What is EGIDS?
Recently John
attended a language vitality workshop in Texas.
There was so much to
learn, and there was also much fun with a Discovery alumni (who is now a field
coordinator in Mexico) in attendance.
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| Claudia Discovery 2006 |
Working in Bible translation without ever
having studied the disciplines of linguistics makes it a challenge
sometimes. Some branches of linguistics
are such detailed science that we often tell students that they can easily
branch from engineering or physics (or math or music) to study
linguistics. I've successfully avoided studying this for the most part.
However there is
also sociolinguistics which was mostly what this workshop was about and is more up my alley. Here's an example:
Dialects may differ in social acceptance, even if mutually understandable.
"Ya'll are the salt of the earth"
You might have read
about languages dying… This workshop
wasn't exactly about that…
It was about many
things including how we can help a language community assess their language
vitality and plan for the future of their language.
It was about EGIDS
which I had no idea what it meant before this workshop…
Here's a handy EGIDS chart
for those who are interested in this type of thing:
Well… it turns out
that the EGIDS is super helpful as we consider that many of the languages we
work with in Bible translation are at a level 6a. But when you get into the nitty gritty of it,
you realize that this is an oral language and the people are sometimes asking
for a written book… well, in the community sessions on planning the future of
your language we can help them with actual plans on how to move from 6a (stable
orality) to a stable literacy level 4 if that is their goal.
If the community is
planning to stay at 6a (stable orality) or even if they acknowledge that some
members of their community will not become literate, there are an ever growing
number of Bible products for non-literate people.
It turns out that
sociolinguistics is super interesting as a social science. It gets into multi-lingualism which is so
common in west Africa where John works.
Sometimes different languages are used in different contexts in the same
community (people may speak one language predominantly at market, another at
school and another at home or even one while talking about farming and another when the topic changes to health) or even in the same church (different languages may
be used for singing, greeting, announcements, Bible reading and the
sermon). And all these variables affect
how the newly translated scriptures will be used!
We want to be able to help communities plan for the future of their language and as best we can help them have access to Scripture in the form and language that best speaks truth to them.
*We may have some linguistically inclined blog readers who I suspect will like to send feedback on how this could be better understood... we ask you to be kind... you might have a masters degree in this stuff... and all I got was a week long workshop! Thanks
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