ORTHOGRAPHY
"What's that?" you say. Well it has nothing
to do with growing plants or straightening teeth. But it
is crucial to the work of reducing an unwritten language
to writing and beginning to produce written materials in
that language. It is basically an alphabet. Ralph Lewis
(NTM) tells a story of asking a Cambodian friend,
who does not speak Kuy to read a story to a group of Kuy
people. The story was in "Kuy" language,
written down using the Khmer script. The Kuy people had
a good laugh, saying, "That's not our
language!" Obviously an alphabet is not so simple
to develop.
Actually a good orthography is also very helpful to the
development of even oral tools for evangelism, teaching
and church planting. It's very difficult to translate
the script for a video, a gospel tape or even a story
that you wish to teach others without some way of
writing it down to preserve accuracy. Imagine the
confusion if you start with a poor orthography or if
there is more than one orthography produced for the
same language.
We are very excited that there are people working and
getting ready to work to produce a Kuy orthography. This
will open the door to all kinds of important
opportunities to present the gospel to the Kuy people
including providing them with the written Word.
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Pray for good cooperation among all who are
interested in this work.
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Pray that a very good orthography would be developed
for Kuy.
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Pray for open doors for Kees Jan and Mirjam Bos (ICC) to
move to Preah Vihear province and begin getting to
know the Kuy people and learning the language. They
are eager to get started with literacy and
translation work in Kuy language and would like
to be moved by January.