Lots of learning

Wow.  Ten graduate credits in nine weeks.  All related to what I’m doing in My Country – linguistics and translation and such.  It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun and really good, too.  And besides the 1000+ pages I read or all the papers and projects I did, I learned a lot outside of class as well.  In the picture above you’ll see most of the 100+ language nerds that I got to hang out with 24/7 for the months of June and July.  What did I learn, you ask?  Well, here are just a few highlights:
In class: – I learned how you can look at sounds on the computer to help distinguish ones that some of us can’t always hear the difference between very well.  This is a helpful step before creating an alphabet, and also in bettering my pronunciation, etc. – I had my first class on Translation, which seeing as how I’m planning on being involved in Bible translation, is a very good thing! – I had a 1-credit class about how to involve local people in decision-making processes and in working together for a common goal, which could be helpful in things like coming to an agreement on which letters to use in their alphabet, etc. – I had another class on meaning.  One of the things that we all know but we studied more is that we don’t always mean what we say.  For example, if I ask you, “Can you pass the salt?”, I’m not really asking if you’re physically able to do it, but requesting that you do pass it to me.  I’m going to need to figure out how My People do things like that so that translation into their language will sound more natural and not all weird and stilted all the time.
Outside of class: – A fix to a big problem I had in making a dictionary app for My Language.  What a simple fix, but one I hadn’t been able to figure out on my own! – A new computer program that should help me better know which  sounds in My Language need letters in their alphabet some day and which don’t. – I got in contact with someone who I hope to meet up with in My Country about the possibility of writing My Language with a different script in case My People decide that that is the alphabet they’d prefer to use for their language.
I could go on and on, and talk about click languages and sign languages and languages that use crazy reduplication to mean all sorts of stuff, but it’s probably more fun for me than for you, so I’ll stop.
But before I go, I should mention that I do look forward to going back some summer in the near future (whenever that is) to take other classes that I couldn’t take this summer and which will also be super important for my work among My People.  Two that I’m especially looking forward to are Discourse Analysis (how to put paragraphs and stories and arguments and such together) and Tone Analysis (though that sounds scary, I think it will be very helpful as My Language may be a tonal language and that means that I’d have to figure out what it’s doing).  Please pray that I’d know when makes most sense to head back there again – it’s trying to find the balance between the practical in BMy Country and the theoretical in North Dakota that will make the practical in My Country both quicker and easier.
Thanks for joining me on this journey of working to help My People have access to the Word of God in their language for the first time in the history of forever!  I’m learning that it involves all sorts of steps, including these studies that help me figure the language out.