Historical Overview

A Request for Help

Since 2009, the RGC approach has been used with more than 10 language communities in South Sudan and Sudan, working with 1 language at a time. In each case, the workshop was planned in response to a community request for SIL's support in community-based langauge development. These language communities are what many might consider small, their number of speakers ranging from 4,000 to 117,000.* Many of these language groups had begun translation with little grammar analysis. 

SIL formed a partnership with each community through the local language committee. When a committee did not yet exist, communities were encouraged to establish one. Tim Stirtz was then assigned, via SIL, to assist these communities with linguistic research that would inform writing choices and identify natural constructions in the language. 

* Eberhard et al. (2023) lists the populations and ISO 639-3 codes of the ten languages as follows. Pseudonyms are used for three languages because of the sensitive nature of the work described. Belanda Bor [bxb] 26,000 Reel [atu] 116,000 Bongo [bot] 21,000 Kappa (pseudonym) About 100,000 Beli [blm] 65,000 Omega (pseudonym) About 30,000 Lopit [lpx] 117,000 Beta (pseudonym) About 80,000 Mandari [mqu] 70,000 Narim [loh] 3,620 (1984) 

Existing Materials & Language Typology

When Stirtz began working with these communities, most languages had a tentative alphabet under discussion which was inconsistently used, few if any beginning reading materials, and in some cases, only a handful of people who could read them. 

Several of the 10 languages mentioned above have extensive agglutinative or fusional morphology,* as well as a high number of sound changes at morpheme boundaries, including many that are irregular. Consistently representing these changes in the orthography can be extremely challenging. Meanwhile, others of these languages are more isolating,** which can cause great confusion as to what should constitute a word. In addition, 9 of the 10 languages distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning by tone, and in 8 of these, the functional load of tone is significant enough that tone needs to be at least partially represented in writing for meaning to be correctly understood.

*Those with extensive agglutinative morphology include Lopit, Mandari, Kappa, Omega, Beta and Narim. Reel mostly has fusional morphology. 

**The more isolating languages include Belanda Bor, Beli and Bongo.

The RGC Workshops

For each of the 10 languages, the language committee was involved in planning and development decisions, such as which dialect to write, which training workshops should be offered, and especially, who should attend. The workshop participants collectively helped document the sound patterns and structures of their language to agree on a tentative writing system. 

In the weeks following each workshop, the word lists, narrative texts, documented grammar, and agreed-upon spelling rules were made into a beginning dictionary and other reference tools for the language writers. The language committee was given the final say in alphabet choices and which materials to develop. Members of the language community also collaborated with literacy experts to develop literacy materials, teach literacy classes, and take other steps towards language development. 

All materials produced were checked according to the agreed-upon writing system and revised as needed. This process trained writers to consistently use their writing system and empowered the language community to own the process of developing their written language. 

Further Reading

Rapid Grammar Collection as an Approach to Language Development 

Stirtz, Timothy. 2015. Rapid Grammar Collection as an approach to language development.

In SIL Electronic Working Papers. Series Issue 121. Dallas, TX: SIL International. 

Rapid Grammar Collection: Language communities owning the orthography development process

Stirtz, Timothy. 2024. Rapid Grammar Collection: Language communities owning the orthography development process. 

In Stirtz, Timothy, Michael Cahill and Philip Davison (Eds). Participatory linguistics: Methods and case studies from around the world. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication no. 29. [PP 218-230] Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.