The exotic country of Canada! We've spent our whole time in Wycliffe (25+ years) working from Canada. I (Bruce) have done short-term trips to Nigeria, Cameroon, and Mexico to do language work and consulting. We've been based in the building of Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL) the whole time. That's a training school for Wycliffe Bible Translators.

We have not been directly involved in the translation process, so the answer is none. Our work has been to support those who are. That has been done through these areas:

• teaching linguistic training courses (the study of how languages work)

• helping colleagues share the vision of Bible translation

• encouraging and supporting research that helps ensure Bible translation quality

• assisting Bible translation teams with designing alphabets for unwritten languages (especially tone languages)

As my high school math teach would say, I'm bilingual: I speak English and broken English!

So I (Bruce) haven't learned to speak fluently in any other language than English. I have some background in French from elementary and high school, but it was only reading and writing, not conversational.

Raewyn has basic German from a high school exchange trip and working for a few years with German speaking customers.

We have been able so far to do our ministry without needing other languages, because we haven't been directly involved in translation. When I have worked with other languages, I've been able to discuss in English the meaning and sounds of individual words with a language speaker.

Linguistics is the study of how languages work. It is not studying languages in the sense of learning how to speak them. It is analyzing languages to figure out things like what sounds they have, what order they put their words in to make a sentence, and how meaning is packaged into words and other parts of language.

If you haven't studied carefully how a language works, you can end up with an inaccurate Bible translation. Without studying the sounds, the writing system you design may be confusing, causing people to read the wrong words. Without studying the grammar, you may use a suffix or a small function word or a word order that communicates entirely the wrong meaning. Without studying how meaning works in the language, you may choose a word that doesn't really match the meaning you want to communicate.

Linguistics involves the study of several different subject areas:

• phonetics - how to recognize and say the different language sounds of the world

• phonology - the study of sound systems of languages, needed to design alphabets

• morphology - the study of how meaningful word parts are combined to form words

• syntax - the study of how words are combined to form phrases and sentences

• discourse - the study of how words and sentences are combined to form whole texts

• semantics - the study of how language is used to communicate meaning

• lexicology - the study of how a language packages meaning into the speaker's "mental dictionary"

• pragmatics - the study of how the physical and social context affects communicated meaning

• sociolinguistics - the study of how society affects language use and attitudes

• ethnology - the study of cultures: the beliefs and social and material traits of a people group

There are several practical applications of linguistics relevant to Bible translation:

• language survey - how to figure out where the boundaries between different languages are

• language and culture learning - how to pick up a language and culture without books or courses

• field methods - how to go to a language area, collect language data, and start figuring the language out

• language data management - how to design and use computer tools to organize and analyze language data

• literacy - how to teach people to read and write their own language (which may be a new concept)

• translation - how to transfer meaning from one language to another

Currently, none. Bruce's dual role is now research officer (encouraging and supporting research that helps ensure Bible translation quality), as well as linguistics consultant (helping translation teams in Mexico design alphabets for unwritten languages).

In the past, Bruce has taught phonology (the study of sound systems of languages, needed to design alphabets), and lexicography (how to make bilingual dictionaries useful for doing Bible translation). Raewyn has taught phonetics (how to recognize and say the various sounds of languages of the world).

I (Bruce) mainly help people design writing systems for languages that don't have them (there are lots!), especially for tone languages (see below). This is a foundational step that is need for Bible translation, since if you want to publish a Bible, you need an alphabet. I also encourage and support research done by staff and students at Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL), that will help ensure Bible translation quality.

Raewyn is currently focusing on caring for the family, but hopes to return to an assignment with Wycliffe again soon.

Great question! Designing a writing system for an unwritten language involves:

• finding a speaker of the language to work with, discussing words and phrases in his/her language

• writing down a list of words and phrases from the language, using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which has a symbol for every possible language sound

• recording the list of words / phrases

• analyzing the recordings to find out what phonetic sounds are in the language

• analyzing the patterns in the data to figure out what meaningful categories of sounds the language has

• choosing symbols for these categories of sound

• proposing a linguistically ideal writing system to the community, with the reasons for it (i.e. to make it easy for people to read and write)

• making compromises from the ideal due to social and political pressures, without sacrificing readability, so that the people will actually accept and use the writing system

A tone language is a language in which the pitch of your voice (the "tune" with which you "sing" the word) is just as important as which consonants and vowels you use. If you sing it with the wrong tune, you could say the wrong word.

The classic example is Mandarin Chinese. These are four different words(!):

• mother ma — (high tone)

• hemp ma / (rising tone)

• horse ma _ (low tone)

• scold ma \ (falling tone)

The rise and fall of the pitch of the voice has been approximately indicated by the lines after the consonants and vowels. These are an important part of the word! You don't want to call your mother a horse!!

There are many tone languages in southern Mexico, and almost all the languages in Africa south of the Sahara are tonal. These are areas of the world I (Bruce) have worked; there are many other parts of the world that also have tone languages, especially in southeast Asia.

If you are translating the Bible into a tonal language, you may need to have a way of writing the tone, not just the consonants and vowels, or people will not be able to tell which word they are reading!

This is my (Bruce's) area of specialty: how to design a writing system for tonal languages.

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