Timely Request

[kerravonsen]

Just got an email from my-brother-the-Wycliffe-Bible-translator, requesting that people donate... Time Magazines... specifically, the July 29th issue, to Wycliffe. Now, before you go off and say "I'm not a Christian, why should I care?", while Wycliffe's primary goal is the translation of the Bible into local languages, they are also strong advocates of the preservation of local languages, wanting to help prevent them dying out. And there's an article in that issue of Time that can actually help with this issue... if local peoples have copies to read. I know many of you are interested in Diversity, and diversity of language and culture is another kind of diversity which needs support. So if you are interested, read on...

Here's the letter (with names blacked out for privacy):

Dear friends,

Last Monday when S#### and I were in transit at Makassar Airport on the way to attend the dedication of the Moronene New Testament in Taubonto, Southeast Sulawesi, which will take place tomorrow, I saw the July 29 issue of Time Magazine for sale, with a cover picture of THE PEOPLE'S POPE. It had an article on "The Power of the Bilingual Brain", so I bought it. I was very interested in it since a few days earlier I had written an article for the dedication booklet entitled "Bahasa daerah perangsang otak" that is "Local languages stimulate the brain".

After we got to Taubonto I showed the article to several people including P#####, the nephew of one of the Moronene translators who runs a mobile and computer services kiosk in Taubonto village. I told him and several others that the article told about lots of research showing how the brain of bilingual people was different from people who only know one language, and that in America they were spending 20 billion rupiah per year (two million dollars) to teach children a second language at an early age to stimulate their brains. Whereas in the Moronene area, all parents needed to do was speak Moronene to their children, and they would get the same benefit, since they would all also learn Indonesian at school and from friends, TV etc. However in recent years more and more Moronene parents, (and also in many other language groups in Indonesia) are choosing to speak Indonesian to their children, thinking it will help them at school. As a result more and more children are becoming less bilingual. P##### and several other people I spoke to about the article were quite excited and said it was important for Moronene parents to know about this research. P##### asked me to translate the article and he would photocopy it and give it to everyone who came to his kiosik. He asked if I could leave the magazine with him, since Time magazine is so influential and would back up the message of the article. He also had the idea of doing a survey of young people to find what percent regretted that their parents didn't speak to them in Moronene (so far I haven't found anyone who said they regretted that their parents spoke to them in the local language).

This really encouraged me to want to work with people like P##### and others concerned to promote and preserve local languages, including enabling people to benefit more from the translated Scriptures. And I realized it would be helpful to have lots of copies of this particular issue of Time to share with people like that all over Indonesia, as well as in other countries where local languages are beginning to come under pressure from dominant national languages, such in in Papua New Guinea, Philippines, USA, Europe etc. etc. But then I thought that it's really hard to get lots of copies of magazines once they are off the stands. I myself would gladly buy 100 copies, but I'm in a remote village. Hence I'd like to pass on this request to all of you, that if you have the chance, you buy one or half a dozen copies of this issue, and them send them to your local Wycliffe Bible Translators office. It could either be a donation, or we could arrange for you to be reimbursed if you bought a lot. But you'd have to act fast, because I think that July 29 is the last day it's sold. However sometimes news agents still keep last week's copy for a few days. Alternatively people who subscribe could send in their subscription copy after they read it. I think this issue of the magazine could be a very useful tool in helping speakers of vernacular languages all over the world realize the value of their languages for their children.

I will be very busy over the next week, so may not be able to respond personally, so just take your own initiative. And feel free to reprocess this request and pass it on to people in your network.

Yours in Christ,
David A#######
Taubonto, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia