 20 times or more looking at particular issues and tidying things up. I thought I’d give any interested people (geeks) an annotated …
Too long away
Kai! (Exclamation) We have been away from Nigeria for too long! It sometimes just strikes me. One way I notice is that when I call up translators on the phone or sign off to friends in Nigeria I have to work just a little bit harder to remember all the correct greetings. And the funniest …
Last Post: Tears to the eyes
Today is VE day: Victory in Europe Day. 75 years ago peace broke out in Europe, and today as Europe struggles along mostly locked down with an unseen enemy laying waste to the economies and life of the countries, trumpeters and buglers are being encouraged to play the Last Post at 2.55pm from their homes. …
Ishɛ translation update: I’m a wondering about ‘amma’…
Years ago when starting work with the Koro Ashɛ translation team (whose language is called Ishɛ) the translators asked me about an issue they had. There were too many Hausa words in it. In particular the word ‘amma‘. It’s a common conjunction rather like English ‘but‘ and you do actually hear it frequently in conversation. …
Rowbory family & ministry update 2019
Merry Christmas, everyone! We’re enjoying being around friends and family in the UK for Christmas for the first time in 4 years, but missing our friends and co-workers in Nigeria. We have now been in the UK for nearly 6 months, and had various plans for our time here which haven’t exactly worked out, but …
Discourse Analysis and Translation: an introduction
I’ve been doing lots of ‘discourse’ study recently and some people have asked how they can find out more about it. The people to read: Teach-yourself courses for discourse discovery for source and target languages and translation between them Steve Nicolle: Narrative Discourse and Translation – example from Acts 16 (Free direct download PDF) Steve …
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Big Words, Big Trouble
“What I like about English,” a student pastor told me at the end of one class, “is that you have so many special words for things, so that means you can think and talk about so much more than we can in our own languages.” This sounds fairly convincing. English has a word ‘justification’ and …