It is a helpless feeling to look into an indigenous person’s face and realize you have no way of communicating. The team enters as learners in the community because of their inability to communicate. Culture and Language Acquisition (CLA) is their first task.
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The genius of language is precisely its capacity to express thoughts which the people have not heard before.
—Eugene Nida
“All languages and dialects are bearers of identity.” John Edwards: Sociolinguistics, a very short introduction
Several months ago I was sitting in my office with my language helper doing another language session. In this session we were exploring some of the animistic aspects of the local culture. As the session progressed, I began asking more questions about the local animistic parts of the culture.
"Undoing Babel would imply eliminating linguistic difference and giving everyone a single language to speak. In fact, the gospel does something quite different—uniting people in one community whilst retaining their different ethnic, social and cultural differences." —Ian Paul
“When a European has been living for two or three years among strangers, he is sure to be fully convinced that he knows all about them; when he has been ten years or so amongst them, if he is an observant man, he finds that he knows very little about them, and so begins to learn” —(R. H....
“Why don’t you just teach the people Spanish rather than trying to learn their language?” This question is a common one when people hear that we are spending so much time learning the indigenous language. So why would my team spend 3+ years to learn the Tarahumara language? The main reason is...
I often hear an objection: “Wait a second. Are you saying missionaries shouldn’t try to share the good news about Jesus until they reach a high level of language ability?” No, I’m not saying that. In fact, I’m actually making a more startling claim: for all practical purposes, we simply ...
"Because of the intense drudgery involved in learning language, nothing short of whole-hearted, sacrificial support for language learning—making concrete plans and expecting intense commitment until high-level mastery of the language is achieved—will enable new missionaries to master their...
"Translating the Bible into the common language of common people is an uncommon challenge that produces an uncommon reward."—William Barrick