Can you read the messed-up English sentence above and understand it? Do you know what I’m trying to say there? I think we can all agree that it has problems. Now imagine if your whole Bible was written like that – it would give very little motivation to try to decipher it, wouldn’t it?
I’m currently in another country of West Africa and could use your prayers. I’m in a corner of the country I’ve never been in before, working with a translator who just recently finished translating the entire New Testament into this language! (Praise the Lord!) And yet they are still not quite able to figure out their vowels, especially the difference between certain ones. For example, in certain dialects of English, they are trying to distinguish between vowels in words like bet and bait and in words like doe and dog. So that’s what I tried to mess up in the sentence above, giving us a taste of how such a little thing can make a big difference. (If you want to know what the sentence is really trying to say, scroll down and the answer is at the end of this post.)
So now, what the translator and the others involved haven’t been able to figure out in 20-30 years, I’m here to try to help them figure out in a few weeks! Yes, did I mention that we could use your prayers? I’m so grateful for the alphabet party method, and I’m tentatively optimistic that it could help us figure out what in the world is going on, but we could use lots of wisdom. We want to figure out what’s going on and how to properly spell words so that the translator can make all the changes necessary in the New Testament before it goes to print. Then she wants to make new learn-to-read books that should hopefully make it much easier and less painful to learn how to read in this language.
Thanks for your prayers for us and the mother-tongue speakers we’ll be working with! I’ll let you know how it goes and if we get it all figured out!
Sentence in the title: I bet your brain won’t let you read this sentence well.