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April 1930
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T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
The Remarkable Language of A Neglected People B y W. C ameron T ownsend (Missionary to Guatemala, C.A . )
3§gT is estimated that there are over 15,000,000 Indians Jraj in Latin America who still speak their own lan- guages and dialects. Of the 500 or more tribes, only three have the entire New Testament pub- jjjL lished in the languages they speak. Another tribe, ■51 viz., the Cakchiquels of Guatemala, are soon to receive the New Testament. The manuscript was com pleted in October, 1929, and is now in the hands of the American Bible Society for publication. It is no easy undertaking to translate the Word of God into any language, and much less into one that, to all
though they did not understand its grammatical rules, served as our teachers. As they would answer our ques tions we would write and compare, verify and correct. It took us nearly two months to discover the future form of the verb. After 9 years of questioning and comparing we have discovered about 2,500 verbal forms. Just think of being able to write a single verb in 2,500 different ways! This great variety of verbal forms is obtained by adding prefixes and suffixes to the roots. The latter sel dom change, and then only for the sake of euphony. The prefix varies according to the tense and mode of the verb,
practical purposes, has been unwritten. Soon after the Spanish con quest the more pious or ambitious monks did s o me writing in the languages of the Indian tribes a m o n g whom they labored. S a i n t Bartolomé de las Casas was a leader in the en deavor to reduce the I n d i a n languages to , 'writing. He and his associates c omp o s e d Catholic hymns in the language of the tribe inhabiting what is now k n o w n as Alta and Baja Vera Paz, Guate mala. They t a u g h t these hymns to Indian peddlers who returned to their people singing what the f r i a r s had taught them. O t h e r
according to the person and number of the ob ject as well as the per son and number of the subject, and according to whether the subject has come from else where to perform the act or has to go away to do it. The suffix varies to s h o w the voice of the verb, and to mark the action as precise, frequentative, historic, rapid, causa tive, instrumentative or prolonged. Numerous complex forms can also be made by the use of one or more of seven auxiliary verbs or par ticles after any one of the 2,500 simple verbal forms. Of course in specific cases the addi tion of a certain auxil
MR. AND MRS. W. CAMERON TOWNSEND AND TWO INDIAN, GIRLS. IN THIS CORNSTALK HOUSE WAS DONE THE EARLY PART OF THE TRANSLATION WORK AND THE PRINTING OOF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN CAKCHIQUEL.
priests wrote brief accounts of the life of Christ, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, chants, etc. in the Indian languages. However, the art of reading and writ ing in the Indian tongues never became generalized, and today, if an Indian learns to write, he writes in Spanish, although, if he were conversing with the person to whom he writes, he would use the Indian language if they were both of the same tribe. Most of the writings of the friars in the Indian lan guages are now to be found only in museums. The gram mars they left, some of which have been printed, are in adequate to give much assistance in the mastery of the languages as they are spoken today. This is especially so -of the Cakchiquel language, for the two extant gram mars which the writer has seen are very, very limited and frequently inaccurate. We are glad that these two gram mars were not available to us when we began our work •of learning Cakchiquel and translating the Scriptures into it, for they would have misled us. They were possibly cor- •cect (though very elementary) two or three hundred years ago when they were written, but not so today, We began our study by asking questions. Different In dian believers who could talk considerable Spanish even
iary particle might not make good sense, but then again two or three particles can be combined after a single verb form. It is probably safe to say that a verb can be ex pressed in over 15,000 different ways, each one showing a variation in thought. And, marvel of marvels, a humble barefooted Indian who neither knows how to read nor write would instantly understand any of the 15,000 forms! This is true in spite of the fact that the great majority of these forms are seldom used. One naturally wonders how it is possible, and the explanation is that all the forms are -obtained by following certain rigid rules of a very logical character which every Indian unconsciously imbibes into his system of thought from childhood. It influences even his mode of thinking, and as a result vie find that the In dians are a. very logical people except where prejudice, superstition, and mistraining interfere. By the addition of suffixes many nouns can be formed from verbs and adjectives, and verbs can be formed from nouns and adjectives. This makes a very economical lan guage from one standpoint, for a single root will serve to make many different words. The rules followed are almost always regular and the roots are not nearly so numerous as in our composite languages, so that the task
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